Should the poor be allowed to sell their kidneys?

Solair wrote: »

Someone is only going to do something like this out of desperation not choice.

I would do it out of choice.

And desperation does not deny you a choice. Lack of options deny you a choice.

andrew wrote: »

No it's not. Because firstly, being coerced into selling your car isn't that bad.

Neither is selling/donating your kidney.

Secondly, if you didn't allow people to sell anything because of coercion, the world would grind to a halt. I'm merely putting forward a practical argument that we should prevent the possibility of coercion where possible, and as such shouldn't let people sell their kidneys. I really don't get why you think this requires me to justify banning the sale of everything.

I don't require it, your argument does.

You're making an arbitrary distinction between a kidney and a more typical commodity.

andrew wrote: »

Again, my argument isn't about the principal of selling your kidney. My argument is about the negative things which happen when people can sell their kidneys. Do you understand?

That they can be coerced into selling it?

Why does my argument require it?

• Person A can be coerced into selling his kidney, therefore Person A should not be allowed to sell his kidney.
• Person B can be coerced into selling his car, therefore Person B should not be allowed to sell his car.

Unless you can show that a kidney is not equivalent to a car (in an ethical or market sense) these things logically follow.

andrew wrote: »

Do you understand that i'm not objecting to free will kidney donation?

Yes.

They don't logically follow, because being coerced into selling your kidney is different from being coerced into selling your car. If someone demanded your kidney or your car, would you really be indifferent between the two? Would you be indifferent between having your kidney stolen or your car stolen? Would you be indifferent between having a kidney fail and a car fail/break down? Are they really exactly the same in your mind?

You can't distinguish by worst case scenarios when those scenarios are not reasonable.

They're also subjective. Maybe I would rather give a thief my kidney than my €250,000 dream car.

They don't logically follow because by your logic, because we allow murder in war, then we should always allow murder. Because people can murder in self defence, we should always allow murder. Because we allow 20 year olds to drink, we should also allow 10 year olds to drink etc.

No, you're altering the conditions of those statements and as a result none of them logically follow.

Specifically, I'm saying we should ban selling kidneys because it's potentially harmful and because we can. There's no similar reason to banning car sales, and we can't ban car sales. If i could ban all coercive sales I would, but right now I'm settling for wanting to ban a specific kind of sale, because it's feasible to do so.

You want to ban kidney sales because of the potential for coercion. Yet you won't ban car sales despite the fact coercion currently happens.

You are distinguishing between a kidney and a car based on subjective distinctions. Your distinctions are not necessarily.true for everybody. Clearly they're not true for me. Subjective views are not something that can be argued.


"Instinct often trumps logic. Sometimes that's right. But in this case, the instinct that selling bits of oneself is wrong leads to many premature deaths and much suffering. The logical answer, in this case, is the humane one." - Economist.com

andrew wrote: »

Sorry for taking ages to reply, it's quite a bump. Anyway....

No bother, I'm always here anyway :pac:

Your case isn't actually logical here. A reductio ad absurdum argument like yours doesn't work when it's based upon a false dichotomy; your idea that either all potentially coercive transactions should be banned, or none of them be banned, is a logical fallacy.

It's not a false dichotomy because I'm not forcing you to pick one or the other, obviously you could pick both or none but you'd have to explain your choice.

It's also not a reductio ad absurdum because I'm not trying to disprove your argument by using my "absurd" comparison.

What I'm trying to get is a clear objective distinction between a kidney and a car. If you can't provide that distinction then the argument fails on it's own.

The fact is that there are shades of grey, in which some coercive transactions are worse than others, such that only some of them should be banned. Yes this is a subjective opinion,

That, in itself, is not subjective. It's completely true and I completely agree with it.

Instead of a kidney if we were discussing selling hearts this would be the perfect argument against it.

• Person A can be coerced into selling his heart, therefore Person A should not be allowed to sell his heart.
• Person B can be coerced into selling his car, therefore Person B should not be allowed to sell his car.

The distinction as to why a heart is not a commodity in the same way as a car can be made clear here because you require your heart to survive. Selling your heart results in your death whereas selling your car doesn't. Therefore they're not the same.

This distinction doesn't apply to kidneys, so you need to find one that does.

and subjective opinions are something that can be argued; most argument is based around subjective opinions.

Subjective opinions can't be argued. It's true most arguments are based on subjective opinions but then again, most arguments don't go anywhere.

You can't convince someone based on subjective opinions. Objectivity, on both sides, is required for that.

If your subjective opinion is that that selling your kidney is exactly the same as selling a car, I'd like to hear it; I think that's the issue here, not any kind of absurd logic.

My argument as to why they're not different enough (not necessarily "exactly the same") to warrant outlawing one and not the other is as simple as this:

• They share all the characteristics of typical commodities with no discernible distinctions*.

It's not intuitive, I'll give you that, but it doesn't need to be. It is logical.



*A discernible distinction could be a massive negative impact on the seller, scarcity that threatens their existence etc.