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The more things money can buy, the harder it is to be poor.
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In almost every society around the world today, there is tremendous frustration with politics,
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with politicians, with political parties.
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What passes for political discourse these days consists largely of partisan shouting
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matches, where people aren't really listening to one another but shouting past one another,
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or narrow, technocratic, managerial talk, which inspires no-one.
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I think one of the reasons for the emptiness of public discourse is that we've outsourced
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our moral argument to markets. Over the last few decades we've drifted, almost without
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realising it, from having market economies to becoming market societies.
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The difference is this: a market economy is a tool, a valuable and effective tool for
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organising productive activity, but a market society is a place where almost everything
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is up for sale.
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There was a proposal to increase attention by GPs to the diagnosis of dementia by offering
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fifty-five pounds for every dementia diagnosis that she or he made.
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Or, consider the use of cash incentives in schools, offering teachers bonuses if the
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test scores of their students increase.
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Why not allow a free market in votes so that people who don't much care about the outcome
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of elections get some value, if they choose, and sell their votes to the highest bidder?
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Sold
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[If] the only thing money could buy were cars, vacations and luxury yachts, inequality
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wouldn't matter very much.
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But, where money determines access to the fundamental necessities and good things in
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life - health, education, living in a safe neighbourhood, political voice and influence
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- inequality matters a lot more than it otherwise would.
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We sometimes shrink from engaging with big ethical questions in politics because we know
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that in pluralist societies, like ours, we will disagree.
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I think we need to overcome this hesitation. I think people want,
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politics to be about big things.
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The reason we should aim for a more ethically engaged kind of public discourse is not that
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it will produce unanimous agreement, but because it will make us better democratic citizens.