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Kenneth J. Arrow’s essay, "Invaluable Goods," reviews Margaret Jane Radin’s Contested Commodities (1996), situating her work within a long history of critiques against economic thinking for its perceived disregard of life's deeper and more sacred aspects. This tradition includes Edmund Burke (1790), who lamented the passing of "the age of chivalry" for the age of "economists, and calculators", and Thomas Carlyle (1847), who warned against human relations being "long carried on by Cash-payment alone". Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels similarly stressed that the bourgeoisie dissolved all relations into "naked self-interest" and "callous 'cash payment,'" converting professionals and personal worth into exchange value. John Ruskin, admiring Carlyle, labeled the idea of labor as a commodity—something "priceless"—as the "alpha and omega of Politico-Economic fallacy". Radin avoids simple condemnation, advocating instead for *"incomplete commodification,"* where essential goods may be bought or sold, but with specific restrictions. A key secondary theme is that market-based discourse affects the values placed on transactions, even those not directly market-mediated. Radin consciously employs a *pragmatic tradition* (e.g., John Dewey), rejecting the utilitarian derivation of values from few assumptions and favoring judgment formed through wide dialogue. Arrow, while expressing a personal preference for deduction from clear principles, respects the complexity of policy issues requiring more fluid argumentation. A persistent concern for Radin is *commensurability**; while she sometimes defines it as the ability to definitively rank values (e.g., via a utility function), she often uses a stronger definition where everything must be expressible in money terms, such that the more valuable item has the "higher price tag". Arrow counters that standard economic theory does not require everything to have a price, noting that a decision not to sell a child at any price is consistent with ordinary economics. Furthermore, the impossibility of finding a monetary equivalent for high risks of death is a consequence of standard expected-utility theory (if utility functions are bounded). Radin’s core objection ultimately rests on rejecting the commensurability implied by applying a common utility function to all human activities. Her concept of personhood is central, requiring the **"integrity and continuity of the self,"* and she distinguishes between *"personal property"* (incommensurable, bound up with the self) and *"fungible property"* (commensurable, not implicated in self-constitution), viewing these as end points of a continuum. In line with her pragmatic approach, Radin stresses that the language of commodities, as an analytic tool, threatens personhood, specifically criticizing economists like Gary Becker and Richard Posner for applying market categories to legal and familial issues (e.g., Posner analogizing rape to the theft of bodily integrity). While skeptical of a strong "domino" theory where commodification instantly drives out personal values, Radin maintains that using market rhetoric risks error by leading practitioners to overlook intangible considerations and concentrate on the measurable. Discussing policy applications, Radin examines *free expression**, suggesting that speech can have profoundly bad consequences, and links the reasoning for regulating discourse (like discouraging the reading of Posner's or Becker's writings) to the reason for prohibiting baby-selling, though she concludes books should be protected. She relates this to Dewey's view that democracy is a **"cooperative pursuit of human flourishing"* where government speech shapes public discourse. Arrow warns against state control of discourse, noting that state authority has often been the source of oppression and that politicizing activities is no greater guarantee of preserving individuation than commodifying them. On *baby-selling**, Radin seeks to analyze the ban through the lens of personhood. Arrow finds the discussion ambiguous, wavering between whether the harm lies in compromising the mother's altruism by introducing a price or compromising the baby's personhood by pricing it, though he asserts the crucial point is the child's right to be nurtured and protected by a trustee rather than being treated as property. Arrow concludes that the problem of **contested commodities* (e.g., judicial decisions, votes, regulated securities) is highly significant, even if the primary reason for banning them may relate more to the functioning of the social system (externalities) than solely to individual integrity. He ultimately supports Radin's *pluralism* regarding social decision-making, acknowledging that reliance on any single system—market or polity—leads to unsatisfactory conclusions, and suggesting the multiplicity of control systems in the real world is likely necessary.