Markets

Select an item worth approximately $1 USD, such as a candy bar. Over the course of a week, try to sell or trade that object for items of higher value. Trade each new object in turn and try to end up with the highest value object or most amount of money you can, just from trading. In your reflection, discuss Frankfurt’s view of efficiency and Spafford’s view of community. 

• Notes: You cannot add something to the objects to increase their value. For instance, don’t offer to tutor someone in Calculus II if they buy your candy bar. Don’t tell them you are raising money for charity. Also, the monetary value must be something we can easily establish from retail websites and the like; you cannot, for instance, just say you personally value some ten-cent item at $1 million. 

Evidence: Photos of every traded object with the prices listed in your journal 

Choose a small favor, service, or form of care that you ordinarily provide within a relationship without charging for it. For a limited period, replace the ordinary arrangement with an explicit price or fee. For example, offer to proofread a friend’s paper for $5, charge a sibling for a ride, ask a roommate to pay for listening to a long complaint, or create a written price list for small household favors.

Do not choose anything high-stakes, humiliating, coercive, or likely to damage the relationship. Explain that this is a temporary class project before the other person agrees to participate.

From this experience, reflect on what changed when the exchange became explicitly commercial. Did the price make the arrangement clearer, fairer, colder, easier to refuse, or more insulting? Consider whether payment merely changes how a good is distributed or whether it can change the meaning of the good itself.

Evidence: Include the proposed price or price list, the other person’s response, and a brief record of the exchange.

If you are medically eligible, sell plasma at a licensed plasma donation center. In your reflection, compare this experience with donating blood (whether or not you have donated blood before). How did the experience differ? Who else was donating plasma? What reasons do you think people had for being there? How did it feel to be paid for providing part of your body? Did receiving payment change the meaning of the act? Would you do it again? Why or why not?

In your reflection, discuss whether there is an important moral difference between donating blood, selling plasma, participating in paid medical research, and selling other kinds of bodily labor or bodily materials.

Evidence: Include documentation that you sold plasma.

Give someone a benefit that is deliberately inefficient, unnecessary, or difficult to measure. For example, write a long letter instead of sending a text, make an elaborate meal from scratch rather than buying it, repair something of little monetary value, spend time accompanying someone on an errand, or create an object that the recipient could easily purchase.

From this experience, reflect on whether the inefficiency of a gift can partly constitute its value. Consider the difference between benefiting someone and expressing care for them.

Evidence: Include a photograph or copy of the gift and a description of the time, attention, or labor involved and have the recipient email to certify that they got the gift/benefit.