ABSTRACT
The Selfishness Objection isn't just an objection to commodifying specific things, but to commodifying almost anything. Someone advancing the Corruption Objection should check to see whether otherwise identical pets belonging to demographically identical owners end up being treated worse if they were purchased rather than acquired through non-market means. Institutionalist economics often argues that market exchange does not rely upon self-interest alone. Benjamin Barber claims that markets corrupt politics, but in fact the most marketized societies are also the least corrupt. One of the most consistent findings of public choice economics, the subfield of economics that studies government behavior, is that politics corrupts markets. Economist Gary Becker argued in a 1957 book that the market tends to eliminate unjust discrimination. Capitalism gives people an economic incentive to overlook their differences and instead work together. And, once people work together, they tend to stop caring about those differences.
