Hey! I would first of all like to announce that my capabilities in English are very limited, I am French. I wrote here before and i found the responses that i got very interesting. Since then, I have read som random articles about health care and money and stuff on this site. I have also read a book in economics, in french, written by a guy named Frederic Bastiat (the title is "That wich is seen and that wich is not seen" in english).
Anyhow, on the social science in school, the topic for the period is human rights. We have discussed a lot whether it should be legal tho sell your own organs (to sell your kidney or whatever). I think it should be allowed, because when people sell their organs it's often the last way out to save their lives. If we stop them from doing that, they will die.
Then an interesting question came up. Should'nt we have a decided, fixed price on organs, so rich buyers don't "drive out" poor people in higher need of organs? Is that not unfair? Anyway I'll be back, i got to catch the bus now. Share your thoughts!
Best regards!
Bonjour Bonjour! Comment cava? Je parle un peu de francais. J'apprends toujours.
Accueil!
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
Egoist: Then an interesting question came up. Should'nt we have a decided, fixed price on organs, so rich buyers don't "drive out" poor people in higher need of organs? Is that not unfair? No. Organs are scarce. Rich buyers will drive up the price of organs. The higher price will cause more people to want to sell their organs. It may also make people want to invest in technology to grow organs inside animals. If you set the price lower, people won't want to sell their organs as much. No one will want to invest in organ growing technology. Computers were once expensive. But because some people were willing to pay a lot of money for them, more businesses tried to make better and cheaper computers. Now, everyone can have a computer because of all that capital investment and competition among entrepreneurs. It would be great if organs were as cheap as computers in 30 years.
Egoist: Then an interesting question came up. Should'nt we have a decided, fixed price on organs, so rich buyers don't "drive out" poor people in higher need of organs? Is that not unfair?
Snowflake:It may also make people want to invest in technology to grow organs [s]inside[/s] outside animals.
Growing them outside would be even better. You probably meant that anyway.
Also, there's a moral thing to be said about not agreeing with price controls, since nobody has a right to tell you how much you can charge; except the customer, that is, who might not be able or willing to pay your asking price.
Egoist wrote: Should'nt we have a decided, fixed price on organs, so rich buyers don't "drive out" poor people in higher need of organs? Is that not unfair?
Should'nt we have a decided, fixed price on organs, so rich buyers don't "drive out" poor people in higher need of organs? Is that not unfair?
The fixed price on organs right now is 0 dollars/euros. Supposedly to help poor people. The only thing this does is completely stiffle the market for organs.
See:
Price Controls http://www.conciseguidetoeconomics.com/book/priceControls/
I agree with Snowflake on this, markets will allocate. There is a current blackmarket for organs now since the price is kept artificially low. Therefore, instead of the rich buying up a finite supply of organs, black market agents are beginning to take them.
Read until you have something to write...Write until you have nothing to write...when you have nothing to write, read...read until you have something to write...Jeremiah
Merci!
Thanks for the replies everybody! I will probably come back with some reflections later.
This was interesting! Do you really think it's possible to develop technology so you can "cultivate/grow" organs outside humans and animals? It would be nice to read a little more about that, any sources?
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Hopefully, you or someone else will find the following quote (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_transplant) interesting enough to warrant the thread-necromancy:
At the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, in North Carolina, Dr. Anthony Atala and his colleagues have successfully extracted muscle and bladder cells from several patients' bodies, cultivated these cells in petri dishes, and then layered the cells in three-dimensional molds that resembled the shapes of the bladders. Within weeks, the cells in the molds began functioning as regular bladders which were then implanted back into the patients' bodies.[13] The team is currently working on re-growing over 22 other different organs including the Liver, Heart, Kidneys and Testicles.[14]
@Egoist: Yes, using stem cells, it is possible to grow specific organs in a lab. Because organs are so valuable to their donors, allowing them to be sold would likely stimulate research, development and investment into stem cells and production of artificial organs from the private sector. Also, many organs can be harvested at death - allowing people to elect to sell their organs (rather than merely donate them) would increase the number of organs available from the newly dead and would give people a way to pay for their funerals without being a burden to their family and friends.
And if medical insurance companies can capitalize brain surgery, I'm sure they can afford the price of an organ sold in an open market and, at current prices for surgery and current organ availability, I suspect the price-tag from the implantation operation (surgeon's labor) would dwarf the price of the organ itself. All around, a free market in organs is a win-win. The poor don't win out from fixing the price of organs to zero... instead, we all lose out.
By the way, I am the one who recommended that you read Bastiat... can you tell me how you liked him, both his ideas and his French? How was it? Was it boring, engaging, is his prose artful?
Clayton -
Egoist: Should'nt we have a decided, fixed price on organs, so rich buyers don't "drive out" poor people in higher need of organs? Is that not unfair?
Remember that today, most organs are donated. Governments have monopolized this trade and outlawed the free market. There is a maximum price of $0 on organs. The result is literally criminal!
In the absent of such a coercive monopoly, those donations would still be there. But t hey would likely find their way to all those who can't afford to buy them on the market. Today, even a millionare must resort to a donated organ or turn "criminal" by seeking and risking an organ on the black market.
Also, If there was no price control and therefore, no shortage, the poor would have a far better chance of getting access to an organ by resorting to private charity, help from family and friends, or even receiving a loan. But all is of no use if the supply is curtailed.
A couple considerations concerning organs and markets -
Only MY organs are scarce.
The market has no claim on my organs (at any price).
To the OP -
If organs are priced on the market, fixed or otherwise, does pricing constitute a claim to my organs or anyone elses'?
Does "higher need" constitute a claim to my organs or anyone elses'?
"Oh, I wish I could pray the way this dog looks at the meat" - Martin Luther
Excuse me?
assimilateur: Only MY organs are scarce. Excuse me?
It's just that I'm using them right now and may object to someone else placing them on the market.
From the standpoint of individualism is it not only the organs you have that are scarce? (....because no one else has a legitimate claim to them and, likewise, you have no legitimate claim to organs that others are using? )
Scarcity is not about who has a claim to it... its about there being only a relatively amount of organs and demand for a lot more...
Thanks Sieben.
I was just being selfish - trying to come up with a good reason not to have a market for organs.
I subjectively resent someone else placing a value on a kidney I am already using.
What next - make it mandatory to sell it when I'm done with it?
Granted, the situation we have now is no better. A fixed price of $0.00 - organ sale prohibition - promotes organized crime.
I don't see that fixing any other price on organs would do anything different.
Every other market allows the owner to determine whether or not his property is for sale and what price he decides is worth more than the property itself. Why should a market for organs be any different?
Let the free market decide.
Not offices and bureaucrats, but big business deserves credit for the fact that most of the families in the United States own a motorcar and a radio set. - Ludwig von Mises
Can you be forced to sell them to pay debt?
I suppose it's possible. Then again, in a "free market" people could negotiate on how they'd refinance their loans.
You just blew the case for organ markets.
No. Organs are scarce. Rich buyers will drive up the price of organs. The higher price will cause more people to want to sell their organs. It may also make people want to invest in technology to grow organs inside animals.
I can't think of any easier explanation that more completely sums up the free market.
No, you blew the case for restructuring debt.
Why do you think harvesting organs is good? Why is it necessary?
I didn't say that, nor did I imply that.
Thanks for your replies everybody!
It is actually pretty fun, because a few weeks after I had asked the question about how to grow organs, on this forum, we read about genetic engineering on the natural science in school, haha :) We read a lot about creating organs from stamcells, not only "existing" organs like a regular lever or a heart, but also create tottally new organs that man has never seen before, fit to cure special diseases and so on. Really cool, this organ production can be truly great in the future!
Someone asked me about Bastiat. I think his essay "That wich is seen, and that wich is not seen" was pretty enjoyable to read, compared to other texts (in the school litterature etc) in the same subject. His language was not that hard for me, but that can have something to do with the fact that I am really interested in old litterature and that kind of stuff, so I am used to the most kind of language. My teacher suggested me to read a book about John Maynard Keynes, because he "constitute" the modern economics. If I am interested in free market economics, he recomended Milton Friedman, but he is not an "Austrian economist", or is he? We have been taught about three different "directions" in the economic science. The socialistic one, that says that government should do the most stuff in the economy. The free market part that says that government should only take care of the money to keep the inlation in check and leave the rest to the free market with competition and all that, and then the "keynesian" perspective wich is like a mixed between both :) Regulation is necessary, but we must also have some capitalism. But the austrian, pretty radical perspective that says we should END the central bank and government should not create money, was not included. I did not have the curage to point that out though, because I am such a noob at this, I haven't hardly read anything about economics so I am not tempted to discuss with my teacher when he is talking about all this complicated stuff,
I think it is strange though, because you guys, Mises, Hayek and so on really seems to know a few things. I doubt that you are completely way off in this subject. But i really think you are right about organs, It just make sense what you have write in this thread! ;)
BTW: I would like to remind you that my capabilities in english are very limited, as you probably have noticed. Sorry about that!
I think it is strange though, because you guys, Mises, Hayek and so on really seems to know a few things.
? Do you mean they're not well known?
I suggest you read Man, Economy & State with Power & The Market when you get the time. It'll erode most of the nonsense you'll be taught at school and give you a starting point from which to move to other, deeper Austrian works.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
I had never heard of any of them before I found this site by myself. My teacher did not even mention Hayek or the austrian school. But this is high school, people problably get to know about this kind of economics later in life.
Anyway, this is a little off the topic, I will probably come back with more reflection about organs and prices later!