Michael Lissack that do have dollar value people are willing to trade for time spent with friends. Making this move has the virtue of revealing costs and benefits that may previously have been hidden from economic analysis. But making this move is also a major step in the direction of economic imperialism because it makes explicit the commercialization of social relations. In the economic world, people get what they pay for. Certainly, they get nothing more, and vigilance is required to see that they don't get less. Business is business, after all. So what happens when the social world gets commercialized? Presumably, people start getting only what they pay for in social relations as well as in economic ones. In the economic world, people are prepared to operate on this assumption. Products come with explicit guarantees, services are provided in accordance with detailed and specific contracts. People enter into exchanges with their eyes open, expecting, and guarding against, the worst. They are not so prepared in the social world, or at least have not been until recently. There is a self-fulfilling character to the commercialization of social relations. The more we treat such relations as economic goods, to be pur- chased with care, the more they become economic goods about which we must be careful. The more an assumption of self-interest, rather than com- mitment, on the part of others governs social relations, the truer that as- sumption becomes. As one noted critic said, "the more that is in contracts, the less can be expected without them; the more you write it down, the less is taken, or expected, on trust." We replace the view that the people close to us love us and are deeply concerned for our welfare with the view that they are out only for themselves. And we change our actions accordingly. We can't count on people's inherent honesty, government protection, or consumer education to solve the problems of deception and abuse that face us in the marketplace. In the absence of either a sense of responsibility toward customers or a set of enforceable government regulations and sanc- tions, abuse and dishonesty can only escalate. Every day, someone will come up with a new way to wring extra profit out of each sale by misleading the people who buy. Every day, someone will come up with a new way to wring extra money out of each rule or regulation by misleading the people who
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