i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant enough harm to outweigh the harm of the recipient not getting the kidney. if we're worried about people being financially desperate, we should allow organs to be sold and build a stronger social safety net (with the money we save on dialysis?)
Nothing I have said really even touches on the topic that that safety could be impacted by people trying to game the screening process, though it is of course a legitimate concern.
> i just don't see kidney donation as being a significant enough harm to outweigh the harm of the recipient not getting the kidney.
I don't disagree that kidney donation is a net good. The question is what you do with that opinion. You could defend the idea of a "kidney draft", where some random selection of the population gets forced by the state to "donate" one of their kidneys; though I suspect a lot of the proponents of a free organ market would be uncomfortable with that idea, as would I. The difference is that I view financial coercion as just as much of a problem as state coercion.
> if we're worried about people being financially desperate, we should allow organs to be sold and build a stronger social safety net
I agree! If there was a social safety net which reliably kept people out of desperate poverty, I would be less worried about financial incentives.
The safety net needs to come first, however.
I was originally going to post this as a facile gotcha, until I thought about it slightly harder and realized that effectively disbanding the military would actually be a pretty good idea, all considered. However, I would still argue that we should accept monetary rewards for altruistic yet dangerous acts, like fighting fires and rescuing cats from trees (and donating kidneys).