Today if you look at most economic textbooks, economics is not defined by subject matter. It's presented as a science of social choice that applies not only to material goods - not only to flat-screen televisions - but to every decision we make, whether it's to get married, or to stay married, whether to have children and how to educate those children, or how to look after our health.

Over the past three decades, markets and market thinking have been reaching into spheres of life traditionally governed by non-market norms. As a result, we've drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society.

Whether you're a libertarian liberal or a more egalitarian liberal, the idea is that justice means being non-judgmental with respect to the preferences people bring to public life.

My argument is not that we must never intervene in nature. My argument is that there is a moral difference between intervention for the sake of health, to cure or prevent disease, and intervention for the sake of achieving a competitive edge for our kids in a consumer society.

I think too often in our society parents, who may have good impulses, overreach and try to mold and shape and direct their child.

There are really exercises in a kind of consumerist ethic that I think don't have the same moral weight as medicine or health.

Very often when we aim at the best, or what we may think is the best for our children, we aim really at lesser things, such as getting into a certain college.