You’re all insane.
On Tuesday, I had a discussion with Jeff Miller, Motion Sensor Soundtrack, JGH and Super Hamburger America regarding whether it’s should be permissible to buy somebody else’s organs. I said no. The others (possibly excluding JGH) all thought it was a great idea and a question of fundamental freedoms. After a day’s reflection, I’ve come to three conclusions.
Firstly, you’re all insane. But this conclusion is neither novel nor interesting.
Secondly, just as our first amendment jurisprudence gives a lower priority to commercial speech than other types of speech, commercial freedoms may occupy a subset of freedoms we should be less interested in broadly protecting. I’ll elaborate later.
Thirdly, it’s important to know the weaknesses of whatever projects or programs you are advocating. As such, I can call myself both a capitalist and a critic of capitalism. I think capitalism is great at some things—specifically organizing immensely complex arrangements between diverse people in distant places and facilitating the exchange of resources based on subjective values. But the market has some weaknesses. Though it empowers individuals to make many decisions, it often fails to give them the information they need to make informed decisions. Similarly, the expanding market has exacerbated existing inequalities. Even more importantly, the focus on the direct benefits of a specific transaction blinds us to the manifest injustice of creating a system where the privileged are able to consume not only the lion’s share of the resources but also are able to extend their lives at the expense of the life or long-term health of the less-empowered. For whatever reason, we implicitly assume that the rich are somehow more deserving of life than the poor. Worst of all, none of this is necessary. The entire underlying problems could be solved with a few tiny tweaks that don’t destroy the underlying, egalitarian nature of our current donation system.
