My Dentist, the Free Market, and Moral Cavities

When my dentist handed me a teeth-whitening pamphlet before I had even reclined in the dental chair, I thought of Michael Sandel. Not because the Harvard professor has particularly memorable choppers, but because Sandel has spent a considerable amount of time questioning pursuits like this. Specifically, highlighting the drawbacks of a society where market values infect all areas of our life. “Today,” Sandel writes, “the logic of buying and selling no longer applies to material goods alone. It increasingly governs the whole of life.” My experience with the dentist is a perfect example. There is something deeply troubling about medical professionals treating patients, first and foremost, as consumers. This runs counter to the very promise made in The Dentist’s Pledge , the dental version of the Hippocratic Oath, whose first point reads: …Let each come to me safe in the knowledge that their total health and well-being is my first consideration. Yet, in that dentist’s office, dentistry’s primary responsibility had been displaced by profit motive. The norms of the profession have been commercialized—health isn’t the primary goal anymore; rather, making money drives all decisions. While “ economists often assume that markets are inert: that they do not affect the goods they exchange ,” this assumption is naive. Market values are some of the most powerful forces on earth. They most certainly reconfigure priorities, and to my mind, they often do so in suboptimal and intangible ways, as dentistry proves. When there is no respite from being sold something, people are forced to doubt the true motivations behind everything. Intent, from politicians to the dentist, becomes questioned. That’s an undesirable way to live. Furthermore, in a market society, “ where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means .” Inequality is exacerbated, as money becomes the “ sole value on which all choices are based .” And in 2017, that reality hits too close to home for most Americans—the majority of whom  have less than $1,000 in savings . When you perceive the world through this lens, you begin to understand why both political parties endlessly spoke about the economy
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