As for me I haven’t made up my mind.

Clearly, it doesn’t speak for itself. That’s why I asked for further explanation, because what you’d given wasn’t sufficient to support an authoritarian position. You talk about being in favor of decriminalized prostitution; I’m sure there are a great many people who would disagree with you by saying exactly the same thing you said to me. Most places it’s illegal, and the majority probably think it should stay that way. Does that prove their position to you? Unlikely.

You then say that no one’s offered a concrete reason as to why there should be a major paradigm shift, but that’s absurd. The entire video above was one long reason. The reason is that peoples’ lives are at stake, and a major paradigm shift would almost certainly save a large number of them. Is that really not meaningful at all to you?

I’ll ask again, by what right do you feel you can take away both freedom and lives? Can you actually clarify the reasons and basis for your supposed moral high ground, keeping in mind that simply being in the majority is not a convincing or meaningful argument? Is it safe to assume that if you’d lived during the time of slavery in the states when most people thought that was all right, that you’d be on that side as well?

Lloyd:

I recognize that risk, there is certainly the possibility of abuse, fraud and coercion, just as there is with any business transaction. The specifics of the laws and enforcement mechanisms would have to be worked out, but in my view this part of the discussion is about the principle, not what would undoubtedly be an extremely complex practice. You state that the seller’s consent does not matter, but I think that statement is absolutely false. That is the only thing that matters. As long as the transaction is genuinely voluntary and informed, no one here has offered any real justification for denying lifesaving care to those in need.

Their base position is “no one gets to survive unless I approve of how it is done.”

I had the same conversation with a person who was incensed about “price gouging” in disaster zones. He finally got around to admitting that he would forcibly break up a peaceful transaction (if he had the ability) if he thought it was unfair regardless of the effect it had on the buyer. The buyer would go away without whatever he needed to survive and the seller would be arrested.

Damn the cost! I want fairness, and I’m willing to let you die to get it!

People pay good money to watch two people beat the tar out of each other. A boxing career brings with it greatly increased risk of long-term damage to the brain. However, as entertaining as boxing is, no one has ever had their life saved over watching or participating in a boxing match.
It should be noted that many fighters come out of poor neighborhoods. And only a few make it to the big time (money).

(cue soaring orchestral anthem)

barf. care to comment on the great socialist famines of the 1931-34 ukraine and 1957-61 china? how about modern-day zimbabwe? or do those not count since they were, y’know, *caused* by their socialist overlords? “besides, the only ones who died were the proles!”

I don’t know what the right answer is but the objections above are ones that you must seriously consider and not try to brush aside

Don’t feed the troll. At least I assume he’s one; he can’t seriously base his argument *for* using force to prevent consensual transactions on hand-waving and the fact that it’s currently illegal, right? And yet he’s in favor of prostitution legalization…yes, definitely a troll.

This is what happens when you invite Obama supporters, Mr. Balko!

And yet, while I offer some chance at common ground all I get in return is, free market this, and my body my right??

The reason I don’t have to go into a lengthy essay about why I think this is a poor idea, is because it speaks for itself. I’m clearly on the side of the majority in America if not most of the world (China and Iran notwithstanding). You would like America to make a major paradigm shift and offer no concrete reason as to why or how.

good luck with that

Edin, on the most basic level, what could possibly be more one’s own than one’s organs? By what right do you claim the authority to control what a person wants to do with their organs?

Like any market, there would need to be controls for fraud and theft, and it seems like your objections (poorly described as they are) mostly center around the theory that, like anything else, protections for consumers will not work 100% of the time. Thanks for the news flash. We’re right there with you.

Do you have any principled objection to the process that doesn’t rest on an ill-described, mystical moral authority, or problems with markets in general that are already addressed in a number of ways or for other commodities?

As Nurse JohnMcC noted above, everyone in the donation/transplant process makes money, except the person providing the most valuable and critical part.

/salute

If you are going to avoid the topic, at least have the spine to walk away without the drive-by snark. Hey, if there was a market in body parts you could buy one!

A response to what? Emotion-based pleading that someone who has more money to purchase an organ will likely have a better chance to get one than someone with less money to purchase an organ? (Which seems strange, when a market in organs doesn’t suddenly mean insurance goes away)

The free market may not be the answer to everything. But it should be the default position, and asking an agency of force to limit people’s choices (especially when that can and will lead to death due to lack of a good) should be well justified. Sorry if I haven’t read that from you yet.

But if I am to be shamed in such a manner, I ask only one small favor before I’m exiled. May I have a reasonable response. It doesn’t have to too well thought out. I don’t want to overreach on my last request.

Yes, you are a socialist on this topic. But it’s not because you are thinking, it’s because you think the issue of organ supply and demand can’t be helped by the same open market process that efficiently and consensually allocates every other commodity that exists.

Cecil Woodham-Smith, an authority on the Irish Famine, wrote in The Great Hunger; Ireland 1845-1849 that,

“ …no issue has provoked so much anger or so embittered relations between the two countries (England and Ireland) as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported from Ireland to England throughout the period when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation. ”

Ireland remained a net exporter of food throughout most of the five-year famine.
——————————–

So much for your fat man and the free market.

I’m pointing out that a poor person and a rich person are equal. Fortunately, I’m backed by our own Constitution. You deride me and call me a socialist, but fail to answer my points with any kind of thought or reason.

If thinking makes me a socialist. If trying to think beyond today makes me a socialist. If thinking about what the possible ramifications of new laws might mean in the future. Then sir, I wear the mantle proudly.

If Libertarians want to be more callous than Republicans, don’t be squimish about it. Taking little bites here and there. Be proud.

Typical socialist attitude–better everyone suffer than there be any inequality.