ABSTRACT
Most of the literature on the moral limits of markets has defended the view that there are some things that ought to be, in Margaret Jane Radin's (1996) words, 'market-inalienable'. Libertarians are often described as advocates of the view that markets ought to be unlimited. Semiotic, or symbolic, objections to markets are supposed to be, in principle, objections to the buying and selling of specific goods or services. Symbolic objections are in-principle objections to markets in everything. Exploitation objections to markets in specific goods, like kidneys are common. The misallocation objection can be understood as focusing our gaze on both the badly off as well as the very well off. The corruption objection is the worry that markets make people worse, that they can corrode the character and corrupt the relationships. The domino theory is not an argument against making kidneys into commodities; it is an argument for leaving some space for altruism.
