5 Semiotic Objections - Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests by Jason F. Brennan, Peter Jaworski....... #mercatobestemmia #applebmwutero...#democraziaespressiva #semioticaovunque #significatotrasformativo
Buying and selling is not just about getting goods or making money. It can also be an expressive act,Read more at location 1135
we now identify different brands with different lifestyles, attitudes, and ideologies.Read more at location 1138
So, for instance, one reason people buy Apple computers over less expensive but equally well performing PCs is that they want to signal to others and themselves that they are a certain kind of person.Read more at location 1140
Many people who buy a BMW are thus signaling (or trying to signal) that they are exciting driving enthusiasts, who demand precision and performance. Buying a Mercedes tends to signal that a person is refined, sophisticated, and elegant.Read more at location 1147
consider common attitudes in the United States towards prostitution. Some people believe it is not immoral to buy sex, but even most of these people look down upon men who do so–buying sex is seen as low status, because a high status man should be able to get sex for free.Read more at location 1149
some people take pride–acquire a sense of dignity–in performing certain tasks–such as installing new drywall in the basement–rather than hiring others to do it for them.Read more at location 1152
In this chapter, we are concerned with objections based on the idea that buying and selling certain things can be a form of wrongful expression.Read more at location 1168
One shouldn’t write Neo-Nazi music expressing the hatred of Jews. One should not just say to one’s kind, loving mother, “Hey Mom, I hope you die and rot in hell.” And so on. Even when it is within our rights to express such attitudes,Read more at location 1171
Consider how, say, a committed Christian might feel if you told her that you once used the Bible as toilet paper,Read more at location 1174
Many people think that markets in certain goods and services are offensive in just this way.Read more at location 1177
Semiotics: Independently of objections A–F, to allow a market in some good or service X is a form of communication that expresses the wrong attitude toward X or expresses an attitude that is incompatible with the intrinsic dignity of X, or would show disrespect or irreverence for some practice, custom, belief, or relationship with which X is associated.Read more at location 1183
Semiotic objections–as we identify them–are independent of worries about exploitation, misallocation, rights violations, self-destructive behavior, harm to others, or character corruption.Read more at location 1192
Satz discusses a case where students at a university were paid to keep their rooms clean in order to impress prospective students and their parents. She is not worried about exploitation or deceptive advertising. Rather, she finds the transaction at odds with the kind of relationship a university should haveRead more at location 1201
Anderson worries that markets in pregnancy surrogacy are inherently disrespectful of women and children. Some of her concerns involve purported rights violations. Yet, rights violations aside, she is worried that paying women for surrogacy communicates that women are “incubation machines,”Read more at location 1203
Many democratic theorists defend democracy in part on semiotic grounds, on the idea that democracy and only democracy expresses our fundamental moral equality.Read more at location 1213
Sandel objects to adoption auctions: “Even if buyers did not mistreat the children they purchased, a market in children would express and promote the wrong way of valuing them.Read more at location 1215
Michael Walzer says that distributions of goods are unjust when these distributions violate the social meaning of those goods.12 Different goods–such as office, honor, and love–are governed by different norms,Read more at location 1229
David Archard, following similar arguments by Richard Titmuss and Peter Singer, claims that selling blood is “imperialistic” because it involves a “contamination of meaning.”Read more at location 1235
As far as we can tell, semiotic objections are the most common class of objections against commodifying certain goods and services.Read more at location 1239
However, despite this, there has been no systematic investigation or criticism of semiotic objections as such.Read more at location 1241
In Part II, over the next three chapters, we examine and rebut a number of plausible-sounding semiotic arguments:16 The Mere Commodity Objection: Claims that buying and selling certain goods or services shows that one regards them as having merely instrumental value. The Wrong Signal Objection: Claims that buying and selling certain goods and services communicates, independently of one’s attitudes, disrespect for the objects in question. The Wrong Currency Objection: Claims that inserting markets and money into certain kinds of relationships communicates estrangement and distance, and is objectionably impersonal.Read more at location 1244
One of our main responses will be to explain how the meaning of markets is, in general, a highly contingent, fluid, socially-constructed fact. There is little essential meaning to market exchanges. What market exchanges mean depends upon a culture’s interpretative practices.Read more at location 1250
Rather than giving us reason to avoid those markets, it gives us reason to revise the meaningRead more at location 1253
Note: REVISIONE DEI SIGNIFICATI
