Book Reviews

Harvard professor Michael Sandel's new book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets (Farrar Straus, 2012) has a lot to say about the effect of commercial, market values on American culture, including on American government. Sandel's book focuses on "the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don't belong. … We need to ask whether there are some things money should not buy." This question leads us to the core of government ethics.

This post looks at the final three essays in Corruption and American Politics, an essay collection edited by Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Meyers (Cambria, 2011).

Pay to Play in the Municipal Bond Market

The fourth essay in Corruption and American Politics, an essay collection edited by Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Meyers (Cambria, 2011), is by Wayne S. Le Cheminant. The title of the essay – "Bending the Frame to Corrupt the Lenses" – provides a good picture of his fascinating approach to government ethics.

The third essay in Corruption and American Politics, a collection edited by Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Meyers (Cambria, 2011), is by John M. Parrish, a professor at Loyola Marymount University. The essay, which has the intriguing title "Benevolent Skulduggery," starts out by asking the question, Is corruption ever justified? My short answer is that there are moral dilemmas where one must choose the least of two or more bad ways of handling a matter.

The second essay in Corruption and American Politics, a collection edited by Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Meyers (Cambria, 2011), is by Mark E. Warren, a professor at the University of British Columbia. It asks the question, Is low trust in democratic institutions a problem of corruption?

Corruption and American Politics, an essay collection edited by Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Myers (Cambria, 2011), has some excellent essays, especially those that deal with institutional corruption. The only serious criticism I have of the book is its price: $30 in both paperback and e-book formats.

Anyone who has seen the movie Chinatown has some idea how much ethical misconduct went into the ongoing battles over water in California. Those who want to get down to the nitty gritty of it will enjoy Robert Gottlieb and Margaret Fitzsimmon's Thirst for Growth: Water Agencies as Hidden Government in California (Univ. of Arizona Press, 1991).

Government ethics is naturally focused on the selfish aspects of people's conduct, the aspects that make them provide special benefits to themselves, those who help them, and those to whom they feel special obligations. But as Jonathan Haidt argues in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), people are not just selfish. They're also groupish. And our groupishness causes a lot of problems, as well.

Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012), set out a Moral Foundations Theory that posits the existence of moral modules or foundations. In my last post I dealt with the fairness/proportionality foundation.