At a pharmacy near my home, I recently saw a sign indicating that they offer advice (although I never found out about what) and, as an incentive to enter, eloquently added: "We smile for free." This small detail made me think because, in an intensely commodified culture like our own, it is assumed that we do not even have the right to expect that a spontaneous gesture like a smile can occur without some monetary benefit in return. This is a deeply daunting thought for anyone who hopes that market relations put other human dimensions into play beyond the legitimate interests involved in any business transaction. In Kantian terms, we would say that this habit of pricing everything in monetary terms not only ignores the distinction between "market value" and "sentimental value," but also the further distinction, emphasized by Kant, between value and dignity.

My discouragement at this should not be attributed to naive or utopian romanticism. I do not seek a bucolic and pastoral culture in which human beings develop their personality outside of any commercial interest. However, to think that smiling is simply a means to attract customers and increase profits is to forget that economic transactions are human relations and, as such, are not just subject to market rules, but also to the norms of a good education and ethics.

It is the latter, rather than the former, that inspire a smile, not just as a means for commercial purposes, but as an act that is in itself valuable, expressing a kind of welcome to the person, whether a sale follows or not. If mere economic transaction is the only thing relevant to human exchange, the usual practice of expressing thanks after buying a product at a fair price could not be understood: if everything were settled with price, there would be no need to express thanks. However, the fact that we express thanks to someone after they sell us a product indicates that, in this short trade, not everything is reduced to calculating interest. There is also an explicit recognition of the person who has given us their time and attention, which, unlike the materiality of the product, cannot be paid with mere money, but must include courtesy and, ultimately, a good education.

Indeed, one might add that even a product itself cannot be paid with money alone since any product contains several people's work, which, all things considered, involves more dimensions than the market price can account for. Here we find what Marx called "the limits of goods." Not everything has a market price or a mere emotional price: to the extent that there are people involved, relationships with them must conform to principles beyond utility or taste. For a long time, the remuneration of medical practitioners was called an "honorarium" and not simply a "salary" because it was understood that the service provided could not itself be paid with money, but rather with honor. This is an increasingly strange notion in our culture; however, it must still be said that any form of work can never be paid with money alone.

More generally, the humanization of economic life involves noting that even in the context of market relations, where it often seems that people participate in the market as if they themselves were commodities, human beings cannot simply treat one another as means. This is related to the famous Kantian formula, "Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, always as an end in itself, never as means only." It is clear that, because we are inserted in a framework of functional interdependencies, we treat each other as means. The ethical point, however, is not to treat each other exclusively as means, but always at the same time as an end. In practice, this involves respecting the relations of justice, as well as conferring due respect and honor to people in the context of everyday interactions. In effect, observing the difference between people and things is the most basic ethical skill.

Developing and materializing this ethical skill in practice, with words and gestures appropriate to each context, is the content of a good education. Following Plato, Aristotle dared to define good education as "learning to indulge and withhold properly." And, unlike courtesy, a good education does not confine itself to certain external formalities, but rather is accompanied by an interior disposition that lends depth and authenticity. The economy can be humanized from within by returning this content to our usual transactions; without it, any attempt to "humanize" from the outside is hopelessly torn between sterility and coercion.