Kidneys on eBay?
Don Boudreaux over at Cafe Hayek has a nice little bit about legalizing organ sales, with which I wholeheartedly agree:
Voters no doubt do feel repugnance at commerce in such things. But one question is: how much? When voters are asked to cast a ballot about such things, they do so largely free of charge -- that is, they get to express their opinions on the cheap, without any obligation to reflect seriously upon the issue before them. I wonder how likely it is that any randomly chosen voter would let repugnance prevent him from buying a kidney if such commerce were necessary to save the life of his child or his wife or one of his parents?
How insane is it that our supposedly free country, because of voters' irrational emotions, bans the sale of things that could save so many lives? Besides, what happens when you ban something that the market demands? It simply creates a dangerous black market and greatly increases the price of that particular good.
Just more evidence that democracy, to the extent that a mere 51% of voters can vote away our rights and empower a totalitarian political elite, is a truly flawed and dangerous system. Democracy is just totalitarianism in which the all-powerful dictators are 'chosen' by a certain portion of the population.
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November 19th, 2007 - 14:07
“Democracy is just totalitarianism in which the all-powerful dictators are ‘chosen’ by a certain portion of the population.”
While ‘unfettered’ democracy would create the condition you describe, the Constitution (specifically the Bill of Rights) provides a considerable mitigant:
“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.” -Thomas Jefferson
Working on a comment to the credit crisis post.
November 20th, 2007 - 20:29
The limits written into the Constitution are better than pure democracy (and, as has been said by others, much better than what we currently live under), but keep in mind that the Constitution was also very big-government as compared to the more libertarian Articles of Confederation. As smart as the Founding Fathers were, the Constitution is not the ideal framework for a free society. I agree that the Bill of Rights picks up some of the slack and attempts to ensure individual liberty, but it also has been discarded for the most part by the U.S. government. In fact, there is no other way it could have been. Government, by its very existence, is coercive and an affront to liberty. Every conceivable government, through its monopoly on the use of force and its ability to tax, is engaging in unprovoked aggression against someone. Governments will always have the luxury of regarding things like our Constitution as mere suggestions, because no one has the legal right (although they do have the natural right) to resist the government should it choose to act unjustly against them.