The paired donation idea is a clever one that side-steps the issues we talked about earlier. However, it's not like the current system ignores bio-compatibility, it just has additional prioritization built in for little kids because the supply is low. This really seems like a rebranding-type move.
'Merica: man announces he will sell a body part for 35K
- Thread starter Kyriakos
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The paired donation idea is a clever one that side-steps the issues we talked about earlier. However, it's not like the current system ignores bio-compatibility, it just has additional prioritization built in for little kids because the supply is low. This really seems like a rebranding-type move.
Yeah, fair point. The analogy will only resonate with people from places that allow smoking in restaurants.
Well, there's no guarantee that there will be a buyer for the kidney. I don't think your above scenario is the most horrid potential outcome. The modern system is worse where the guy just dies while waiting for lungs and the other guy dies waiting for a kidney.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
The analogy doesn't need to be to something so clear cut as second-hand smoke, though. A person who does any work which has an even mildly deleterious effect on their health can be described as selling their body as much as our smoke-affected waitress, whatever the nature of the effect. The example of the waitress is unusual in its clarity, in our ability to draw a direct line between a specific (and avoidable) aspect of working conditions and a specific form of ill-health, but not unusual in principle.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Okay. If you're ready for the red pill, I'm about to blow your mind.
Property is a social fiction. By subsuming the human body to the concept of property, you are rendering the human experience to a social fiction. Instead, we should render property unto the human experience, rather than the other way around. In this case, we believe in property not as the highest order of freedom, but the self-and-social human experience itself as containing the highest realm of freedom. So property serves that, rather than the other way around.
Spoiler :
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
This is where they explain to you that animals are territorial, sometimes, and that proves private property is natural, somehow, because.
Oh man, we just got blue-pilled in the facehole with that killer response. Like, if some animals are sometimes territorial for different reasons, then everything in sight must be turned into commodities and blacksploited.
hobbsyoyo
Deity
- Joined
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- 26,575
Property rights in the dog world are piss poor.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that I object to a system based around biting people and pissing on things, because I think I could hold my own pretty well. Lot of of old people in my neighbourhood, y'know, not too much competition. But it's not really "private property" as conventionally defined.
Actually this is where I tell him that if he accepts that a person controls his own body (as he does), it is his own choice to sell off bits of it or not. I would be interested in how he balances choices he finds to be icky and therefore opposes with those he presumably finds appealing (alcohol consumption, etc) and his support for them.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
you guys are killing it.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
And he takes the blue pill, allowing him to comfortably believe that private property is above his existence on the order of things.
I admit, I was more at peace when I used to believe that. It made my finance-intended career track a lot easier to stomach. Actually, it should have done the opposite but so powerful is the drug of believing that freedom=property that it will distort its own logic to keep itself going.
DinoDoc, you make this too easy, but I guess that what happens when you (i.e. me, not you) once believed the world is flat and now you know it's round, and someone argues why it's flat "you'd fall off the bottom!" But I understand, it's self consistent logic, and I used to be there. It's more intelligent logic than a lot of the nonsense it successfully argues against, so I give you credit. I'm having a go, please forgive me.
So sure someone can sell their bits because it's their body, but the market where you sell your bits is a social fiction designed to coerce you to sell your bits to your detriment to someone else's betterment. It's why Wall St types prefer less personal wealth for a greater share of the pie, it's about Being the Man. "Master of the Universe".
Think about that.
"Master of the Universe"
This isn't about having nice things and getting laid, that stops being an issue at 6 figures. This is about being the Master of the Universe. And if they get everyone to believe, most of all their over-medicated selves, that property is the universe, then they can be your master. And you will sell them your kidney and call it freedom. And it will be for $1,000 once the market bids the kidneys down, which will pay your rent and cost them one fancy dinner.
Ahhh freedom.
Thorgalaeg
Deity
Every country has its own system, some work better than others. Also i dont think that legalizing organs traffic would eliminate deaths, it would merely reduce the people dying to a specific socioeconomic group.
Yes, it would reduce the deaths in a specific socioeconomic group. I'll not deny that. I mean, the current alternative is that they are 'allowed to die', and I'm not sure that's a reasonable counter-factual.
As in all things medical, the only real longterm solution is an affordable cure. Everything else is going to require some suckiness.
It surely can be. But, it can also be a scenario that actually does end up being win/win.
We call these types of transactions 'euconsensual', or 'truly consensual', where even knowing the later effects, you didn't regret the decision. And in counter-point to the win/win, it's hard to deny that there's a lot of 'lose/lose' in the current system.
As in all things medical, the only real longterm solution is an affordable cure. Everything else is going to require some suckiness.
It surely can be. But, it can also be a scenario that actually does end up being win/win.
We call these types of transactions 'euconsensual', or 'truly consensual', where even knowing the later effects, you didn't regret the decision. And in counter-point to the win/win, it's hard to deny that there's a lot of 'lose/lose' in the current system.
Borachio
Way past lunacy
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Why does living organ donation have to involve any financial transaction at all?
http://www.lkdn.org/overview_of_living_tx2.html
http://www.lkdn.org/overview_of_living_tx2.html
Because people are dying waiting for altruism to take hold.
Terxpahseyton
Nobody
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- Sep 9, 2006
- Messages
- 10,759
@Hygro
Either we have a fairly decent unconditional basic income or a system of "property" very much different than right now or you will have people who may benefit from selling parts of their body.
All the talk about social fiction - which I wholeheartedly agree with - doesn't change this set of options from what I can see.
Either we have a fairly decent unconditional basic income or a system of "property" very much different than right now or you will have people who may benefit from selling parts of their body.
All the talk about social fiction - which I wholeheartedly agree with - doesn't change this set of options from what I can see.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Sure thing. I was pointing out the inherent problem in justifying self-agency because of private property. There are certainly a lot of real world considerations more important than that philosophy, but those real world considerations are held back by the same people who would have that very philosophy. Like being against anti-poverty measures that would allow us to tackle this issue from a stronger starting position.
(I reckon it's a lot easier to inspire altruism when people think their society isn't rigged, btw.)
I got this story stuck in my head of the impoverished Brazilian man who sold his kidney for about $3,000 or so. They kicked him out the clinic first moment, and then he got robbed of all the cash before he even got home. It's one of those instances where on one hand the black market can make it worse than if it were legal* but on another it shows, black market or not, thrives on exploitation of the poor. If memory serves, apparently these types of robberies were so common it was suspected the people doing the surgery were in on it.
*Of course, if it were legal, the price would be bid down for the organ sellers, which is no bueno.
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