Distribution > Human Life?

[PokrLikeItsProse]

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Given that the people who agree with this point of view seem tend to be the same people who will claim that every human life is priceless, it seems like a rather absurd and inconsistent position to take. Of course, as it's been mentioned, you could be internally consistent by believing that wealthy people are less valuable than poor people, which is what I would guess is the main motivation behind my friend's position. It's viscerally motivated though, I doubt he'd claim to feel this way if asked in those terms. Ironically (but not suprisingly), he's extremely wealthy himself and is afflicted by the rationality-crushing guilt many of my peers seem to have.

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You are under the assumption perhaps that you are starting de novo. From your friend's perspective, he may see the first situation as what currently happens, and sees your proposal as killing poor people to save rich people. From that perspective, life is priceless, and you shouldn't actively take life to save more lives because you can't compare two priceless quantities. The selling of organs, on the other hand, suggests that life actually does have a price.

[NickMPK]

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I think I must have written my OP rather poorly. I wasn't intending the thread to be a discussion about the legality of organ selling (although there have been some very interesting posts on it that I very much enjoyed reading). I was more interested in people's thoughts on the more abstract (liberal?) notion that a 'just' distribution can be worth more to a society than a distribution that helps a greater number of people.

I mostly wanted to know if this position is common and simply not often articulated or if my friend just happens to be an outlier. I think the thread has given a bit of anecdotal evidence on this question and I'm leaning towards it being a fairly common view, which completely baffles me.


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I don't know why it baffles you that people hold this view, because I think it is held most strongly by market conservatives/ libertarians/ACists. They believe that a "just" distribution is one that upholds property rights and minimizes coercion, and that such a distribution is worth more to a society than a distribution that helps a greater number of people.

I would say liberals tend to be more utilitarian, although they are probably closer to the John Rawls vision of utilitarianism than the classical one. I don't think anyone believes that we should be solely helping "the greatest number" of people without regard to the magnitude of individual help and harm.

[AWoodside]

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I think I must have written my OP rather poorly. I wasn't intending the thread to be a discussion about the legality of organ selling (although there have been some very interesting posts on it that I very much enjoyed reading). I was more interested in people's thoughts on the more abstract (liberal?) notion that a 'just' distribution can be worth more to a society than a distribution that helps a greater number of people.

I mostly wanted to know if this position is common and simply not often articulated or if my friend just happens to be an outlier. I think the thread has given a bit of anecdotal evidence on this question and I'm leaning towards it being a fairly common view, which completely baffles me.


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I don't know why it baffles you that people hold this view, because I think it is held most strongly by market conservatives/ libertarians/ACists. They believe that a "just" distribution is one that upholds property rights and minimizes coercion, and that such a distribution is worth more to a society than a distribution that helps a greater number of people.


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Hey, excellent observation. I personally happen to believe (somewhat conveniently I suppose) that an AC society would also be the best possible outcome from a utilitarian perspective, even if I don't fundamentally support ACism for utilitarian reasons. If I became convinced that there was a more effective system than AC (from a utils point of view) out there it would certainly give me pause and I'd have to think about things long and hard. I suppose I could argue that a concept like "freedom" is fundamentally different than a concept like "equal probability distribution" but that would be a fairly nitty path to take.

Touche then. This is worth thinking about.

[almostbusto]

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I think I must have written my OP rather poorly. I wasn't intending the thread to be a discussion about the legality of organ selling (although there have been some very interesting posts on it that I very much enjoyed reading). I was more interested in people's thoughts on the more abstract (liberal?) notion that a 'just' distribution can be worth more to a society than a distribution that helps a greater number of people.

I mostly wanted to know if this position is common and simply not often articulated or if my friend just happens to be an outlier. I think the thread has given a bit of anecdotal evidence on this question and I'm leaning towards it being a fairly common view, which completely baffles me.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know why it baffles you that people hold this view, because I think it is held most strongly by market conservatives/ libertarians/ACists. They believe that a "just" distribution is one that upholds property rights and minimizes coercion, and that such a distribution is worth more to a society than a distribution that helps a greater number of people.

I would say liberals tend to be more utilitarian, although they are probably closer to the John Rawls vision of utilitarianism than the classical one. I don't think anyone believes that we should be solely helping "the greatest number" of people without regard to the magnitude of individual help and harm.

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this is absolute garbage. the underlying thesis is that a laissez-faire society is not only just, it also maxmizes welfare (if externalities are internalized, which mainstream Austrians/libertarians support)

[Mickey Brausch]

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Malpractice.
The Hippocratic Oath.
Courts.
Law.
The fact that doctors are doctors because - get this - they want to help people.
The fact that if doctors would kill people for their organs, they would do so now, because organs are much more expensive under prohibition and black market buyers don't care about the legality of goods purchased.

Think about these things.


[/ QUOTE ]We have not yet gone down the road towards total absence of moral considerations in medical practice. But we have strayed very far from a world where the Hippocratic Oath takes precedent over material criteria. A doctor who has one eye at the bottom line and one eye at the heartbeat line, so to speak, is not a doctor who adhers to that oath.

You're invoking the fact that the doctors are not "killing people for their organs" but, while this is generally true (you'd be horrified with some cases), they still cause more deaths or worsening of patients' conditions than if proper medical care was provided. In other words, more people should be enjoying better health care with the advance of medical science than they are. (I'm certainly not disputing the advances of medical science. Quite the contrary.) And the most important thing medical doctors who take the Oath should know, i.e. leave well enough alone, is more often than not ignored in favor of busybody medicine, bottom-line-fattening medicine, market-driven medicine.

Capitalism and medical science. What a scandalous couple.

Mickey Brausch

[WillMagic]

"they still cause more deaths or worsening of patients' conditions than if proper medical care was provided. In other words, more people should be enjoying better health care with the advance of medical science than they are."

I would argue that this is not the fault of the market, but of government intervention. We don't have a free market in health care. Our government spends as much per capita on health care as any European government with a UHC system.

This would actually make for an interesting 1v1 debate.

[AWoodside]

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Capitalism and medical science. What a scandalous couple.


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All those wonderful advances in medical technology that you were lauding because they make so many people's lives better… those probably were researched and developed and marketed out of the goodness of people's hearts right? The fact that an incredibly disproportionate amount of said progress was produced by the 1st world country that most closely approximates a free market is simply a coincidence, right? Hell, I know of a way to find out, it'll be a fun little experiment. Lets go ahead and socialize our medical industry and see what happens, no matter who's right about this issue doing so would certainly yield interesting and important data. After all, people don't really care about their health enough to provide sufficient incentives for the market to develope effective solutions anyway.

[Albert Moulton]

MAN:
What's this, then? Mmh.

MR. BROWN:
A liver donor's card.

MAN:
Need we say more?

ERIC:
No!

MR. BROWN:
Listen! I can't give it to you now. It says, 'in the event of death'. Uh. Oh! Ah. Ah. Eh.

MAN:
No one who has ever had their liver taken out by us has survived.

MR. BROWN:
Agh.

ERIC:
Just lie there, sir. It won't take a minute.

MR. BROWN:
[screaming]

full scene from The Meaning of Life

As funny as this is, I think creating a free and open market for humans to buy and sell organs would end up with a proliferation of scenes not too dissimilar to this one - especially as poor people who need a transplant, know that rich people can buy them, and then resort to violence to obtain the organs and/or the money.

I think the greatest problem with this would be the enormous resentment that poor, sick people would have. This kind of in your face, life and death inequity would be the stuff that riots and class revolutions are made of. Let them eat cake! Or maybe just a liver.

[hmkpoker]

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As funny as this is, I think creating a free and open market for humans to buy and sell organs would end up with a proliferation of scenes not too dissimilar to this one - especially as poor people who need a transplant, know that rich people can buy them, and then resort to violence to obtain the organs and/or the money.

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This is like saying that we shouldn't allow Ferrari to make Enzos because their high value would cause poor people to run around stealing them.

What do you think is going to happen to a poor person who shows up at a hospital red-handed with a full, severed adult liver in his grasp to make a sale?

[AWoodside]

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I think the greatest problem with this would be the enormous resentment that poor, sick people would have. This kind of in your face, life and death inequity would be the stuff that riots and class revolutions are made of. Let them eat cake! Or maybe just a liver.

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It's gonna be pretty tough to russle up the energy to riot and revolt when your suffering from the nausea, diarrhea, malnutrition, and severe joint pain commonly associated with liver disease.

PWNED!