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> It's absolutely perverse that, instead of striving for a more egalitarian society, we would effectively force the most vulnerable among to sell themselves to scientific experiments to survive

So, you think the situation they're in now, where they don't have this option, is preferable to the one where they do have this option? Nobody said anything about 'instead of', either.

The point is: unless you have a perfectly egalitarian society, some people will have more stuff and other people will have less. Jobs offering stuff are, inherently, more attractive to those who currently have less stuff. There is nothing wrong about that, in fact, that's the mechanism by which people with less stuff acquire more stuff. Why, exactly, do you believe they shouldn't be able to make that choice for themselves?

It is unethical to perform such experiments on people regardless of what they say or why. It’s like I tell my children. We strive to be polite to other people because of who we are, not because of who they are. That’s what ethics is about.

To approach it another way, as long as one group of people has an economic benefit from abusing another group, there’s a problem. There’s no way you can ever be certain enough that such a system is being administered fairly and competently. The bureaucratic and ethical abuses and mistakes we get already are bad enough.

Finally, I f anyone is in such a desperate situation that this looks like a good option, then surely there must be other ethical options available for society to intervene?

> It is unethical to perform such experiments on people regardless of what they say or why.

Why? Why shouldn't these people be free to make that choice for themselves?

> To approach it another way, as long as one group of people has an economic benefit from abusing another group, there’s a problem.

How, exactly, are you defining 'abuse'? Is it abuse to offer someone money to do something? It's hard to see how it could be abusive to give someone an option that they didn't previously have.

There is a large group of people who are at the mercy of the system. They do not have the ability to be self-sufficient and are reliant on social assistance.

There is now an incentive for the people who control the system to reduce the level of social assistance, because in so doing they increase the number of people who "voluntarily" submit to risky experimentation.

This proposal seems like adding a new option on an individual level, but on a social level it paradoxically leads to a situation where that group has less choice.

It's like playing the game of chicken on a road where the first person to swerve from a head-on collision loses. Paradoxically the winning move is to visibly remove your own choice by throwing your steering wheel out the window.

More choice is not always better.

> There is now an incentive for the people who control the system to reduce the level of social assistance, because in so doing they increase the number of people who "voluntarily" submit to risky experimentation.

That's quite the logical leap there. And is one that could be made about literally any effort to help the poor, so, i'm not quite sure you've made your point.

>We strive to be polite to other people because of who we are, not because of who they are. That’s what ethics is about.

It's a nice concept, but ethics (and the idea of politeness) are largely relativistic to the interpreter/actor. Even with the idea of normative ethics being dictated by culture and point-of-view out of the way, there are layers to every ethical/moral choice within each doctrine of thought.

Ask people around the world about the ethical treatment of animals, prisoners of war, children, spouses -- you'll get different answers from every individual, with strong weights towards certain behaviors dictated by regional culture and upbringing/experience.

tl;dr : I may think that it's being polite not to spit on me for being a member of a lower caste. YOU might think i'm being polite for opening the door for someone behind me.

Neither opinion is wrong, it's framed by the culture and the person.

To a point what is ethical can depend on the circumstances. In a tribal society with limited scientific or social structures to support investigations, and appropriate legal and justice system might look appalling from our point of view but be the best they can support. However if you do have the technical and cultural resources to support a professional police force, crime labs, judicial process etc, saying that keeping the tribal justice system is ok because culture is relative becomes unsupportable IMHO.

In modern developed society it should never be the case that a person's best economic choice is to sell their health and life for money. It's just not necessary for people to be in that position unless someone wants them to be in that position. Why would anyone want that?

What's the motivation for crating those conditions, and if people do want to put people in that position, how can the rest of us trust that the safeguards someone who would want that would put in place are sufficient and robust?

It's not just having "stuff". Without money, you have no food, no shelter. It's a very effective form of coercion: do this thing you would otherwise never do, or you and your family will starve.

Here are some points:

- It's much, much, easier to coerce someone into doing something they don't want to do when it's a legal option than when it's illegal in all circumstances.

- People in desperate situations are among the least likely to make their decisions rationally, so they might take the option even if they would have found a better one otherwise.

- It lowers the threshold of how bad things can get. Right now, if you have no money, you're in a shitty situation. With that "option", I expect a common outcome is that you take it, have a bunch of health complications and/or die, don't get compensated very well (there's a large supply of poor people like you and you're desperate, so your bargaining position is weak), and end up in an even worse situation.

- Nobody said "instead of", but there is a limited amount of attention and resources directed at getting better laws passed, and this one is extremely far down on my list of priorities.

I'll ask again: How is it that these people are made better off by not having this choice? Why do you think these people aren't capable of making their own decisions?

Each individual person might be better off having that choice, true.

But setting up a system where this is an option, leads to a society where those people might not have the option of not submitting to experimentation.

How exactly would that come about?

Peer pressure? Family pressure? "If you loved your family, you would do this for them."

The U.S. government keeps trying to force people in poverty to make harder decisions to be able to use the safety net. Is it so hard to imagine that someday one of the requirements would be subjecting yourself to experimental tests?

Those are just two ideas off the top of my head. I'm not a fan of slippery slope arguments, but this does seem like a Pandora's box worth looking very carefully at before opening.

So, poor people shouldn't have the option to do this, because if you give them the choice, someday a republican might make it a requirement of welfare? That seems like a bit of a silly argument.

Was the point of this discussion to discuss why people may be concerned about unintended consequences or to blithely assert omniscience? Maybe I just picked the wrong thread.

If all you're saying is that people could theoretically be concerned about that, then sure I agree. I just think the concern is misplaced.

Legalizing human experimentation in this manner would result in it being counted as employment (e.g. for tax purposes).

Meanwhile, unemployed people risk losing their benefits if they refuse a job offer. So depending on how these jobs are treated, an employment agency might put you in a position where you may not be able to refuse.

This is completely accounted for in the current law:

https://employment.findlaw.com/losing-a-job/refuse-job-offer...

It's the same reason you can't buy a kidney in most countries. As soon as you make it possible to buy life, you can create a system that exploits the poor.

E.G: I was watching an episode on kidney trade (Netflix TV show The Traffickers) and a man was duped into selling his kidney. He expected more but only received less than $300. There might have been complications with his operation because now he has pain that he will have to deal with his entire life. I'm not sure if he actually understood the risk of this entire thing. And he has also been ostracized from his community. This system of organ trade, even though it is illegal, has become so bad that it's like a human pyramid scheme. They recruit one person to sell their kidney and every time that person gets someone else to sell a kidney, they take a cut. Pretty terrible stuff.

The perfect example. The kidney market is, in fact, the exact reason for my opinion on this issue. Kidney markets are a wonderful thing, the fact that they are illegal in every country except Iran is an absolute tragedy.

> I was watching an episode on kidney trade (Netflix TV show The Traffickers) and a man was duped into selling his kidney. He expected more but only received less than $300.

That's just fraud. A man was deceived. We have laws for dealing with that.

> There might have been complications with his operation because now he has pain that he will have to deal with his entire life. I'm not sure if he actually understood the risk of this entire thing.

Exactly the sorts of issues that bringing such a market out from underground would resolve.

> And he has also been ostracized from his community

That doesn't even make sense, and if it's true, then it says more about the community than it does kidney markets.

> . This system of organ trade, even though it is illegal, has become so bad that it's like a human pyramid scheme. They recruit one person to sell their kidney and every time that person gets someone else to sell a kidney, they take a cut. Pretty terrible stuff.

Is it more terrible than any other pyramid scheme? If you think there's fraud or deception going on, sure that's terrible. But giving people the right to sell themselves is not inherently terrible.

Here, read this: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/need-a-kidn...

Well you're just too far gone.

Maybe you should consider actually thinking about the issue before deciding? Why don't you read the article and get back to me. Literally everyone is better off if we have a liquid market in kidneys.

Well he's just too far gone.

Poor people already give plasma and sign up for medical trials for quick money.

While the consequences aren't fatal, this is already happening.

Why do people who are not poor always feel like they should be telling the poor how to live their lives? You do realize that many poor people are incredibly intelligent, just that they are missing a network to get to a higher level.

All right, what about if we restrict eligibility to a minimum income/wealth, IQ, and a college degree?