The Role of Blood Plasma Donation Centers in Crime Reduction
papers.ssrn.com
papers.ssrn.com
This is rather wild as a fact, but also correlates well with previous studies, showing financial incentives do indeed help regulate health for example weight loss (https://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2024/may-2024-news/cash-incentiv...).
The problem is it's not available or easy to find.
I think bringing back something like the CCC [1] would do wonders for the US. It could even be made more available and accessible in the modern era. Imagine, for example, if you had something akin to a small jobs board. Citizens could apply for tasks to be done and the government could fund (or partially fund) the completion of those tasks. Could be things like scrubbing graffiti off a wall. Filling a pothole. Or any other community improvement (like taking care of a park).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_Conservation_Corps
All of that requires funding. Where would that funding come from? If the answer is "just spend more money", why is it better to spend money on public works programs than paying it out via means-tested welfare programs?
Taxes. Ideally higher income taxes or even better a wealth tax (but that has dubious constitutionality).
I also wouldn't mind pulling $100B, $200B, or $500B away from the military budget for such projects.
> why is it better to spend money on public works programs than paying it out via means-tested welfare programs?
Means testing requires someone to do the means testing along with additional bureaucracy to enforce it. It's, in fact, more expensive than just having an open program. Why would I actually care, for example, if we paid extra money for a billionaire's kid to get healthcare if that meant the 99% of the population that isn't billionaires got healthcare?
A public works program is a welfare program. With the benefit that beyond just giving money to people that need it, it also improves public spaces for everyone. And, I think nobody would actually object to allowing anyone to participate in public works. Would you really care if a millionaire got a little extra cash cleaning a highway?
But beyond that, it's better to spend money on people with the least amount of money because they drive the economy way harder than everyone else. A dollar given to someone poor is far more likely to be spent in the economy than a dollar given to a rich person. A healthy economy is one where money moves more frequently.
A good example is what's predicted to happen with the medicaid defunding. Rural hospitals are likely going to shutdown as the majority of them receive their funding from medicaid. That hurts everyone in a rural community even if they aren't on medicaid.
Now imagine the reverse. If that rural community had government works jobs, that'd be more money in the community which would ultimately mean more opportunities for new businesses in the community to exist. Where it previously may not have made sense for a grocery store to exist, now it might because more of the population has a stable income they are willing to spend.
How is means testing (ie. reviewing some paperwork) going to be cheaper than running an actual public works program where you need to decide what needs to be done, plan the thing that needs to be done, recruit people to do the thing, procure equipment/material so those people can actually do the thing, supervise/train those people to do the thing, inspect their work, and remit payment for them? Sure, a public works program might produce beneficial outcomes that justifies some of the costs, but the hassle of herding a bunch of casual workers (compared to having full time staff) and paying them is probably going to take orders of magnitude more money than means testing. If your argument is just that the government should tax more and use that money to spend on full time government jobs, that's just a generic "tax and spend" argument, not a "small jobs board" or whatever.
Means testing is not just "reviewing some paperwork". It can be a quiet laborious effort up to and including enforcement actions. It doesn't just happen once; it has to happen frequently as salaries change. And further, because it's generally based on things like salaries/net worth, it requires background checks and verification that isn't necessarily readily on hand. There's also the need to review the work of the person doing the means testing.
I'll grant that it'd be a smaller portion of the cost for something like a CCC program. However, for other welfare programs such as heating assistance, the means testing can quickly outstrip the cost of just giving the assistance in the first place. Hiring a department of people to make sure someone doesn't get assistance costs money.
> If your argument is just that the government should tax more and use that money to spend on full time government jobs, that's just a generic "tax and spend" argument, not a "small jobs board" or whatever.
Yes, I believe tax and spend is in fact more beneficial to the economy and public good as I've outlined. Absolute government efficiency is not an absolute good.
The small jobs board, though, is something that we could actually do more efficiently in the modern environment. You could track that information far more efficiently then you could in the 1940s. That means you don't really need the full blown work camps of the 40s to get most of the same benefit that CCC provided.
This is a perfect case for UBI instead of feeding off the poor.
It removes PFAS, heavy metals, and microplastics from your blood. All things that won't really come out without the donation.
Fiber also removes some of them by binding bile.
I don't think this is the case, certainly not for microplastics and PFAS. I'm not sure how it'd work for heavy metals.
AFAIK, fiber doesn't cross the stomach->blood barrier so it really wouldn't have the ability to bind to anything other than what's already in the digestive tract. I could see it potentially reducing the amount of plastics/metals/PFAS that end up in the blood stream but not actually reducing what's already there.
People get all huffy when you suggest criminal activity isn't an innate trait of a person but due to life circumstances and desperation, as if they would never steal to eat/survive.
It's an attack on a person's identity to insinuate that the only difference between them and a 'criminal' is one of circumstance. For some, such is too much to even consider. This is the real barrier to fixing the problem: a lack of imagination and empathy.
> Not innate
These two thoughts seem to be in conflict. You are describing an innate difference.
I agree there is nuance. We are a product of our environment and innate nature. I suspect the environment is (far: by orders of magnitude) easier to change. I don't think we only need to change the environment, but I would venture the 80/20 estimation here...
This says nothing for 'truly evil' people, which - I suspect - is a vanishingly small number of people. I also think that such people require a degraded environment to operate effectively (according to their goals) and by focusing on improving the conditions people are in: we remove a lot of leverage for those people to act as they wish (maliciously).
I think the trade offs are all sensible here.
1. It doesn't depend on politics, it already works today
2. You have to plan for and show up to a place to get the money and ensure your blood remains valuable, all of which promote a basic semblance of order in your life, especially when you're on the ropes.
3. You save lives and are compensated for it
4. In the area between having no money vs having a job, pretty much anything I can think of to make money is worse than selling plasma.
It's a lucky quirk that you can sell your plasma, because you usually can't sell your blood even though countries, industry, hospitals, and insurance companies pay each other good money for it, just not to the person who created it.
Like yeah, I give (double red) blood as often as I am able because, well civic duty and all but it's still real fucked.
But what I mean is that cash handouts are a constant contentious political battleground that feels like a pipe dream where I live while selling plasma was a political decision made before we arrived and probably not something most people feel quite as strongly about.
The danger as I see it is that we can let perfect be the enemy of good, though I suppose you aren't suggesting that it's bad that people have the option to sell their plasma as everything currently stands. I do see it better than the alternative of prohibiting it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/why-blood-makes-up-over-2poi...
In rural America you do have some poor people selling their plasma to afford gas. Drug screening means they avoid doing drugs. Not being on drugs lowers propensity to engage in petty crime. I knew a couple like this.
On a related note, I find that making elementary grammatical errors, like using the wrong "its" or "there", can detract from the impact of an argument.
0: https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/199e6mc/...
Next to the plasma donation center in my town, there's a children's trampoline and activity center. I take my son there at least once a month, sometimes more often if the weather’s bad.
While he plays, I sit near the front windows and keep an eye on him while also looking outside and seeing the various individuals who go and sell their plasma at the donation center.
There are people from all different walks of life. You've got people walking in from god knows where (my town and this area in particular are not very walking friendly), people driving up in trash cars about to fall apart, people driving up in $60k+ cars, folks with multiple children in tow, etc.
It seems that many people other than the folks we'd normally consider poor need to sell their plasma to get that bit of extra cash.
AMaybe some of them are doing it for altruistic reasons.
It takes about 3 hours on a gurney.
I donate blood every 2 months. It takes about 30 minutes. I was doing it for altruistic reasons but it turns out that I have an iron deficiency and everyone is tested for an adequate hemoglobin level before they can donate. I have been turned away because my level was too low. Because I donate blood, I get a nice chart that I can show my doctor of what the levels are.
A while ago, the Red Cross was testing for COVID-19 antibodies so that blood with those could be given to immuno-compromised people.
My thought is that the Red Cross should find some tests that are relatively inexpensive to do but would be popular with certain people. Like testosterone or Vitamin D levels. That'd be a much bigger incentive than a $10 gift card.
Which, at least on the highly regulated coasts and comparable midwest areas, are the areas that are/were depressed by manufacturing pulling out.
It's more likely the reason some of these folks aren't employed.
Lowering wages doesn't create anything except depravity on the part of employers.
If a business doesn't pay a living wage, that effectively means that said business is being subsidized by a different entity. It could be the employee, the employee's spouse, the government, etc. But someone is subsidizing businesses that don't pay living wages.
I never understood this framing. If the person in question wasn't being employed, it's not as if he suddenly won't need food/housing/whatever, so why call it a subsidy when he decides to get a job?
Not a very advanced society at all. Gross on multiple levels.
Drug use shots up, crime rises as a result, people die due to plasma shortages, but at least it's not gross, right?
No other options. /s
But then you propose to take away a clearly beneficial opportunity to donate plasma just because it sounds personally gross to you (while people make their own free choice to take this opportunity or not), so not sure a nuanced conversation about 2nd order effects can be held here
Considering we’re the only “advanced” country that does healthcare this poorly, and we have a wild oligarch class that desperately needs to be put in its place, I’m really curious how “healthcare for all and not requiring the poor to sell their own plasma” is the worse option.
You know what sucks? Having what, 150+ “mass casualty” incidents a year, extracting the blood of the poor, then trying to say “hey that reduces crime!” while 5 families have more wealth than 50% of America combined, and the only “advanced” country where medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy.
There’s no sane washing any of this shit.
Where is the incentive for people to donate plasma other than paying people for it?
If people were donating it for free in adequate quantities there wouldn’t be companies paying people for it.
I’m not even arguing against socialized medicine, just pointing out that you haven’t provided a better solution to the demand for plasma.
I see that some people being crazy rich is infuriating and very often unjust. And I wish socialism worked. But it doesn't. Look at history and consider second order effects of 90% tax and similar policies. Or more narrowly, imagine you are poor and rely on plasma donations, now that option is gone, what do you do next? Are you better off with that option no longer available?
If anything doesn't work, it's the system WE HAVE NOW.
You're saying "socialism doesn't work" - we're the only country without single payer healthcare. We don't live as long. We pay 2x what other countries do. It just doesn't work... here. It's absolutely a lie that it doesn't work.
Socialism works just fine, and it's high time we get there and tax the living crap out of these useless lizard people.
We know that 90% tax rates are bad since 14th century. Not exactly cutting adge science but somehow many people still don't get it