4 ms·
It's not just having "stuff". Without money, you have no food, no shelter. It's a very effective form of coercion: do this thing you would otherwise never do, o
by librexpr 8y ago
It's not just having "stuff". Without money, you have no food, no shelter. It's a very effective form of coercion: do this thing you would otherwise never do, or you and your family will starve.
Here are some points:
- It's much, much, easier to coerce someone into doing something they don't want to do when it's a legal option than when it's illegal in all circumstances.
- People in desperate situations are among the least likely to make their decisions rationally, so they might take the option even if they would have found a better one otherwise.
- It lowers the threshold of how bad things can get. Right now, if you have no money, you're in a shitty situation. With that "option", I expect a common outcome is that you take it, have a bunch of health complications and/or die, don't get compensated very well (there's a large supply of poor people like you and you're desperate, so your bargaining position is weak), and end up in an even worse situation.
- Nobody said "instead of", but there is a limited amount of attention and resources directed at getting better laws passed, and this one is extremely far down on my list of priorities.
- darawk 8y agoI'll ask again: How is it that these people are made better off by not having this choice? Why do you think these people aren't capable of making their own decisions?
- cecilpl2 8y agoEach individual person might be better off having that choice, true. But setting up a system where this is an option, leads to a society where those people might not have the option of not submitting to experimentation.
- darawk 8y agoHow exactly would that come about?
- macintux 8y agoPeer pressure? Family pressure? "If you loved your family, you would do this for them." The U.S. government keeps trying to force people in poverty to make harder decisions to be able to use the safety net. Is it so hard to imagine that someday one of the requirements would be subjecting yourself to experimental tests? Those are just two ideas off the top of my head. I'm not a fan of slippery slope arguments, but this does seem like a Pandora's box worth looking very carefully at before opening.
- darawk 8y agoSo, poor people shouldn't have the option to do this, because if you give them the choice, someday a republican might make it a requirement of welfare? That seems like a bit of a silly argument.
- macintux 8y agoWas the point of this discussion to discuss why people may be concerned about unintended consequences or to blithely assert omniscience? Maybe I just picked the wrong thread.
- darawk 8y agoIf all you're saying is that people could theoretically be concerned about that, then sure I agree. I just think the concern is misplaced.
- level3 8y agoLegalizing human experimentation in this manner would result in it being counted as employment (e.g. for tax purposes). Meanwhile, unemployed people risk losing their benefits if they refuse a job offer. So depending on how these jobs are treated, an employment agency might put you in a position where you may not be able to refuse.
- darawk 8y ago