Abstract

Michael Sandel's critique of commodification is based on two pillars: corruption and fairness. After outlining these concepts, this paper scrutinizes Sandel's analysis of paid line-standing, focusing, in particular, on queues for congressional hearings in the United States. Sandel's corruption objection to commodifying places in queues for these hearings is unsatisfactory, and I develop an alternative account. According to that alternative, the corruption can be overcome by remedying the background conditions of inequality in society. This conclusion contradicts something that Sandel repeatedly claims, namely, that his corruption and fairness critiques of commodification are independent of each other. The corruption critique of paid line-standing for congressional hearings, I argue, has little normative force beyond that of his fairness critique.