[tn135]

One thing that can ease the pain of death is by probably discussing the benefits of it.

I wish people could sell their organs after their death. Putting grandkids through college or paying for the mortgage etc. could make it easier for people to talk about death.

[coldtea]

>Putting grandkids through college or paying for the mortgage etc. could make it easier for people to talk about death.

It will also make it easy for rich leeches to force poor people into "voluntary" deaths, to improve the fortune of their remaining family members.

[sithadmin]

In the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life?

Putting organs on the market might make certain ethical dilemmas about economic inequality more obvious to the casual bystander, but the same sort of ethical quandaries are already structurally woven into the global economic system.

[eli_gottlieb]

>In the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life?

It's not different at all. We're not different from the Aztecs: our economy has become an elaborate system of human sacrifice to false gods.

[ashark]

Especially Moloch.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

[InitialLastName]

Especially Yahweh

[anigbrowl]

Putting organs on the market will make those existing structural ethical dilemmas (which I fulminate about here pretty regularly, going back a long time) more obvious because it makes them worse. Making things worse is not, in my experience, the first step in making things better. How many innocent people do you propose to sacrifice on the altar of your intellect in order to persuade the 'casual bystanders' to adopt your position?

This sounds little different than the failed Marxist strategy of 'sharpening the contradictions of capitalism' in hopes of awakening class consciousness among the proletariat. Your eschatology seems to suffer from some glaring ethical flaws from where I'm sitting.

[sithadmin]

You're reading my commentary as a defense of the practice, which it isn't.

[anigbrowl]

You're normalizing it, a;beit unintentionally, by equating a chronic loss of economic agency with an acute loss in the form of a single transaction.

[xherberta]

There's only one place I'm aware of on earth where organs can be sold: Iran. Here's an interview with an economist who helped set up that market, which does seem to function fairly efficiently and has some safeguards in place to prevent coersion.

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/09/tina_rosenberg.html

Edit: specifically, this is about kidney donation from living donors, not after-death donation.

[tn135]

> In the end, is it truly that much different than the prevailing economic structure disproportionately forcing the poor into high-risk or hard-labor occupations that result in significantly degraded lifespan and/or quality of life?

You are right but I am unable to see why might think it is bad. Poor people taking more risks to come out of poverty is very natural and should be encouraged. Why do you think I left my homeland, left my parents, friends and Gods to come to Silicon Valley ?

If you are not going to allow poor people to take risks and make hard choices you are keeping them in perpetual poverty.

[anigbrowl]

You're taking risks to advance your own economic power by serving the interests of a system that is an aspect of the very thing that keeps you poor int he first place. Liberation is something that begins in the mind, not the pocketbook; economics is a useful theory but it's far from being a totalizing philosophy.

[tn135]

> interests of a system that is an aspect of the very thing that keeps you poor int he first place.

Seems other way round to me. It is the restrictions on organ trade that is keeping poor.

[coldtea]

>If you are not going to allow poor people to take risks and make hard choices you are keeping them in perpetual poverty.

Only in a world where getting rich is about "taking risks" and not about being ruthless, luck, connections, and inheritance.

[tn135]

> being ruthless, luck, connections, and inheritance.

All those are important but then risk is also one way to get rich faster.

[awkwardtortoise]

> Poor people taking more risks to come out of poverty is very natural

Poor people don't take more risks to come out of poverty... Poor people take risks because they have no choice and they remain in poverty.

> Why do you think I left my homeland, left my parents, friends and Gods to come to Silicon Valley ?

That's not the type of risk we are talking about. We are talking about things like coal miners.

[tn135]

> rich leeches to force poor people into "voluntary" deaths

What is wrong in rich people parting their wealth to help poor people while benefiting their family members ?

The voluntary part however is very important and in a country like USA that part can generally be achieved much better than say India or China. Give instant green-cards to the family members of organ donors from India and China instantly and USA will not have a problem of organ donation queue while helping millions of Chinese and Indian people live a better life.

[anigbrowl]

I'm sure Indian and Chinese people must be delighted by the prospect of being 'voluntary' livestock to produce meat to replace the failing body parts of wealthy Americans, and that no financial or emotional pressure will be brought to bear on anyone to participate.

[tn135]

While it might sound bad to you for millions of Indians and Chinese it is totally worth a Kidney. As long as they are making that choice themselves I do not see the problem.

[coldtea]

>What is wrong in rich people parting their wealth to help poor people while benefiting their family members ?

What's wrong is that life and health should be a right to everybody, not just to those who can buy it out.

[tn135]

> What's wrong is that life and health should be a right to everybody, not just to those who can buy it out.

I am unable to see how life and health can be right without justifying force and violence. If someone needs a Kidney and if it is a right then it must be forcibly taken from someone else without that you can not call it a right.

[coldtea]

>I am unable to see how life and health can be right without justifying force and violence. If someone needs a Kidney and if it is a right then it must be forcibly taken from someone else without that you can not call it a right.

Or you know, it can be either taken from a donations pool where everybody has access to, or the person may just not have it.

Prioritizing the rich to live is not really ethical in my book.

[tn135]

> from a donations pool where everybody has access to

If the donation pool is limited and a sick person is not allowed to use his wealth to save himself, it is violence on the sick person.

[melling]

I paid off my mortgage by 44, and I don't have kids. Who is going to want my 78.94 year old organs?

My personal feeling is that if humans would quit wasting their time bullshitting on the Internet all day, and we figured out a way to collectively be more productive, we could cure cancer, create artificial organs, extend life by a few healthy decades, eliminate poverty, etc then die peacefully in our sleep around 120.

I have no idea how we could accomplish this, but I have notice over the years, that we seem to repeatedly have the same conversations, and they don't add anything to our understanding or advancement in any way.

[chimen]

> "My personal feeling is that if humans would quit wasting their time bullshitting on the Internet all day, and we figured out a way to collectively be more productive, we could cure cancer, create artificial organs, extend life by a few healthy decades, eliminate poverty"

You just wasted time on the internet telling people not to waste time on the...internet. Let's not take from the importance of the internet and how much we accomplished in the past years just from being able to ask strangers about our problems and receive answers...among many other things.

You can't add/multiply intelligence. Even if 1,000,000 researches work on curing cancer compared to 1,000 it might still be solved around the same time. In other words, putting 1000 people bad at math together in a room doesn't mean they are going to bring any new algorithm out.

It's all a symbiotic process and things need to move in all directions just so you can tackle certain issues at the right time with the right tools.

[melling]

Yes, I get that every time I make the observation. I waste a lot of time on the Internet too, much less than in the past. i'm certainly as guilty as the next person. However, I'm trying to be more self-aware about it. Thirty years ago I thought all the Internet conversation would amount to more.

I didn't offer a solution to the problem. I simply threw it out there for others to ponder. Yeah, I know i'll get a bunch of answers that start with "you can't..."

Still, collectively we waste a lot of time, which i see as untapped potential. We're going to get self-driving cars and we'll probably just get an early start on HN.

Finally, the observation that you missed as you rushed to tell me that I was wasting time too, and it can't work because... is that we need to collectively figure out a way to capture the wasted time of millions of people.

[ansible]

Thirty years ago I thought all the Internet conversation would amount to more.

Thirty years ago (reading Marc Stiegler's book "David's Sling" [1]), I expected that the Internet would enable us to more effectively communicate, and enable us collectively to make better and smarter decisions as a society.

And... that's not exactly what happened. We've instead made it even easier to find groups of people who will reinforce our existing beliefs, and easily exclude inconvenient truths. Sigh

[1] https://www.baen.com/david-s-sling.html

[marcosdumay]

And yet I'm here reading a comment against my high rated belief that the Internet makes information much easier to get.

[ansible]

The Internet does make information easy to get. It is truly wonderful in that regard.

What I was expecting with the Internet is that it would lead to a widespread increase in correct beliefs and (eventually) wisdom as well.

Certainly, some individuals do use the increased information availability to great benefit. But this isn't nearly as widespread as I predicted and hoped it would be.

[TeMPOraL]

> is that we need to collectively figure out a way to capture the wasted time of millions of people.

This is the topic worth discussing. The time I spent on HN e.g. today, bitching about Uber, would not likely contribute anything to curing cancer if I were doing anything else with it. It would be great to have more ways to capture little amounts of unskilled effort from many people and channel them into something good. But besides working more to give more to charity, I'm out of ideas.

[psyc]

> You just wasted time on the internet telling people not to waste time on the...internet.

How I wish there was some way I could persuade you never to do this again...

[psyc]

I'm with you 100% on this. I often think of what the human race is technically and intellectually capable of accomplishing right now, if only the incentive / will / organization existed.

[DanBC]

> Who is going to want my 78.94 year old organs?

There isn't an age limit on donating organs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8226709.stm

> Professor James Neuberger, associate medical director of NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "The belief that there is some sort of age limit on becoming an organ donor is a complete myth.

> "Organs are successfully transplanted from people in their 70s and 80s, and the oldest cornea donor recorded was 104 years old.

[tn135]

What if you could get $10K today just to donate your dead body to a medical college ?

[anigbrowl]

What if you were habitually bad with money and agreed to donate your dead body to 20 different colleges?

[yequalsx]

I agree with your sentiment that people should talk about benefits to dying. But your comment really says a lot about where the United States is at as a society. Selling organs to put grandkids through college. Wow.

[dsp1234]

I have value in life, why can't I have value in death? While I'm living, I am free to give the results of my value to anyone I choose. Why not in death?

[TeMPOraL]

The problem with this is that today, individually, it may seem like a worthwile thing to do with your dying body. Fast-forward 20+ years, and it'll become expected part of life, and college funding will become conditioned on grandparents dying early enough.

You generally don't want to start going that road.

[tn135]

That is a very valid concern. But your concern also has an answer.

> Fast-forward 20+ years, and it'll become expected part of life,

Yes. I think people will probably have a reverse mortgage like thing where they will be able to borrow (but lot less) money today with a promise that they will have to donate their kidney when the time comes. People with certain ethnicity, blood group, genetic makeup etc. will become more valuable and hence will be able to derive more value and hence "rare type" will stop being rare type. This is a great outcome.

At the moment rich people from developed countries hunt for organ donors in Mexico, China, India and Africa bringing a lot of misery to those countries and money for the politicians and smugglers. Do you really like little Indian kids kept in a basement forever only to be killed like chickens later for their organs ? Or would you like to see the American justice system being applied to maximise individual freedom with full protection of law ?

[anigbrowl]

Your argument is fallacious. You allude to indian children being held in awful conditions for organ harvesting so as to hold people emotionally hostage to your proposal, but the outcome you refer to to is not an inevitability but the result of a moral and political failure on the parts of the actors involved. You are in effect absolving them of ethical responsibility by saying they can't help it because they are powerless to resist the temptation to make all that money so we should just accept that it's going to happen unless we create a market for it.

They are not powerless to resist the ethical incentives. They are ethically corrupt and your implicitly endorsing their corrupt behavior by treating it as an inevitability that is better commercialized than eliminated.

[TeMPOraL]

There's an argument about what they should do vs. what we can actually make them do. If we can make those people behave ethically, great. But if we can't? Sometimes it's easier to make bad things unprofitable and let their own lack of ethics steer them away from doing bad things.

[TeMPOraL]

Didn't think of that this way. You make an interesting observation; I need to think more about it because I still feel like there might be big market failures in such a system. I'm worried about ways people could be coerced into dying "before their time".

Personally, I hope genetics will soon advance to the point the organs can be grown, thus rendering the whole issue moot.

[yequalsx]

It was the sell organs to pay for college that I was referring to. What a terrible society to live in where people think this reasonable. Perhaps society should just properly fund college education so that the harvesting of organs from people isn't considered reasonable.

[tn135]

How about harvesting organs so the kids could use that money to create their next Javascript based startup ? Should the society then also fund their Startup ?

College education is an example. People will spend resources on whatever they think is useful. Who are we to judge ?

[yequalsx]

People are free to spend on what they want, within the bounds of the law. I think you fail to see how badly society is doing when selling organs to pay for education seems reasonable. Education is a public good. A startup is not. Education is something that reasonable societies provide for its citizens.

We've gone so far away from proper notions of the purpose and meaning of a society that people are talking about selling organs to pay for public goods. I'm not talking about your proposal to sell organs. It's your proposal to do something so drastic to pay for something so basic.

[xherberta]

Right. Monetizing death. Ugh. I'm also not certain that you can donate organs if you've been on pain (and other) medications.

[tn135]

I am an Indian citizen I am not American. Indians (and Hindus specifically) see death as merely one transition.

I find it weird that we are denying poor people an excellent opportunity to pull their family out of poverty instantly even after an unfortunate event. Here we are using nature's forces to force the "rich leeches" (as one person wrote above) to part with their wealth and help the poor family.

At the moment rich Americans fly to India and China where gangs (and government) illegally harvest organs for the benefit of world rich. If USA regulates the organ trade within USA we can avoid all that misery for poor Indians.

I suggest you want the Indian movie Ship of Theseus which dwelves on this topic.

[yequalsx]

You miss my point. The U.S. is a wealthy nation. Our notions of society, shared burdens, shared responsibilities has degraded so far that people are talking about harvesting their organs to pay for the education of their progeny. Reasonable societies that are wealthy provide education to their citizens. The concept of selling your organs to pay your child's education ought to be derided and unthinkable in a nation as wealthy as the U.S. Public goods should be paid for by the public (generally speaking).

My point has nothing to do with organ harvesting. It has to do with the U.S. being dysfunctional as a society that organ harvesting for something as basic as education is being talked about.

[anigbrowl]

If it's such a great idea, why don't you set it up for Indian people in India and see how that goes first? Why do you think it's more appropriate to create the market within the richest country in order to attract would-be donors from the poor countries? It might be worth pointing out that the philosophical trend in western society has historically been about moving away from institutional caste systems and toward one of equalization. I really suggest that you expand your understanding of Western mores before making further proposals to market the living bodies of your erstwhile compatriots.

[anigbrowl]

Good grief, is there nothing that people won't try to make into a commercial transaction? You won't cling to life any more effectively by making one last sale.

[ThatGeoGuy]

This sort of argument always seems eerily reminiscent of the King's morality advisor in the fable of the dragon-tyrant [1]. I don't think most people can grapple with thinking about the benefits of their own demise, much less accept that dying is ultimately the "better" option. I also don't think such a perspective is wrong.

[1] http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

[easilyBored]

I wish people could sell their organs after their death. Putting grandkids through college or paying for the mortgage etc. could make it easier for people to talk about death.

We're not ready to accept that money means life or death. Two people on waiting list for transplants: one has the money, the other doesn't.

Of course the person with the money still can go to another state /country and try to get in a smaller waiting list