3 ms·

This was an enjoyable read. The solution of giving people money to donate their kidneys is terrifying to me however. I do not like the thought of desperate peo

by mort96 3y ago

This was an enjoyable read. The solution of giving people money to donate their kidneys is terrifying to me however. I do not like the thought of desperate people selling their internal organs to survive one bit. Of course, if inequality was dealt with and nobody was desperately poor, it would be a different question. If everyone had enough money to comfortably get by, and the extra $100,000 from a kidney donation would just go to luxury goods, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But that's not the world we live in.

eru 3y ago
Iran allows paying compensation to kidney donors. You can study how they are doing. Hint: they don't have much of a wait list. > I do not like the thought of desperate people selling their internal organs to survive one bit. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repugnant_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repugnant_market Do you prefer desperate people have fewer options? Especially, do you prefer taking options from people that they prefer to take?
- mort96 3y ago
  > Do you prefer desperate people have fewer options? Yes. For an individual poor person, one could argue that the individual would be better off if they were allowed to sell their internal organs. But this isn't just about individuals, this is about societies. A society which pushes poor people towards selling their organs to survive is worse than a society which doesn't do that, in my opinion.
  - mort96 3y ago
    The extreme example would be: I think an IRL version of something like the Squid Game should be illegal, even though that means "desperate people have fewer options".
- taylorius 3y ago
  Yes. Because the second order effects of giving those desperate people the option of donating their organs is worse for the society going forward.
- taylorius 3y ago
  You can justify anything with that argument, no matter how horrific. Why not permit people to allow themselves be killed in entertaining ways, for a pay per view audience, with their surviving family getting 80% of the proceeds? It's possible that that would be the most money they will ever "earn". Don't you want to give poor people as many options as possible?
  - eru 3y ago
    > Why not permit people to allow themselves be killed in entertaining ways, for a pay per view audience, with their surviving family getting 80% of the proceeds? We already allow shades of that, and society hasn't collapsed. Ie we seldom allow people to consent to outright death, but we certainly allow them to take on a great deal of risk of injury or death in return for fame or money. If you repeat a 1% chance often enough, you are going to hit the jackpot sooner or later. So I'm not sure your reductio ad absurdum works here.
    - taylorius 3y ago
      We certainly do allow such activities (MMA fights, extreme sports competitions etc). But such activities are fundamentally different in my view. While risky, they are not designed to permanently damage the competitor. If a participant emerges victorious and unscathed, they can enter next year's competition. That's not the case with selling a kidney (nor with my admittedly extreme example above).
- Suzuran 3y ago
  Remember, if you can sell it, then a debt collector can force you to sell it. I'd much rather say "People can't sell their organs" than have a future where debt collectors manipulate people into parting out their bodies.
  - nyssos 3y ago
    > Remember, if you can sell it, then a debt collector can force you to sell it. This is not true at all. Debt collectors acting on their own can't take anything. A court can force you to sell certain things if you lose a lawsuit, but many assets are protected. They can't seize your 401k, in most states they can't take your primary residence unless the debt was taken on to purchase it in the first place, they can't garnish more than 25% of your income (and in some states can't garnish anything for consumer debt), they can't take social security income, and so on.
fritzo 3y ago
What is it that makes "giving people money to donate their time" so much less repugnant? Is it that time is finely divisible, whereas kidneys come in twos?
- mort96 3y ago
  It's not necessarily much less repugnant. The fact that rich people can spend their time doing whatever they want, while a lot of people have to burn themselves out working two jobs to make ends meet, is abhorrent. However, the ability to make ends meet through selling your organs is a line most societies haven't crossed, and I'd prefer to keep it that way to be honest. And for better or worse, we do tend to see a difference between forcing people to sell their time and forcing people to "sell their body". It's one (among many) reasons why societies tend to look down on prostitution, for example. Prostitution, like paid organ donation, is the kind of thing that I see no issue with people doing voluntarily, but I take issue with systems which "force" people to do it out of desperation. I think society would be better if we started viewing the selling of one's time more like we currently view the "selling of one's body". I think society would be worse if we started viewing the selling of one's organs more like we currently view the selling of one's time. We want people to labour in order to keep society going, just like we want people to donate kidneys to help people in need, but we don't want an unfair division of labour where an underclass is working 80 hours per week while an upper class has all the free time they could wish for, and we don't want an unfair division of kidney donations where an underclass feels forced to donate their kidneys while the rest of society never even has to think about it.
  - varnaud 3y ago
    As always, society will push a problem caused by its economic system away by making it illegal and create a new one in the black market. Sourcing organs is an especially difficult problem since for the people needing one it is a literal matter of life and death. I wouldn't be surprised if people travel to countries where buying organ is legal/easier.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
sadtoot 3y ago
selling kidneys doesn't preclude us having the same thorough screening process we have now, although it means there may be people who try harder to game the screening process. i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant enough harm to outweigh the harm of the recipient not getting the kidney. if we're worried about people being financially desperate, we should allow organs to be sold and build a stronger social safety net (with the money we save on dialysis?)
- mort96 3y ago
  > selling kidneys doesn't preclude us having the same thorough screening process we have now, although it means there may be people who try harder to game the screening process. Nothing I have said really even touches on the topic that that safety could be impacted by people trying to game the screening process, though it is of course a legitimate concern. > i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant enough harm to outweigh the harm of the recipient not getting the kidney. I don't disagree that kidney donation is a net good. The question is what you do with that opinion. You could defend the idea of a "kidney draft", where some random selection of the population gets forced by the state to "donate" one of their kidneys; though I suspect a lot of the proponents of a free organ market would be uncomfortable with that idea, as would I. The difference is that I view financial coercion as just as much of a problem as state coercion. > if we're worried about people being financially desperate, we should allow organs to be sold and build a stronger social safety net I agree! If there was a social safety net which reliably kept people out of desperate poverty, I would be less worried about financial incentives. The safety net needs to come first, however.
  - algas 3y ago
    I agree, and would extend your point even further. Drafting people into the army against their will is a grave harm, for obvious reasons. But the existence of a "volunteer" army that nevertheless gets paid for their participation represents no less financial coercion. People on a financial precipice, given the option to join the army, might take it -- and thus increase their risk of being shot or blown up abroad. Removing those payments removes that coercion. I was originally going to post this as a facile gotcha, until I thought about it slightly harder and realized that effectively disbanding the military would actually be a pretty good idea, all considered. However, I would still argue that we should accept monetary rewards for altruistic yet dangerous acts, like fighting fires and rescuing cats from trees (and donating kidneys).
pas 3y ago
What about lazy people? I'm not desperate at all, just regular depressed, desensitized, uncaring, unmotivated, due to all the shit going on constantly in this nice fancy interconnected world, blablabla.
makeworld 3y ago
The post mentioned a tax credit though. In theory the poorest people would benefit the least from this. But there could still be issues as you increase your income, I agree.
- eutropia 3y ago
  The modify NOTA people call for it to be a tax credit ($10k/yr for 10yr) or a check(also 100k split up over 10 years) from the federal government if you do not make enough money to pay federal taxes.

by mort96 3y ago

eru 3y ago

Iran allows paying compensation to kidney donors. You can study how they are doing. Hint: they don't have much of a wait list. > I do not like the thought of desperate people selling their internal organs to survive one bit. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repugnant_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repugnant_market Do you prefer desperate people have fewer options? Especially, do you prefer taking options from people that they prefer to take?

mort96 3y ago
> Do you prefer desperate people have fewer options? Yes. For an individual poor person, one could argue that the individual would be better off if they were allowed to sell their internal organs. But this isn't just about individuals, this is about societies. A society which pushes poor people towards selling their organs to survive is worse than a society which doesn't do that, in my opinion.
- mort96 3y ago
  The extreme example would be: I think an IRL version of something like the Squid Game should be illegal, even though that means "desperate people have fewer options".
taylorius 3y ago
Yes. Because the second order effects of giving those desperate people the option of donating their organs is worse for the society going forward.
taylorius 3y ago
You can justify anything with that argument, no matter how horrific. Why not permit people to allow themselves be killed in entertaining ways, for a pay per view audience, with their surviving family getting 80% of the proceeds? It's possible that that would be the most money they will ever "earn". Don't you want to give poor people as many options as possible?
- eru 3y ago
  > Why not permit people to allow themselves be killed in entertaining ways, for a pay per view audience, with their surviving family getting 80% of the proceeds? We already allow shades of that, and society hasn't collapsed. Ie we seldom allow people to consent to outright death, but we certainly allow them to take on a great deal of risk of injury or death in return for fame or money. If you repeat a 1% chance often enough, you are going to hit the jackpot sooner or later. So I'm not sure your reductio ad absurdum works here.
  - taylorius 3y ago
    We certainly do allow such activities (MMA fights, extreme sports competitions etc). But such activities are fundamentally different in my view. While risky, they are not designed to permanently damage the competitor. If a participant emerges victorious and unscathed, they can enter next year's competition. That's not the case with selling a kidney (nor with my admittedly extreme example above).
Suzuran 3y ago
Remember, if you can sell it, then a debt collector can force you to sell it. I'd much rather say "People can't sell their organs" than have a future where debt collectors manipulate people into parting out their bodies.
- nyssos 3y ago
  > Remember, if you can sell it, then a debt collector can force you to sell it. This is not true at all. Debt collectors acting on their own can't take anything. A court can force you to sell certain things if you lose a lawsuit, but many assets are protected. They can't seize your 401k, in most states they can't take your primary residence unless the debt was taken on to purchase it in the first place, they can't garnish more than 25% of your income (and in some states can't garnish anything for consumer debt), they can't take social security income, and so on.

fritzo 3y ago

What is it that makes "giving people money to donate their time" so much less repugnant? Is it that time is finely divisible, whereas kidneys come in twos?

mort96 3y ago
It's not necessarily much less repugnant. The fact that rich people can spend their time doing whatever they want, while a lot of people have to burn themselves out working two jobs to make ends meet, is abhorrent. However, the ability to make ends meet through selling your organs is a line most societies haven't crossed, and I'd prefer to keep it that way to be honest. And for better or worse, we do tend to see a difference between forcing people to sell their time and forcing people to "sell their body". It's one (among many) reasons why societies tend to look down on prostitution, for example. Prostitution, like paid organ donation, is the kind of thing that I see no issue with people doing voluntarily, but I take issue with systems which "force" people to do it out of desperation. I think society would be better if we started viewing the selling of one's time more like we currently view the "selling of one's body". I think society would be worse if we started viewing the selling of one's organs more like we currently view the selling of one's time. We want people to labour in order to keep society going, just like we want people to donate kidneys to help people in need, but we don't want an unfair division of labour where an underclass is working 80 hours per week while an upper class has all the free time they could wish for, and we don't want an unfair division of kidney donations where an underclass feels forced to donate their kidneys while the rest of society never even has to think about it.
- varnaud 3y ago
  As always, society will push a problem caused by its economic system away by making it illegal and create a new one in the black market. Sourcing organs is an especially difficult problem since for the people needing one it is a literal matter of life and death. I wouldn't be surprised if people travel to countries where buying organ is legal/easier.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

sadtoot 3y ago

selling kidneys doesn't preclude us having the same thorough screening process we have now, although it means there may be people who try harder to game the screening process. i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant enough harm to outweigh the harm of the recipient not getting the kidney. if we're worried about people being financially desperate, we should allow organs to be sold and build a stronger social safety net (with the money we save on dialysis?)

mort96 3y ago
> selling kidneys doesn't preclude us having the same thorough screening process we have now, although it means there may be people who try harder to game the screening process. Nothing I have said really even touches on the topic that that safety could be impacted by people trying to game the screening process, though it is of course a legitimate concern. > i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant enough harm to outweigh the harm of the recipient not getting the kidney. I don't disagree that kidney donation is a net good. The question is what you do with that opinion. You could defend the idea of a "kidney draft", where some random selection of the population gets forced by the state to "donate" one of their kidneys; though I suspect a lot of the proponents of a free organ market would be uncomfortable with that idea, as would I. The difference is that I view financial coercion as just as much of a problem as state coercion. > if we're worried about people being financially desperate, we should allow organs to be sold and build a stronger social safety net I agree! If there was a social safety net which reliably kept people out of desperate poverty, I would be less worried about financial incentives. The safety net needs to come first, however.
- algas 3y ago
  I agree, and would extend your point even further. Drafting people into the army against their will is a grave harm, for obvious reasons. But the existence of a "volunteer" army that nevertheless gets paid for their participation represents no less financial coercion. People on a financial precipice, given the option to join the army, might take it -- and thus increase their risk of being shot or blown up abroad. Removing those payments removes that coercion. I was originally going to post this as a facile gotcha, until I thought about it slightly harder and realized that effectively disbanding the military would actually be a pretty good idea, all considered. However, I would still argue that we should accept monetary rewards for altruistic yet dangerous acts, like fighting fires and rescuing cats from trees (and donating kidneys).

pas 3y ago

What about lazy people? I'm not desperate at all, just regular depressed, desensitized, uncaring, unmotivated, due to all the shit going on constantly in this nice fancy interconnected world, blablabla.

makeworld 3y ago

The post mentioned a tax credit though. In theory the poorest people would benefit the least from this. But there could still be issues as you increase your income, I agree.

eutropia 3y ago
The modify NOTA people call for it to be a tax credit ($10k/yr for 10yr) or a check(also 100k split up over 10 years) from the federal government if you do not make enough money to pay federal taxes.