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Comment by lghh | Hacker News Reader

> I'm an adult, if I want the money isn't it strictly better than I have the freedom to cash in on my human resources?

Yes.

To add onto this —- living with only one kidney rather than two only barely increases your risk of dying, and many people each year die due to lack of kidneys. So, creating a market here (regulated of course) would save a lot of lives.

To further add on, I doubt rich people die because of lack of kidneys and I think they'd be the only ones to benefit from that.

You can tell that to my Aunt whose husband died because he couldn’t get a kidney. They would’ve gladly paid $100K and worked a couple more years before retiring if he could’ve lived.

Iran has an organ market and his has been a large success and has a very low rate of regret.

It would likely coerce poor Americans into selling their kidneys to the wealthy so that they could pay off their student debt. Is coercing the poor to sell their organs to the rich a net benefit for society?

For anyone who thinks this is hyperbole, ProPublica has done excellent work investigating how lenders use the court system to imprison Americans who can't pay back their debts: https://www.google.com/search?q=propublica+debtors+prisons

You and I have very different views of coercion. Making a choice possible is not coercing people into that choice.

Debtors prisons are bad but of course that’s a separate issue.

"Coerce" in the sense that poor people would notice a way to make money and go after it?

Coerce in that someone will now have the "choice" of selling an organ or going to jail.

>> I'm an adult, if I want the money isn't it strictly better than I have the freedom to cash in on my human resources [by selling my kidney]?

> Yes.

By this logic, slavery should be legal, because people should have the freedom to sell themselves into it (for instance, to purchase medical care for a loved one).

Yes. But that wouldn't be slavery really because you are working for a predetermined rate.

> Yes. But that wouldn't be slavery really because you are working for a predetermined rate.

Huh? I literally said the person would be selling themselves into slavery, which means becoming chattel property with no rights of any kind. That's nothing like a non-slave "working for a predetermined rate," because those workers still have rights since they're not property.

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