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This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
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In a few hours I’ll appear on a news show on RT America, talking about organ sales. You can watch live here; here is the 5 minute video:
Me on RT America Soon
If you're dying in the desert, it actually is rational to accept a low price for your organs. The long term is irrelevant if you're about to die.
Pollution is more of a collective action problem. The individual harm you suffer if you drive a polluting car is small, but if you multiply all the people in L.A who suffer from it, it adds.
A society that even went to the extreme of completely privatizing education does not seem equivalent to one which kidnaps people and drops them in the desert. A lot of people would just not bother with education. And my understanding is that most unemployed people are not blood donors even now, with donation perfectly legal and compensated.
"Getting back to organs, is your ACTUAL objection that it's irrational or that it's non-euvoluntary?"
It's involuntary, it's also irrational in the long term (and on scales larger than one person) even though it's rational in the short term. There are lots of analogues to this in life: for example it's easy and fast, therefore rational in the short term to take the car to cross a small distance, but in the long run you'll get fat, unfit and die early and on a larger scale it causes pollution.
"I'm also not clear on what the biomarket analogue is for water-sellers that kidnap people and drop them in the desert."
Examples include a society that funds schools based on local taxes (so F-you when you're born in a poor neighboorhood), or a society that has made a ponzi scheme out of tuition of tertiary education, or a society where the rich bought most politicians and are externalizing the cost of pollution and subsidies.