It's time to bring back usury laws.

[KrazyHorse]

You can't simply make a blind argument about, for example, child pornography and apply it to this. THERE IS NO MORAL/LEGAL SOURCE OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY. You can't make child porn without exploiting children. You can't get more endangered animal products without killing endangered animals. You CAN get more voluntary organ donations by PAYING MORE MONEY. Recipients are already going to be paying tens of thousands of dollars for their transplant. They can and will be able to afford to pay the donors enough to get their voluntary cooperation. MORE MONEY BUYS MORE LEGITIMATE ORGANS. There's no need to go through a back alley organlegger if you can just pony up the extra few thousand and get a brand spanking new kidney from a healthy donor. It even comes with a nice card from the donor with his smiling picture inside and a little note that tells you how your money saved little Johnny from diphtheria and is paying for little Jane to go to teacher's college. Then you can send your own little note and tell them how you're now able to go 10 minutes without pissing blood thanks to the wonderful new kidney.

[DanS]

I don't have a problem with strong safeguards against international trafficking in forced donations. All organs to be traded on the international market could be donated in facilities supervised, for example, by international doctors. Organs would be tagged at point of origin, and only verified legitimate organs could be imported to developed countries.

Customers would demand these verifications on the supply chain anyway to ensure quality. Even meat in the supermarket is being traced to its origin nowadays. No big deal.

[Straybow]

KH: Then there will be more organ theft from corpses without precautions against transmittable disease, organ donors who lie about their drug abuse and sexually transmitted diseases or other health conditions, resulting in more diseased organs infecting hosts or faulty organs resulting in failed transplants.

[MRT144]

I'm all for selling organs as long as there is a clearinghouse for such transactions that controls for quality etc.

[MRT144]

Customers would demand these verifications on the supply chain anyway to ensure quality. Even meat in the supermarket is being traced to its origin nowadays. No big deal.

And yet, people still get poisoned occasionally and they keep buying meat. It seems that we've reached an equilibrium point where a small risk of getting sick is worth buying meat, and the customer essentially has no impact on whether illness occurs or not.

Markets are not self regulating when there is imperfect information.

[KrazyHorse]

I plan to start an organ derivatives market. In 15 years I'll be blamed for the great organ bubble of 2024.

[KrazyHorse]

MRT: it's actually pretty incredible how rare the incidence of serious food-borne illness is.

[MRT144]

MRT: it's actually pretty incredible how rare the incidence of serious food-borne illness is.

I just shutter to think about serious organ transplant illness, no matter how rare.

[KrazyHorse]

Better than dying slowly from renal failure.

[MRT144]

Better than dying slowly from renal failure.

There'd have to be some sort of counterparty liability if the organ was a lemon, right?

[KrazyHorse]

I'd imagine that most of this would fall on the presumably international organ export/import companies. They could post malpractice bonds.

[Solomwi]

to KH for finally getting around to pointing out nye's support for organ theft and dangerous amateur harvesting procedures.

[Ben Kenobi]

Kuci, organ harvesting is a problem. If people are worth about 5k, some people will see it to their advantage to get as much of that 5k as they can. Why limit yourself to two kidneys? That's just bush league.

The only people that would want a credit card with 80% APR are those who already have trashed their credit rating.

And that is my point. Such people are significant credit risks. It would make a good starter card, provided it has a low limit, and people can build up a credit.

[MRT144]

Kuci, organ harvesting is a problem. If people are worth about 5k, some people will see it to their advantage to get as much of that 5k as they can. Why limit yourself to two kidneys? That's just bush league.



And that is my point. Such people are significant credit risks. It would make a good starter card, provided it has a low limit, and people can build up a credit.

Any limit is insufficient for that rate because that rate pushes people to default easily.

[Jon Miller]

If a third world nation doesn't take part in it, due to culture/sqeamishness/benefit to that third world nation (due to limiting the human capital that is flowing out), and there is an international market for it, then it would encourage illegal/unethical type behaviors in that nation.

There's already an international black market that encourages far more illegal/unethical type behaviors.

There is already an international black market for endangered animal parts and child exploitation. By keeping the results illegal the demand is kept down which in turn decreases supply.

In the case of endangered animal parts, history validates this.

This is not a discussion on the basis of organ selling being moral/ethical/etc. This is about first world exploitation of the third world. We shouldn't have an international market for organs unless the third world is in favor of it. Because them trying to ban it while the wealthy nations make it legal will create demand that the poor nation's laws will be broken in mass (instead of just a bit, like now).

Which will increase illegal/etc behavior.

JM