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One thing that can ease the pain of death is by probably discussing the benefits of it. I wish people could sell their organs after their death. Putting grandk
by tn135 9y ago
One thing that can ease the pain of death is by probably discussing the benefits of it.
I wish people could sell their organs after their death. Putting grandkids through college or paying for the mortgage etc. could make it easier for people to talk about death.
- coldtea 9y ago>Putting grandkids through college or paying for the mortgage etc. could make it easier for people to talk about death. It will also make it easy for rich leeches to force poor people into "voluntary" deaths, to improve the fortune of their remaining family members.
- sithadmin 9y agoIn the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life? Putting organs on the market might make certain ethical dilemmas about economic inequality more obvious to the casual bystander, but the same sort of ethical quandaries are already structurally woven into the global economic system.
- xherberta 9y agoThere's only one place I'm aware of on earth where organs can be sold: Iran. Here's an interview with an economist who helped set up that market, which does seem to function fairly efficiently and has some safeguards in place to prevent coersion. http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/09/tina_rosenberg.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/09/tina_rosenberg.html Edit: specifically, this is about kidney donation from living donors, not after-death donation.
- eli_gottlieb 9y ago>In the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life? It's not different at all. We're not different from the Aztecs: our economy has become an elaborate system of human sacrifice to false gods.
- ashark 9y agoEspecially Moloch. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- InitialLastName 9y agoEspecially Yahweh
- tn135 9y ago> In the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life? You are right but I am unable to see why might think it is bad. Poor people taking more risks to come out of poverty is very natural and should be encouraged. Why do you think I left my homeland, left my parents, friends and Gods to come to Silicon Valley ? If you are not going to allow poor people to take risks and make hard choices you are keeping them in perpetual poverty.
- anigbrowl 9y agoYou're taking risks to advance your own economic power by serving the interests of a system that is an aspect of the very thing that keeps you poor int he first place. Liberation is something that begins in the mind, not the pocketbook; economics is a useful theory but it's far from being a totalizing philosophy.
- tn135 9y ago> interests of a system that is an aspect of the very thing that keeps you poor int he first place. Seems other way round to me. It is the restrictions on organ trade that is keeping poor.
- coldtea 9y ago>If you are not going to allow poor people to take risks and make hard choices you are keeping them in perpetual poverty. Only in a world where getting rich is about "taking risks" and not about being ruthless, luck, connections, and inheritance.
- tn135 9y ago> being ruthless, luck, connections, and inheritance. All those are important but then risk is also one way to get rich faster.
- awkwardtortoise 9y ago
- anigbrowl 9y agoPutting organs on the market will make those existing structural ethical dilemmas (which I fulminate about here pretty regularly, going back a long time) more obvious because it makes them worse. Making things worse is not, in my experience, the first step in making things better. How many innocent people do you propose to sacrifice on the altar of your intellect in order to persuade the 'casual bystanders' to adopt your position? This sounds little different than the failed Marxist strategy of 'sharpening the contradictions of capitalism' in hopes of awakening class consciousness among the proletariat. Your eschatology seems to suffer from some glaring ethical flaws from where I'm sitting.
- tn135 9y ago> rich leeches to force poor people into "voluntary" deaths What is wrong in rich people parting their wealth to help poor people while benefiting their family members ? The voluntary part however is very important and in a country like USA that part can generally be achieved much better than say India or China. Give instant green-cards to the family members of organ donors from India and China instantly and USA will not have a problem of organ donation queue while helping millions of Chinese and Indian people live a better life.
- anigbrowl 9y agoI'm sure Indian and Chinese people must be delighted by the prospect of being 'voluntary' livestock to produce meat to replace the failing body parts of wealthy Americans, and that no financial or emotional pressure will be brought to bear on anyone to participate.
- tn135 9y agoWhile it might sound bad to you for millions of Indians and Chinese it is totally worth a Kidney. As long as they are making that choice themselves I do not see the problem.
- coldtea 9y ago>What is wrong in rich people parting their wealth to help poor people while benefiting their family members ? What's wrong is that life and health should be a right to everybody, not just to those who can buy it out.
- tn135 9y ago> What's wrong is that life and health should be a right to everybody, not just to those who can buy it out. I am unable to see how life and health can be right without justifying force and violence. If someone needs a Kidney and if it is a right then it must be forcibly taken from someone else without that you can not call it a right.
- deleted 9y ago
- yequalsx 9y agoI agree with your sentiment that people should talk about benefits to dying. But your comment really says a lot about where the United States is at as a society. Selling organs to put grandkids through college. Wow.
- xherberta 9y agoRight. Monetizing death. Ugh. I'm also not certain that you can donate organs if you've been on pain (and other) medications.
- dsp1234 9y agoI have value in life, why can't I have value in death? While I'm living, I am free to give the results of my value to anyone I choose. Why not in death?
- yequalsx 9y agoIt was the sell organs to pay for college that I was referring to. What a terrible society to live in where people think this reasonable. Perhaps society should just properly fund college education so that the harvesting of organs from people isn't considered reasonable.
- tn135 9y agoHow about harvesting organs so the kids could use that money to create their next Javascript based startup ? Should the society then also fund their Startup ? College education is an example. People will spend resources on whatever they think is useful. Who are we to judge ?
- yequalsx 9y agoPeople are free to spend on what they want, within the bounds of the law. I think you fail to see how badly society is doing when selling organs to pay for education seems reasonable. Education is a public good. A startup is not. Education is something that reasonable societies provide for its citizens. We've gone so far away from proper notions of the purpose and meaning of a society that people are talking about selling organs to pay for public goods. I'm not talking about your proposal to sell organs. It's your proposal to do something so drastic to pay for something so basic.
- melling 9y agoI paid off my mortgage by 44, and I don't have kids. Who is going to want my 78.94 year old organs? My personal feeling is that if humans would quit wasting their time bullshitting on the Internet all day, and we figured out a way to collectively be more productive, we could cure cancer, create artificial organs, extend life by a few healthy decades, eliminate poverty, etc then die peacefully in our sleep around 120. I have no idea how we could accomplish this, but I have notice over the years, that we seem to repeatedly have the same conversations, and they don't add anything to our understanding or advancement in any way.
- tn135 9y agoWhat if you could get $10K today just to donate your dead body to a medical college ?
- anigbrowl 9y agoWhat if you were habitually bad with money and agreed to donate your dead body to 20 different colleges?
- DanBC 9y ago> Who is going to want my 78.94 year old organs? There isn't an age limit on donating organs. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8226709.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8226709.stm > Professor James Neuberger, associate medical director of NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "The belief that there is some sort of age limit on becoming an organ donor is a complete myth. > "Organs are successfully transplanted from people in their 70s and 80s, and the oldest cornea donor recorded was 104 years old.
- chimen 9y ago> "My personal feeling is that if humans would quit wasting their time bullshitting on the Internet all day, and we figured out a way to collectively be more productive, we could cure cancer, create artificial organs, extend life by a few healthy decades, eliminate poverty" You just wasted time on the internet telling people not to waste time on the...internet. Let's not take from the importance of the internet and how much we accomplished in the past years just from being able to ask strangers about our problems and receive answers...among many other things. You can't add/multiply intelligence. Even if 1,000,000 researches work on curing cancer compared to 1,000 it might still be solved around the same time. In other words, putting 1000 people bad at math together in a room doesn't mean they are going to bring any new algorithm out. It's all a symbiotic process and things need to move in all directions just so you can tackle certain issues at the right time with the right tools.
- anigbrowl 9y agoGood grief, is there nothing that people won't try to make into a commercial transaction? You won't cling to life any more effectively by making one last sale.
- ThatGeoGuy 9y agoThis sort of argument always seems eerily reminiscent of the King's morality advisor in the fable of the dragon-tyrant [1]. I don't think most people can grapple with thinking about the benefits of their own demise, much less accept that dying is ultimately the "better" option. I also don't think such a perspective is wrong. [1] http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html
- easilyBored 9y agoI wish people could sell their organs after their death. Putting grandkids through college or paying for the mortgage etc. could make it easier for people to talk about death. We're not ready to accept that money means life or death. Two people on waiting list for transplants: one has the money, the other doesn't. Of course the person with the money still can go to another state /country and try to get in a smaller waiting list