Quote Originally Posted by d0zer View Post
I have nuanced opinions that sometimes sound contradictory, but I'm just musing on the various and sometimes opposing factors here. I forgot this is the internet and I'm supposed to take a side and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

The thing about supply & demand with the organ black market, is that market is castrated by virtual worldwide illegality. Legalize it worldwide (or even in a large market) and that demand skyrockets.

Reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_t...al_organ_trade provides many examples of problems with countries that tried legalizing it. India tried it and eventually decided it wasn't a good idea. And you're welcome to pull the theoretical libertarian cliche of "the government isn't good at anything" if you must, but...results indicate:

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Of course there are going to be problems with those sorts of systems. When it's legal in one place but nowhere else, it's still not much different than a black market, with high prices and tourism. If something as simply awful as allowing people to sell organs that they cannot adequately demonstrate they own is allowed, it will cause all sorts of problems.

In your link, if any country is the best example of an experiment, it's Iran, because it looks like the only one that used policy that pulled it out of black market territory. This claim is funny

It has been argued that the Iranian system is in some ways coercive, as over 70% of donors are considered poor by Iranian standards
That's half the point. That's not coercion of the poor. That's allowing poor people to become less poor through choice.


I think part of what you're arguing against is the idea of pro-coercion. Nobody supports making policy that legalizes or promotes theft of kidneys. In a free market system, it is still majorly illegal to sell something you don't have the rights to. There are a million things that capitalism has extracted from what used to be coercive markets and turned into markets of totally free choice. What is it about current black market products that stop the same?