罗思的《Moral Economics》以“为何买海洛因比雇佣杀手更容易”开篇，借毒品、代孕、卖血和器官交换等例子讨论“可憎交易”与市场设计。文中提到1998年加州公投后禁食马肉；美国除内华达少数县外几乎全面禁止卖淫；英国卖血通常只得一块饼干，而美国人却可为献血、甚至在新冠疫苗挑战试验中冒险获得报酬。

作者认为，禁令通常不能完全奏效，但会降低活动频率，且足够有动机的人总能找到绕过限制的办法。罗思引用罗得岛室内卖淫意外合法化的研究：研究者发现性侵和性传播感染都减少了，这支持对有牌照性交易进行政策试验；但在对成瘾且致命的毒品禁令上，由于证据更稀缺或更含糊，他选择保留判断。

评论同时指出，罗思过于把道德分歧视为无法协调的外生事实，因而回避原则之争。作者认为这很可惜，因为书中呈现的是一位重视身体自主、反对为避免少数人的不适而接受不必要死亡的人；同时，文章提醒人们，价值上的“厌恶”不仅用于社会控制，也可能像涂尔干所说那样，通过把世界分成神圣与世俗来维系市场所依赖的社会合作。

Alvin Roth’s Moral Economics opens with the question of why buying heroin is easier than hiring a hitman, using drugs, surrogacy, blood donation, and organ exchange to explore “repugnant transactions” and market design. The text cites 1998 California’s referendum banning horsemeat, near-total U.S. bans on prostitution except in a few Nevada counties, and contrasts British donors’ biscuit-level compensation with paid blood donation and covid-19 challenge trials in the U.S.

The argument is that bans rarely work perfectly, but they do reduce incidence, and determined people usually find ways around them. Roth cites Rhode Island’s accidental legalization of indoor prostitution, where researchers found fewer sexual assaults and sexually transmitted infections, strengthening the case for policy experiments with licensed sex work; for addictive and lethal drugs, however, the evidence is too limited or ambiguous for a firm conclusion.

The criticism is that Roth often treats moral disagreement as an exogenous fact that cannot be debated, rather than a reasoned position. That is unfortunate because the book portrays a deeply moral thinker who values bodily autonomy and rejects unnecessary deaths, while also noting that repugnance can both enforce social control and sustain cohesion by separating the sacred from the ordinary, on which markets ultimately depend.

Source: How should economists treat morality?

Subtitle: Sometimes it is more than merely an exogenous constraint

Dateline: 5月 21, 2026 05:03 上午