Description
Analyze a particular business ethical issue featured in the TV show Better Call Saul (available on Netflix).
Must be an argumentative paper, which means that you must provide information about the topic as well as present an argument with supporting ideas and opposing ideas of an argumentative issue. First, describe the ethical issue and will formulate a thesis statement. Afterwards, develop an argumentation through the lens of two different philosophical approaches learnt in class, presenting supporting and opposing ideas on the chosen business moral issue. Finally, in the conclusion, justify the thesis statement based on argumentation.
Provide the arguments and references from two attached books.
1. What money can’t buy, chapters – 1 & 3.
2. What’s the right thing to do, chapters – 2,3,5,,6,7 and 8
Must be a minimum of 1500 words to a maximum of 2000 words, but excluding works cited and
cover page.Use APA in text citation.
Written work must be typed. 12pt font, Times New Roman, double space. Word or PDF are the only
formats accepted.
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MICHAEL J. SANDEL
What Money Can’t Buy
The Moral Limits of Markets
ALLEN LANE
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOK
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Contents
Introduction: Markets and Morals
Market Triumphalism
Everything for Sale
The Role of Markets
Our Rancorous Politics
1. Jumping the Queue
Airports, A musement Parks, Car Pool Lanes
Hired Line Standers
Ticket Scalpers
Concierge Doctors
Markets Versus Queues
Yosemite Campsites
Papal Masses
Springsteen Concerts
2. Incentives
Cash for Sterilization
The Economic Approach to Life
Paying Kids for Good Grades
Bribes to Lose Weight
Selling the Right to Immigrate
A Market in Refugees
Speeding Tickets and Subway Cheats
Tradable Procreation Permits
Tradable Pollution Permits
Carbon Offsets
Paying to Kill an Endangered Rhino
Ethics and Economics
3. How Markets Crowd Out Morals
Hired Friends
Bought Apologies and Wedding Toasts
The Case Against Gifts
Auctioning College Admission
Coercion and Corruption
Nuclear Waste Sites
Donation Days and Day-Care Pickups
Blood for Sale
Economizing Love
4. Markets in Life and Death
Janitors Insurance
Betting on Death
Internet Death Pools
Insurance Versus Gambling
The Terrorism Futures Market
The Lives of Strangers
Death Bonds
5. Naming Rights
Autographs for Sale
Corporate-Sponsored Home Runs
Luxury Skyboxes
Moneyball
Bathroom Advertising
Ads in Books
Body Billboards
Branding the Public Square
Branded Lifeguards and Nature Trails
Police Cars and Fire Hydrants
Commercials in the Classroom
Ads in Jails
The Skyboxification of Everyday Life
Notes
Acknowledgments
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For Kiku, with love
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Introduction: Markets and Morals
There are some things money can’t buy, but these days, not many. Today,
almost everything is up for sale. Here are a few examples:
A prison cell upgrade: $82 per night. In Santa Ana, California, and some other cities,
nonviolent offenders can pay for better accommodations—a clean, quiet jail cell, away from
the cells for nonpaying prisoners.1
Access to the car pool lane while driving solo: $8 during rush hour. Minneapolis and other
cities are trying to ease traffic congestion by letting solo drivers pay to drive in car pool lanes,
at rates that vary according to traffic.2
The services of an Indian surrogate mother to carry a pregnancy: $6,250. Western couples
seeking surrogates increasingly outsource the job to India, where the practice is legal and the
price is less than one-third the going rate in the United States.3
The right to immigrate to the United States: $500,000. Foreigners who invest $500,000 and
create at least ten jobs in an area of high unemployment are eligible for a green card that
entitles them to permanent residency.4
The right to shoot an endangered black rhino: $150,000. South Africa has begun letting
ranchers sell hunters the right to kill a limited number of rhinos, to give the ranchers an
incentive to raise and protect the endangered species.5
The cell phone number of your doctor: $1,500 and up per year. A growing number of
“concierge” doctors offer cell phone access and same-day appointments for patients willing to
pay annual fees ranging from $1,500 to $25,000.6
The right to emit a metric ton of carbon into the atmosphere: €13 (about $18). The European
Union runs a carbon emissions market that enables companies to buy and sell the right to
pollute.7
Admission of your child to a prestigious university: ? Although the price is not posted,
officials from some top universities told The Wall Street Journal that they accept some less
than stellar students whose parents are wealthy and likely to make substantial financial
contributions.8
Not everyone can afford to buy these things. But today there are lots of
new ways to make money. If you need to earn some extra cash,here are
some novel possibilities:
Rent out space on your forehead (or elsewhere on your body) to display commercial
advertising: $777. Air New Zealand hired thirty people to shave their heads and wear
temporary tattoos with the slogan “Need a change? Head down to New Zealand.”9
Serve as a human guinea pig in a drug safety trial for a pharmaceutical company: $7,500. The
pay can be higher or lower, depending on the invasiveness of the procedure used to test the
drug’s effect, and the discomfort involved.10
Fight in Somalia or Afghanistan for a private military company: $250 per month to $1,000 per
day. The pay varies according to qualifications, experience, and nationality.11
Stand in line overnight on Capitol Hill to hold a place for a lobbyist who wants to attend a
congressional hearing: $15–$20 per hour. The lobbyists pay line-standing companies, who
hire homeless people and others to queue up.12
If you are a second grader in an underachieving Dallas school, read a book: $2. To encourage
reading, the schools pay kids for each book they read.13
If you are obese, lose fourteen pounds in four months: $378. Companies and health insurers
offer financial incentives for weight loss and other kinds of healthy behavior.14
Buy the life insurance policy of an ailing or elderly person, pay the annual premiums while the
person is alive, and then collect the death benefit when he or she dies: potentially, millions
(depending on the policy). This form of betting on the lives of strangers has become a $30
billion industry. The sooner the stranger dies, the more the investor makes.15
We live at a time when almost everything can be bought and sold. Over
the past three decades, markets—and market values—have come to govern
our lives as never before. We did not arrive at this condition through any
deliberate choice. It is almost as if it came upon us.
As the cold war ended, markets and market thinking enjoyed unrivaled
prestige, understandably so. No other mechanism for organizing the
production and distribution of goods had proved as successful at generating
affluence and prosperity. And yet, even as growing numbers of countries
around the world embraced market mechanisms in the operation of their
economies, something else was happening. Market values were coming to
play a greater and greater role in social life. Economics was becoming an
imperial domain. Today, the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to
material goods alone but increasingly governs the whole of life. It is time to
ask whether we want to live this way.
THE ERA OF MARKET TRIUMPHALISM
The years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 were a heady time of
market faith and deregulation—an era of market triumphalism. The era
began in the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
proclaimed their conviction that markets, not government, held the key to
prosperity and freedom. And it continued in the 1990s, with the marketfriendly liberalism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, who moderated but
consolidated the faith that markets are the primary means for achieving the
public good.
Today, that faith is in doubt. The era of market triumphalism has come to
an end. The financial crisis did more than cast doubt on the ability of
markets to allocate risk efficiently. It also prompted a widespread sense that
markets have become detached from morals and that we need somehow to
reconnect them. But it’s not obvious what this would mean, or how we
should go about it.
Some say the moral failing at the heart of market triumphalism was
greed, which led to irresponsible risk taking. The solution, according to this
view, is to rein in greed, insist on greater integrity and responsibility among
bankers and Wall Street executives, and enact sensible regulations to
prevent a similar crisis from happening again.
This is, at best, a partial diagnosis. While it is certainly true that greed
played a role in the financial crisis, something bigger is at stake. The most
fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an
increase in greed. It was the expansion of markets, and of market values,
into spheres of life where they don’t belong.
To contend with this condition, we need to do more than inveigh against
greed; we need to rethink the role that markets should play in our society.
We need a public debate about what it means to keep markets in their place.
To have this debate, we need to think through the moral limits of markets.
We need to ask whether there are some things money should not buy.
The reach of markets, and market-oriented thinking, into aspects of life
traditionally governed by nonmarket norms is one of the most significant
developments of our time.
Consider the proliferation of for-profit schools, hospitals, and prisons,
and the outsourcing of war to private military contractors. (In Iraq and
Afghanistan, private contractors actually outnumbered U.S. military
troops.16)
Consider the eclipse of public police forces by private security firms—
especially in the United States and Britain, where the number of private
guards is more than twice the number of public police officers.17
Or consider the pharmaceutical companies’ aggressive marketing of
prescription drugs to consumers in rich countries. (If you’ve ever seen the
television commercials on the evening news in the United States, you could
be forgiven for thinking that the greatest health crisis in the world is not
malaria or river blindness or sleeping sickness, but a rampant epidemic of
erectile dysfunction.)
Consider too the reach of commercial advertising into public schools; the
sale of “naming rights” to parks and civic spaces; the marketing of
“designer” eggs and sperm for assisted reproduction; the outsourcing of
pregnancy to surrogate mothers in the developing world; the buying and
selling, by companies and countries, of the right to pollute; a system of
campaign finance that comes close to permitting the buying and selling of
elections.
These uses of markets to allocate health, education, public safety,
national security, criminal justice, environmental protection, recreation,
procreation, and other social goods were for the most part unheard of thirty
years ago. Today, we take them largely for granted.
EVERYTHING FOR SALE
Why worry that we are moving toward a society in which everything is up
for sale?
For two reasons: one is about inequality; the other is about corruption.
Consider inequality. In a society where everything is for sale, life is harder
for those of modest means. The more money can buy, the more affluence
(or the lack of it) matters.
If the only advantage of affluence were the ability to buy yachts, sports
cars, and fancy vacations, inequalities of income and wealth would not
matter very much. But as money comes to buy more and more—political
influence, good medical care, a home in a safe neighborhood rather than a
crime-ridden one, access to elite schools rather than failing ones—the
distribution of income and wealth looms larger and larger. Where all good
things are bought and sold, having money makes all the difference in the
world.
This explains why the last few decades have been especially hard on poor
and middle-class families. Not only has the gap between rich and poor
widened, the commodification of everything has sharpened the sting of
inequality by making money matter more.
The second reason we should hesitate to put everything up for sale is
more difficult to describe. It is not about inequality and fairness but about
the corrosive tendency of markets. Putting a price on the good things in life
can corrupt them. That’s because markets don’t only allocate goods; they
also express and promote certain attitudes toward the goods being
exchanged. Paying kids to read books might get them to read more, but also
teach them to regard reading as a chore rather than a source of intrinsic
satisfaction. Auctioning seats in the freshman class to the highest bidders
might raise revenue but also erode the integrity of the college and the value
of its diploma. Hiring foreign mercenaries to fight our wars might spare the
lives of our citizens but corrupt the meaning of citizenship.
Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not affect
the goods they exchange. But this is untrue. Markets leave their mark.
Sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket values worth caring about.
Of course, people disagree about what values are worth caring about, and
why. So to decide what money should—and should not—be able to buy, we
have to decide what values should govern the various domains of social and
civic life. How to think this through is the subject of this book.
Here is a preview of the answer I hope to offer: when we decide that
certain goods may be bought and sold, we decide, at least implicitly, that it
is appropriate to treat them as commodities, as instruments of profit and
use. But not all goods are properly valued in this way.18 The most obvious
example is human beings. Slavery was appalling because it treated human
beings as commodities, to be bought and sold at auction. Such treatment
fails to value human beings in the appropriate way—as persons worthy of
dignity and respect, rather than as instruments of gain and objects of use.
Something similar can be said of other cherished goods and practices. We
don’t allow children to be bought and sold on the market. Even if buyers
did not mistreat the children they purchased, a market in children would
express and promote the wrong way of valuing them. Children are not
properly regarded as consumer goods but as beings worthy of love and care.
Or consider the rights and obligations of citizenship. If you are called to
jury duty, you may not hire a substitute to take your place. Nor do we allow
citizens to sell their votes, even though others might be eager to buy them.
Why not? Because we believe that civic duties should not be regarded as
private property but should be viewed instead as public responsibilities. To
outsource them is to demean them, to value them in the wrong way.
These examples illustrate a broader point: some of the good things in life
are corrupted or degraded if turned into commodities. So to decide where
the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a distance, we have to
decide how to value the goods in question—health, education, family life,
nature, art, civic duties, and so on. These are moral and political questions,
not merely economic ones. To resolve them, we have to debate, case by
case, the moral meaning of these goods and the proper way of valuing them.
This is a debate we didn’t have during the era of market triumphalism. As
a result, without quite realizing it, without ever deciding to do so, we drifted
from having a market economy to being a market society.
The difference is this: A market economy is a tool—a valuable and
effective tool—for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way
of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor.
It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.
The great missing debate in contemporary politics is about the role and
reach of markets. Do we want a market economy, or a market society?
What role should markets play in public life and personal relations? How
can we decide which goods should be bought and sold, and which should be
governed by nonmarket values? Where should money’s writ not run?
These are the questions this book seeks to address. Since they touch on
contested visions of the good society and the good life, I can’t promise
definitive answers. But I hope at least to prompt public discussion of these
questions, and to provide a philosophical framework for thinking them
through.
RETHINKING THE ROLE OF MARKETS
Even if you agree that we need to grapple with big questions about the
morality of markets, you might doubt that our public discourse is up to the
task. It’s a legitimate worry. Any attempt to rethink the role and reach of
markets should begin by acknowledging two daunting obstacles.
One is the persisting power and prestige of market thinking, even in the
aftermath of the worst market failure in eighty years. The other is the rancor
and emptiness of our public discourse. These two conditions are not entirely
unrelated.
The first obstacle is puzzling. At the time, the financial crisis of 2008 was
widely seen as a moral verdict on the uncritical embrace of markets that had
prevailed, across the political spectrum, for three decades. The near collapse
of once-mighty Wall Street financial firms, and the need for a massive
bailout at taxpayers’ expense, seemed sure to prompt a reconsideration of
markets. Even Alan Greenspan, who as chairman of the U.S. Federal
Reserve had served as high priest of the market triumphalist faith, admitted
to “a state of shocked disbelief” that his confidence in the self-correcting
power of free markets turned out to be mistaken.19 The cover of The
Economist, the buoyantly pro-market British magazine, showed an
economics textbook melting into a puddle, under the headline WHAT WENT
WRONG WITH ECONOMICS.20
The era of market triumphalism had come to a devastating end. Now,
surely, would be a time of moral reckoning, a season of sober second
thoughts about the market faith. But things haven’t turned out that way.
The spectacular failure of financial markets did little to dampen the faith
in markets generally. In fact, the financial crisis discredited government
more than the banks. In 2011, surveys found that the American public
blamed the federal government more than Wall Street financial institutions
for the economic problems facing the country—by a margin of more than
two to one.21
The financial crisis had pitched the United States and much of the global
economy into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and
left millions of people out of work. Yet it did not prompt a fundamental
rethinking of markets. Instead, its most notable political consequence in the
United States was the rise of the Tea Party movement, whose hostility to
government and embrace of free markets would have made Ronald Reagan
blush. In the fall of 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement brought
protests to cities throughout the United States and around the world. These
protests targeted big banks and corporate power, and the rising inequality of
income and wealth. Despite their different ideological orientations, both the
Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street activists gave voice to populist outrage
against the bailout.22
Notwithstanding these voices of protest, serious debate about the role and
reach of markets remains largely absent from our political life. Democrats
and Republicans argue, as they long have done, about taxes, spending, and
budget deficits, only now with greater partisanship and little ability to
inspire or persuade. Disillusion with politics has deepened as citizens grow
frustrated with a political system unable to act for the public good, or to
address the questions that matter most.
This parlous state of public discourse is the second obstacle to a debate
about the moral limits of markets. At a time when political argument
consists mainly of shouting matches on cable television, partisan vitriol on
talk radio, and ideological food fights on the floor of Congress, it’s hard to
imagine a reasoned public debate about such controversial moral questions
as the right way to value procreation, children, education, health, the
environment, citizenship, and other goods. But I believe such a debate is
possible, and that it would invigorate our public life.
Some see in our rancorous politics a surfeit of moral conviction: too
many people believe too deeply, too stridently, in their own convictions and
want to impose them on everyone else. I think this misreads our
predicament. The problem with our politics is not too much moral argument
but too little. Our politics is overheated because it is mostly vacant, empty
of moral and spiritual content. It fails to engage with big questions that
people care about.
The moral vacancy of contemporary politics has a number of sources.
One is the attempt to banish notions of the good life from public discourse.
In hopes of avoiding sectarian strife, we often insist that citizens leave their
moral and spiritual convictions behind when they enter the public square.
But despite its good intention, the reluctance to admit arguments about the
good life into politics prepared the way for market triumphalism and for the
continuing hold of market reasoning.
In its own way, market reasoning also empties public life of moral
argument. Part of the appeal of markets is that they don’t pass judgment on
the preferences they satisfy. They don’t ask whether some ways of valuing
goods are higher, or worthier, than others. If someone is willing to pay for
sex or a kidney, and a consenting adult is willing to sell, the only question
the economist asks is, “How much?” Markets don’t wag fingers. They don’t
discriminate between admirable preferences and base ones. Each party to a
deal decides for himself or herself what value to place on the things being
exchanged.
This nonjudgmental stance toward values lies at the heart of market
reasoning and explains much of its appeal. But our reluctance to engage in
moral and spiritual argument, together with our embrace of markets, has
exacted a heavy price: it has drained public discourse of moral and civic
energy, and contributed to the technocratic, managerial politics that afflicts
many societies today.
A debate about the moral limits of markets would enable us to decide, as
a society, where markets serve the public good and where they don’t
belong. It would also invigorate our politics, by welcoming competing
notions of the good life into the public square. For how else could such
arguments proceed? If you agree that buying and selling certain goods
corrupts or degrades them, then you must believe that some ways of valuing
these goods are more appropriate than others. It hardly makes sense to
speak of corrupting an activity—parenthood, say, or citizenship—unless
you think that some ways of being a parent, or a citizen, are better than
others.
Moral judgments such as these lie behind the few limitations on markets
we still observe. We don’t allow parents to sell their children or citizens to
sell their votes. And one of the reasons we don’t is, frankly, judgmental: we
believe that selling these things values them in the wrong way and
cultivates bad attitudes.
Thinking through the moral limits of markets makes these questions
unavoidable. It requires that we reason together, in public, about how to
value the social goods we prize. It would be folly to expect that a morally
more robust public discourse, even at its best, would lead to agreement on
every contested question. But it would make for a healthier public life. And
it would make us more aware of the price we pay for living in a society
where everything is up for sale.
When we think of the morality of markets, we think first of Wall Street
banks and their reckless misdeeds, of hedge funds and bailouts and
regulatory reform. But the moral and political challenge we face today is
more pervasive and more mundane—to rethink the role and reach of
markets in our social practices, human relationships, and everyday lives.
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Jumping the Queue
Nobody likes to wait in line. Sometimes you can pay to jump the queue. It’s
long been known that, in fancy restaurants, a handsome tip to the maître d’
can shorten the wait on a busy night. Such tips are quasi bribes and handled
discreetly. No sign in the window announces immediate seating for anyone
willing to slip the host a fifty-dollar bill. But in recent years, selling the
right to cut in line has come out of the shadows and become a familiar
practice.
FAST TRACK
Long lines at airport security checkpoints make air travel an ordeal. But not
everyone has to wait in the serpentine queues. Those who buy first-class or
business-class tickets can use priority lanes that take them to the front of the
line for screening. British Airways calls it Fast Track, a service that also lets
high-paying passengers jump the queue at passport and immigration
control.1
But most people can’t afford to fly first-class, so the airlines have begun
offering coach passengers the chance to buy line-cutting privileges as an à
la carte perk. For an extra $39, United Airlines will sell you priority
boarding for your flight from Denver to Boston, along with the right to cut
in line at the security checkpoint. In Britain, London’s Luton Airport offers
an even more affordable fast-track option: wait in the long security line or
pay £3 (about $5) and go to the head of the queue.2
Critics complain that a fast track through airport security should not be
for sale. Security checks, they argue, are a matter of national defense, not an
amenity like extra legroom or early boarding privileges; the burden of
keeping terrorists off airplanes should be shared equally by all passengers.
The airlines reply that everyone is subjected to the same level of screening;
only the wait varies by price. As long as everyone receives the same body
scan, they maintain, a shorter wait in the security line is a convenience they
should be free to sell.3
Amusement parks have also started selling the right to jump the queue.
Traditionally, visitors may spend hours waiting in line for the most popular
rides and attractions. Now, Universal Studios Hollywood and other theme
parks offer a way to avoid the wait: for about twice the price of standard
admission, they’ll sell you a pass that lets you go to the head of the line.
Expedited access to the Revenge of the Mummy thrill ride may be morally
less freighted than privileged access to an airport security check. Still, some
observers lament the practice, seeing it as corrosive of a wholesome civic
habit: “Gone are the days when the theme-park queue was the great
equalizer,” one commentator wrote, “where every vacationing family
waited its turn in democratic fashion.”4
Interestingly, amusement parks often obscure the special privileges they
sell. To avoid offending ordinary customers, some parks usher their
premium guests through back doors and separate gates; others provide an
escort to ease the way of VIP guests as they cut in line. This need for
discretion suggests that paid line cutting—even in an amusement park—
tugs against a nagging sense that fairness means waiting your turn. But no
such reticence appears on Universal’s online ticket site, which touts the
$149 Front of Line Pass with unmistakable bluntness: “Cut to the FRONT
at all rides, shows and attractions!”5
If you’re put off by queue jumping at amusement parks, you might opt
instead for a traditional tourist sight, such as the Empire State Building. For
$22 ($16 for children), you can ride the elevator to the eighty-sixth-floor
observatory and enjoy a spectacular view of New York City. Unfortunately,
the site attracts several million visitors a year, and the wait for the elevator
can sometimes take hours. So the Empire State Building now offers a fast
track of its own. For $45 per person, you can buy an Express Pass that lets
you cut in line—for both the security check and the elevator ride. Shelling
out $180 for a family of four may seem a steep price for a fast ride to the
top. But as the ticketing website points out, the Express Pass is “a fantastic
opportunity” to “make the most of your time in New York—and the Empire
State Building—by skipping the lines and going straight to the greatest
views.”6
LEXUS LANES
The fast-track trend can also be seen on freeways across the United States.
Increasingly, commuters can buy their way out of bumper-to-bumper traffic
and into a fast-moving express lane. It began during the 1980s with car pool
lanes. Many states, hoping to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution,
created express lanes for commuters willing to share a ride. Solo drivers
caught using the car pool lanes faced hefty fines. Some put blow-up dolls in
the passenger seat in hopes of fooling the highway patrol. In an episode of
the television comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David comes up with
an ingenious way of buying access to the car pool lane: faced with heavy
freeway traffic en route to an LA Dodgers baseball game, he hires a
prostitute—not to have sex but to ride in his car on the way to the stadium.
Sure enough, the quick ride in the car pool lane gets him there in time for
the first pitch.7
Today, many commuters can do the same—without the need for hired
help. For fees of up to $10 during rush hour, solo drivers can buy the right
to use car pool lanes. San Diego, Minneapolis, Houston, Denver, Miami,
Seattle, and San Francisco are among the cities that now sell the right to a
faster commute. The toll typically varies according to the traffic—the
heavier the traffic, the higher the fee. (In most places, cars with two or more
occupants can still use express lanes for free.) On the Riverside Freeway,
east of Los Angeles, rush-hour traffic creeps along at 15–20 miles an hour
in the free lanes, while the paying customers in the express lane zip by at
60–65 mph.8
Some people object to the idea of selling the right to jump the queue.
They argue that the proliferation of fast-track schemes adds to the
advantages of affluence and consigns the poor to the back of the line.
Opponents of paid express lanes call them “Lexus lanes” and say they are
unfair to commuters of modest means. Others disagree. They argue that
there is nothing wrong with charging more for faster service. Federal
Express charges a premium for overnight delivery. The local dry cleaner
charges extra for same-day service. And yet no one complains that it’s
unfair for FedEx, or the dry cleaner, to deliver your parcel or launder your
shirts ahead of someone else’s.
To an economist, long lines for goods and services are wasteful and
inefficient, a sign that the price system has failed to align supply and
demand. Letting people pay for faster service at airports, at amusement
parks, and on highways improves economic efficiency by letting people put
a price on their time.
THE LINE-STANDING BUSINESS
Even where you’re not allowed to buy your way to the head of the line, you
can sometimes hire someone else to queue up on your behalf. Each summer,
New York City’s Public Theater puts on free outdoor Shakespeare
performances in Central Park. Tickets for the evening performances are
made available at 1:00 p.m., and the line forms hours in advance. In 2010,
when Al Pacino starred as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, demand for
tickets was especially intense.
Many New Yorkers were eager to see the play but didn’t have time to
stand in line. As the New York Daily News reported, this predicament gave
rise to a cottage industry—people offering to wait in line to secure tickets
for those willing to pay for the convenience. The line standers advertised
their services on Craigslist and other websites. In exchange for queuing up
and enduring the wait, they were able to charge their busy clients as much
as $125 per ticket for the free performances.9
The theater tried to prevent the paid line standers from plying their trade,
claiming “it’s not in the spirit of Shakespeare in the Park.” The mission of
the Public Theater, a publicly subsidized, nonprofit enterprise, is to make
great theater accessible to a broad audience drawn from all walks of life.
Andrew Cuomo, New York’s attorney general at the time, pressured
Craigslist to stop running ads for the tickets and line-standing services.
“Selling tickets that are meant to be free,” he stated, “deprives New Yorkers
of enjoying the benefits that this taxpayer-supported institution provides.”10
Central Park is not the only place where there’s money to be made by
those who stand and wait. In Washington, D.C., the line-standing business
is fast becoming a fixture of government. When congressional committees
hold hearings on proposed legislation, they reserve some seats for the press
and make others available to the general public on a first-come, first-served
basis. Depending on the subject and the size of the room, the lines for the
hearings can form a day or more in advance, sometimes in the rain or in the
chill of winter. Corporate lobbyists are keen to attend these hearings, in
order to chat up lawmakers during breaks and keep track of legislation
affecting their industries. But the lobbyists are loath to spend hours in line
to assure themselves a seat. Their solution: pay thousands of dollars to
professional line-standing companies that hire people to queue up for them.
The line-standing companies recruit retirees, message couriers, and,
increasingly, homeless people to brave the elements and hold a place in the
queue. The line standers wait outside, then, as the line moves, they proceed
inside the halls of the congressional office buildings, queuing up
