 What should be the role of money and markets in our society? When I was a kid, Serene and Rob, maybe you had the same experience. If you went to an amusement park, part of the experience was waiting in long lines for the popular rides. No one liked waiting in the lines, but that was just what happened. Today, that's no longer true. In most amusement parks, if you don't like standing in long lines and if you have the money, you can buy a fast-track or VIP ticket, pay extra, and jump to the head of the line. This is a small aspect of social life, hardly the most grievous moral challenge we face. It also happens in another place in Washington D.C. on Capitol Hill. When Congress holds hearings, they set aside a certain number of seats for the public on a first-come-first-served basis. There are many people who want to sit in on their congressional hearings, especially if it's a hot issue, but who don't want to stand in the long lines that sometimes form a day in advance, sometimes two or three days in advance. It's now possible, if you don't want to stand in the line to attend the congressional hearing, to go to a company, pay them a certain amount of money, and they will hire someone, a homeless person or someone else who needs the work, to stand in the line for you. You pay the company $50 an hour. If the line is two, three, four days long, it's quite an expensive seat. But if you're a lobbyist, you don't have time to spare, and so you can pay to get a place at the head of the line, and when the hearing begins, you can claim your front-row seat. One of the companies that specializes in providing this service is called linestanding.com. They will also get you a seat if you want to sit in on oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. So if you were keen to hear the oral arguments over Obamacare or over same-sex marriage, you could pay $50 an hour to linestanding.com, and they would hire someone who would wait as long as it took to assure that you got in. Take another very different kind of example. If you're a drug company and want to market a new drug to increase your market share, we take this for granted now. Most European countries don't allow it, but you can market it directly to consumers on television. You've probably seen those ads on the nightly news or on sporting events. In fact, if you've watched those ads, those incessant ads for prescription drugs, you could be forgiven for thinking that the greatest health crisis in the world is not malaria or sleeping sickness or river blindness but a rampant epidemic of erectile dysfunction. Marketing drugs directly to consumers. We didn't always do it. Congress made it permissible a couple of decades ago. Or take an even more fateful kind of example. The way we fight our wars. In Iraq and Afghanistan, there were more private military contractors on the ground. Then there were US military troops. Now this isn't because we ever had a public debate about whether we wanted to outsource war to private companies. But this is what has happened over the past three decades. Almost without realizing it, we've drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society. The difference is this. A market economy is a tool, a valuable and effective tool for organizing productive activity. But a market society is a place where everything is up for sale. It's a way of life in which market values and market thinking begin to reach into almost every sphere of life. Family life, personal relations, health, education, civic life, politics. And so the question I would like to put to you for discussion this evening is, why should we worry? Should we worry about becoming a market society? I think there are at least two reasons to worry, but I want to get your thoughts about it. The first is that the more things money can buy, the more it hurts to be poor, the more it matters whether you're affluent or poor. If the only thing money governed access to were fancy vacations and BMWs, inequality wouldn't matter all that much. But against a background of rising inequality, putting a price on everything, the rampant commodification of social life makes things, makes it harder to be poor. If money governs access, as it does, to where you live, whether you live in a safe neighborhood or a crime-ridden one, whether you can send your kids to a good school or not very good school, what political voice you have, then inequality matters a lot more than it otherwise would. So one reason to worry is that if more and more of life is commodified, how much money you have looms much larger. But there's also a second reason to worry about becoming a market society. And that has to do with something subtler, the tendency of market thinking and market values, to crowd out or to erode non-market values worth caring about. Now, to explore this aspect of commodification or the marketization of social life, I'd like to see what you think about a certain story, an example. To do with the walrus hunt in the Arctic in the north of Canada, for centuries, the Inuits built their lives around subsistence walrus hunting. And then in the 19th century, more and more people came hunters to hunt the walrus. And the walrus is not very good at defending itself. They are very slow, unthreatening creatures. They were no match for hunters with guns. The population was decimated. And so the Canadian government banned walrus hunting, but carved out an exception, a small exception, a quota of walruses that the Inuit people could continue to hunt to preserve their way of life. Decades passed. And then recently, the Inuit people came to the Canadian government with a proposal, a proposal in the spirit of the age, I suppose you could say. They said, look, we could use some extra income. Won't you let us sell our quota of walruses to big game hunters who would like to come shoot them? We won't increase the number of walruses shot. We'll keep within our quota. But if we can sell the right to shoot the walruses, then we can make new income as guides. We'll take the hunters out. We'll show them where the walruses are. They will shoot them. We'll harvest them, skin them. We will use the skin and the meat and the blubber just as we always have done. But now we will have a new source of income. Now from the standpoint of standard economic reasoning, this seems like a pretty unobjectionable proposal. No more walruses are killed than would otherwise be the case. Everybody is better off. There are big game hunters now who have the chance to do what they couldn't do before. Go up to the Arctic and shoot a walrus. The Inuit community will make more money. So from the standpoint of standard economic reasoning, it sounds like a pretty good deal. And yet some people object. Let's hear what people... I'd like to hear what people here have to say about this case. If you were the Canadian government, if you were making the policy, what would be your view? By a show of hands, how many would give them the right to sell their walrus hunting quotas? Raise your hand. And how many would not? So we have a pretty good division, which is a great point to begin a conversation. Pretty good division of the room. Let's first hear from someone who objects, someone who would not grant them the right to sell the quota. It's like a tradable permit. It's used in many areas of policy. What would be wrong with that? Someone who objects, who can articulate a reason? I'm afraid that this might lead to some sort of arms race kind of a situation where once they see this money stream, then others will offer more money to buy these licenses. And then the Canadian government, why don't you increase the number of walruses we can kill because we'll generate more income and we'll give you a cut as some sort of a tax to the Canadian government. And so they would see it win, win, win all the way except for the walruses. The walruses wouldn't win on that scenario, on the arms race scenario. It's a bit of the slippery slope. The slippery slope to killing more walruses because everyone will want a piece of the revenue. No, that's all right. But let me just ask you this. Does that mean that provided we could prevent the further demand to kill more walruses, it's okay. You mean as a practical matter, they will see a revenue raising opportunity here and it will prove the irresistible. Yes, it will prove the irresistible. All right. So now that's an objection that worries about how this thing will unfold and you're worried about the walruses losing out in the end. But it's different from the objection in principle that was raised that just finds it somehow morally objectionable to cater to these preferences, desires to shoot a walrus. That doesn't bother you. No, we don't apply it uniformly. We kill unless you are a vegetarian. You're killing all kinds of animals and then we don't seem to be worried about that. So why are we worried about walruses? Okay, let's see if there's someone else. Let's see if there's someone else. Yes, in the blue shirt. I think I guess I go by a principle that cultures require some kind of principle, rules of some kind that are not up for sale. I mean, and while in this case you're asking the Canadian government to impose a particular rule or to reinforce a traditional rule of the Inuit, upon the Inuit when they decide that or at least some of their representatives are asking for relaxation of that rule, I would say, you know, in most cases I would not want to have a commodification of a particular valuable cultural property like that. But what actually is being commodified here? What value is being commodified do you think? The same number of walruses are dying. No more. Until the slippery slope kicks in. But just on the matter of principle, what value is being... You're changing the symbolic universe of the culture, which may have already been changed by other factors, but in any case you're institutionalizing... I don't know any culture well enough to know if walrus has some kind of, you know, role in it, but in any case by selling this right, you're changing the symbolic universe in a way that... All right, changing the symbolic universe somehow. All right, well I have to try to elaborate that a little bit. Let's see if there's someone who... All right, what would you say? Do you care about the way of life of the native people up there? And if so, that's something the government gave thought to. And if they're going to sell the hunting rights, that changes their way of life. So I don't know the answer to where that leads, but that does change things. And the other topic is, as the government, the Canadian government, do you just say, well, you know, X number are okay to kill. They can maintain the population. And if that's the way you want to go, then you say, okay, well then, whoever pays the most to kill each one, is that, as a government, what do you want to do? Oh, that's interesting. Why not auction off directly the rights? Right, then someone for a million dollars can go kill one, and the Canadian government would maximize income that way. And probably they don't want to do that, because probably if they think that hunting is a sport that people should all do the same, they just want to control the number killed, but not necessarily allow just the highest bidders to do it. And separately, do they want the native people to continue their way of life? Okay, that's interesting. Why not just let the Canadian government specify the number of walruses? And then have an outright auction. What do you suppose, by the way, the market, going market rate is for coming and shooting a walrus? I don't know. You don't know? No, but it's probably pretty high, and probably lots of people who like to hunt and afford it, and then you have the whole question, does a sport become something that's just to the higher bidder, or is it something that people as citizens should equally have access to a lottery or whatever to be able to kill? Right, okay. Let's hear if there are some, we've heard a number of people who are uneasy with this policy, but at least half the gathering here favored it. So let's hear now from someone who having heard the arguments against has rejoined her. I think the Inuits, they have the rights to get more welfare from the Canadian government to advance their well-being. Right. I think that's a legitimate cause for them to trade and sell this. And this legitimate cause will overwrite the animal protectionism, which is in favor of the rights for walrus. I think people will think... Wait, wait, wait. The animal protectionism, though. Remember, no more walruses are dying. What's the animal protectionism claim? Well, the animal protectionism is the argument of the professor, the slippery... Oh, I see. The worry that sooner or later more will be taken. Yeah. If we take out that possibility, then I think the Inuits definitely have a legitimate cause too. Walruses, it's not like hunting rhinoceros or a lion or something where there is the thrill of the chase, where it's risky, where it's challenging, where it is at least a kind of sport, or so I'm told. The walrus doesn't run away. The boat comes right up within 15 feet. And there was an account of this in a New York Times magazine article that described this going to shoot a walrus like taking a very long boat ride to shoot a beanbag chair. Now, I think that's behind the suggestion that there's something well unworthy or even maybe perverse in the desire to do this. Why do you want to do it? Actually, the reason they want to is not for the sport and the thrill. It's because hunting organizations have lists that hunters aspire to complete. The Arctic Five or the, I don't know, the Serengeti Five. And so the walrus is one of the ones on the list. So let's suppose that that's the reason. It can't be for the thrill of it. What do you say to the argument that social policy and economic reasoning even shouldn't count certain preferences if they're base and unworthy like this one? What would you say to that? I think we have a lot of unworthy desires in our daily lives. And those people, if they don't, instead of killing walrus, they'll probably end up killing people on the street. And I would say that that kind of activity is a recreational activity that helps people to release their desire. And people would pay for that because there's a demand for releasing that desire. And I think commodifying this activity is a good way for the society to release that kind of unworthy desire. And at the same time, generate some welfare that can benefit the individuals at the end of the day. I see. Okay, so you have a kind of moral economy of violence or a vice such that if it's not given expression here, it'll come out there, so why not let them shoot walruses? Is there someone else who would like to defend the policy against the objections that we've heard? Hearing the argument, I'm a walrus, and I'd be a lot happier with some sensible regulation that would help ensure that more walruses weren't killed absent that regulation. All right. It's a version of the slippery slope, but it's on the side of the possibility that it would go without regulation that's sensible to chain the kill. But now we're assuming that there is regulation in place and that it won't give way, which admittedly could be a challenge. Who else would like to reply in defense of this? I guess I would make an argument in terms of the Inuit's right and saying who are we or who is the Canadian government to have any say in the rights that they would have had if Canada doesn't exist in the first place, in which case they could do whatever they wanted with the walruses. So that would be my argument in response. So you agree there should be a limit to protect the walruses, but what they do at the airport is up to them? Yeah. Well, I think that one of the arguments against it sort of has a sense of protectionism of another culture that I think is hard to justify to say, well, we think that this is the way you've always done that, and I think it's a false belief that cultures need to remain stagnant over time when they don't, in fact. So those who would prevent them selling their quotas are imposing on the Inuit community a certain conception about what's for their own good. Yeah. All right. There's another example. This one from American History of a policy that enabled people to buy and sell a certain kind of quota, military service during the Civil War, the first draft law in the North, Abraham Lincoln's draft law had the provision that if you were, there was a lottery and there was conscription, community by community. And if you were drafted to fight in the Civil War and didn't want to go and had the money, you could hire a substitute to take your place. People ran ads in the classified ad sections of newspapers advertising, offering money for substitutes, $1,000 up to $1,500 typically, which was a lot of money in those days, to go take your place to fight in the Civil War. Now, both parties, you think about it from the standpoint of economic reasoning, both parties are better off. It was worth it for the person hiring the substitute, otherwise they wouldn't have offered the money. It was worth it for the person who agreed to serve in his place. Now, let's take a quick vote on that one. And here, let's ask whether people find this system objectionable or acceptable. How many find it objectionable? And how many find it acceptable? Okay, a handful. Most people here consider the Civil War system unfair. Let's see how many people think it's that in all volunteer army of the kind we currently have is unfair. And how many think it is fair? How many think that the all-volunteer army is a fair way of allocating military service? A lot of people are not voting. All right, what these examples suggest, and this really is the beginning, not the end of a discussion about how military service should be allocated and whether it should be by the labor market. One question we would need to ask is what value exactly is being violated? Why should military service not be allocated by the labor market, but most other jobs are? What is it about military service? We let people buy and sell their labor in other areas of life, including risky ones. What is different? Or is there something intrinsically different about military service in this respect? Someone who voted who thinks it doesn't like the volunteer army should probably answer. Go ahead. Because of patriotism and loyalty to one's country. And why do patriotism and loyalty to one's country mean that you shouldn't buy and sell military service? Because it seems that, you know, seeing the country is giving you so much, you should have a duty to your country and not sell that responsibility to someone else and try to get out of that duty. It's basically something you have to do because of what the country has done for you, so you can't just sell that responsibility. So if it's a civic duty, then there seems something wrong with hiring someone else to perform it. So if you're called to jury duty, you're not allowed to hire a substitute to take your place. Or for that matter, your vote. It's an interesting question from an economic standpoint. Why should there not be a free market in votes? Many people don't even use their vote in the election. So what's wrong with it? Well, if you're right about civic duty, we do hesitate to allow people to sell off or hire other people to fulfill their civic duties. What these two examples illustrate, the walrus hunting and the question of military service and civic duty is that we hesitate to allow buying and selling of social practices or duties if we think that some other value, some higher value is at stake, some higher norm, patriotism and loyalty, or the desire to accommodate the way of life of the Inuit people. But if this is true, then there are two, I think, two implications for the way we do economics that we need to consider. Economists often assume that markets are inert, that they do not touch or taint or change the goods they exchange. And this may be true enough if we're talking about material goods like flat screen televisions. If you sell me a flat screen television or give me one as a gift, it will work just the same either way. The value of the television won't vary depending on whether there was a market relationship. But the same may not be true when we're talking about health or education or the environment or the respect for the community and culture of peoples. Same may not be true when we're talking about civic duties. In cases like these, subjecting social practices to market valuation and exchange may change their meaning, may change the character of the goods, and it may do so by crowding out. The market values may crowd out values, norms, attitudes worth caring about. If that's true, then to decide where markets belong and where they don't. It's not enough to engage in economics as if it were a value-neutral science of choice. That's how economics has presented itself. Really, since early in the 20th century as a value-neutral science of choice. But if market reasoning and market practices crowd out values, norms, attitudes, non-market goods, then we have to ask in any given instance where we would use a market mechanism what are the goods at stake in the practice. Whether they are civic goods or communal goods or cultural goods or environmental ones and while marketizing the practice drive those out or diminish or erode them. But this carries a big implication for economics which is it has to reconnect with its origins in moral and political philosophy. Back when economics was invented the classical economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill they all understood their subject economics to be a subfield of moral and political philosophy. And as markets today reach into more and more spheres of social life that feature of economics is one that I think we need to reconnect with. Economics has to be re-understood as a branch of moral philosophy. There's a second consequence for if it's true that marketizing goods drives out certain attitudes and norms worth caring about. It's a consequence for our public discourse during the same period that we've drifted into having a market society. Our public discourse has become emptied of larger meaning. Politics has become narrowly kind of managerial and technocratic and then we have the shouting matches on cable television and talk radio and on the floor of Congress. And people wonder why. The reason we give is that too many people believe too deeply in their moral convictions. I think something closer to the opposite is true. I think the reason our public discourse is so impoverished is that it fails to engage with larger questions of meaning and moral purpose including questions about how to value goods how to value the social goods embodied in practices from health to education to the environment to civic life. Now we tend to shy away we tend to shy away from engaging directly with arguments about the meaning of goods in public life. And the reason we shy away is we realize these are controversial judgments. People disagree about them. And so we reach for a kind of public discourse that's empty of those big questions. And so I think the rise of market reasoning this is part of the appeal of market reasoning. It seems to offer a value neutral way of making social choice that seems to spare us the need to engage in debate about the character of goods. But it's a false promise. It's led to the hollowing out the emptiness of public discourse that we see all around us. It explains I think why citizens of democracies but around the world are frustrated with the terms the alternatives being offered by political parties and by politicians. And so I think a reason I think we have two reasons to reconnect with big questions in public discourse about economics. One is it's the only way we will be able to decide as a democratic society where markets serve the public good and where they don't belong. And second, it's the only way to elevate the terms of our public discourse to engage with big things nobody is inspired by technocratic managerial talk. I don't suggest that we will all agree if we have a morally more robust kind of public discourse. But I do think we will make this democracy better we'll cultivate habits of listening to and learning from one another even where the disagreements persist. And we also may develop a keener sense of the price we pay for drifting toward a society where everything is up for sale. Thanks. First of all, thank you. That's very inspiring and I would say taking the lid off the can of worms that we have to delve into. As I listen to your two examples about the Inuit and I have done a little bit of running around up in high latitudes myself. But not hunting. I'm sorry? Not hunting. You've been fishing up there not hunting. Sailing. Sailing, okay. But and also when you talked about the question of a voluntary army the thing that makes me uncomfortable is that when economists talk about episodes like that they talk about them as though they're devoid of context. A voluntary army will naturally push people who are closer to despair into risking their lives. And that's not a free choice. That's a coerced choice. In my experience in dealing with Eskimo culture they pay tribute to the animals they kill as part of their organic system and the feelings they have relative to the spirits and the gods. And when they start to let other guys come in for sport and shoot those animals to take money are they not deforming something that's dear to their traditions which they're doing as a choice out of despair to take care of people in a culture that's fighting for subsistence. So I experienced some abrasion in these examples that they're really not free choices they're coerced choices and we're just not acknowledging that we're pushing people up against the wall before they make the choice. It's an interesting observation and I think what it points to is there are really two and I think this helps force us to distinguish between two different questions we need to ask before we can decide whether to marketize a certain social practice. One of them is is the choice really free how voluntary is the exchange because part of the appeal of markets is that it involves the voluntary exchange among willing participants. So for example in the debate about whether there should be a free market in organs for transplantation kidneys let's say most countries don't permit it but one objection would be just along the lines that you mentioned Rob that if there were marketing kidneys and the sellers were desperately poor peasants in the developing world who were under great economic compulsion to feed their families to provide an education for their family it would be hard to call that choice free. We would say we might well say that the coercion is built into the necessity of their situation if it's a desperate deal so that's one issue how free is the choice and then the second issue is even if the choice is free it might still be degrading take the debate about prostitution some object of prostitution on the ground that typically prostitutes are coerced in effect by drug addiction or desperate need for money but then we could ask what about imagine a roughly equal society or imagine prostitutes who were not under great economic necessity who freely chose that work would that remove all possible objections well not necessarily because there would still be the further question about whether selling one's body for sex is consistent with human dignity or respect for the human person or whether it's degrading independent of the question of freedom versus coercion so there are really two issues we have to two questions we have to ask is it truly voluntary and secondly even if it is is this choice at odds with human dignity or respect for culture in question or in this case human sexuality and this takes us right to questions about the good and those are the questions that we hesitate to debate in public discourse and I think we've got to try to get over that habit we're afraid to have public discussions about deep values I think because there's a pervasive fear that somehow they will be more conflict ridden and violent and yet the truth of the matter is that the effects of the commodification of value are far more violent in its effects than those conversations that so it's a real sort of distortion has taken place in our understanding even of what violence is in our understanding of what the consequences are of conflict well there are certainly cases where commodifying a good especially under desperate where the sellers are under desperate economic circumstances if it's true that in those cases it's not a voluntary choice then it is can be a kind of violence so I think that that's an important point there's also a closely connected point that I think one of the reasons we hesitate to engage in public debate about the nature of the good life or the character of goods and virtues is even if we don't think it will lead to wars of religion and violence we are concerned about the fact that in a pluralist society we disagree about the good so there will be controversy there will be a clash and in a democracy we would wind up imposing the values of some people on others and that's a serious worry but it's not an answer to that worry to say alright let's let markets decide these questions for us for a reason parallel to the point that you just made it's not that markets will decide these questions in a way that is neutral toward the right way of valuing goods to consign these questions to markets is to presuppose that the proper way of valuing them is as commodities so if we don't decide debate and decide questions of the good in democratic public discourse markets will decide these questions for us it's not that there's some neutral alternative some of us economists after reading your book need a little bit of advice you talk a lot about love okay right in an earlier session here we had two one former Harvard professor and one current one Marcia Sen and Cornell West and where things really heat up that night was where no Marcia offered he said why don't we talk about love so in the Harvard tradition I look at the debate you've had with Larry Summers the writings of Dennis Robertson and also some of the discussions in your book about giving gifts economists would have you give cash gifts because otherwise you're constraining what the person receives could you flesh this out and help us all with our love lives well and love is related to gift and the giving of gift I'd like to get to the topic of love and economists through a concrete example one of the most influential studies about the effect of commodification in recent times was a book nearly 1970s by the British sociologist Richard Titmuss some of you probably remember this book it was called the gift relationship and it was about blood donation and he's compared the US and the UK system of blood donation in the UK you couldn't buy and sell blood you could only donate it voluntarily without pay in the US you could donate blood at the local Red Cross or you could sell it there were blood banks that bought and sold it and his conclusion was on practical and economic grounds the British system works better a more reliable supply less tainted blood and so on but he also made an ethical argument against a market in blood saying that if you allow the buying and selling of blood you drive out and devalue the altruism of giving giving to a stranger even this generated a debate including among some economists who were paying attention because from an economic point of view if some people want to give stuff away and other people want to buy and sell that stuff both groups should be free to proceed as they choose just because blood is being sold by some people somewhere doesn't mean I can't still give it freely if I want to the economist would say in one economist who wrote a long critical review of the Titmuss book fastened on this point he's one of the most distinguished American economists of his time and he concluded his review of Titmuss by making this argument against using insisting on altruism as a basis for blood donation he said like many economists I do not want to rely too heavily on substituting ethics for self-interest I think it is best on the whole that the requirement of ethical behavior be confined confined to those circumstances where the price system breaks down why? he said because we do not wish to use up recklessly the scarce resources of altruistic motivation so the idea is that altruism love sympathy, generosity are scarce resources that are depleted with use now it's easy to see how this I would call it a kind of mystic conception of virtue if true provides good grounds for extending markets into every sphere of life because other people can still go on doing what they want if they want to be generous and so on so it's the idea that generosity and virtue are like fossil fuels the more you use the less you have I didn't realize when I read this that this draws this idea goes back among economists this economic view of virtue to a highly respected Cambridge UK economist who gave a speech at the bicentennial of Columbia University not far from here and the subject of his lecture was what does a question, what does the economist economize this was this was Sir Dennis Robertson this was in 1954 at Columbia and his answer was look he realizes economists deal with the aggressive impulses of human beings but they still have an important moral mission and that is to help to reduce the preacher's task to manageable dimensions and here's how the economist can help by promoting policies that rely whenever possible on self-interest rather than altruism or moral considerations and by doing this the economist saves society from squandering its scarce supply of virtue so here's where the idea first finds full articulation and he ended with this if we economists do our business well we can I believe contribute mightily to the economizing of that scarce resource love the most precious thing in the world now to those not steeped in economics this seems like a strange way of thinking I mean imagine imagine a loving couple would they really think to themselves that they should treat one another as a self-part when they can in calculating fashion so as to save their love for the moments when they really need it that's the idea of hoarding love and or would they or would it turn out that loving acts toward one another actually would increase this resource I heard echoes of this years later that I had actually taught a course which was a series of debates with my colleague Larry Summers a course on globalization and markets and when he was president of Harvard he was asked to give the morning prayer in Memorial Church at Harvard and his theme was what economics can contribute to thinking about moral questions and at the end of his prayer his commentary he replied to those who criticize markets for relying on selfishness and greed and this is what he said quote we all have only so much altruism in us economists like me and I'm quoting still a very valuable and rare good that needs conserving far better to conserve it by designing a system in which people's wants will be satisfied by individuals being selfish and saving that altruism for our families, our friends and the many social problems in this world that markets cannot solve so this is Robertson restated now the metaphor I think is misleading altruism generosity solidarity and civic spirit these are not like commodities that are depleted with use I think they're more like the better metaphor is to think of them as muscles that grow stronger with exercise and I think one of the defects of the market society we have come to inhabit is that it gives us fewer and fewer opportunities to exercise those muscles and develop those virtues