this is a very silly place to get policy opinions ^^ appreciated

Reduce bias towards pronouncing unconscious organ donors dead

Is there evidence that this happens?

@ImaPerson To some extent, there was a recent NYT article about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/us/organ-transplants-donors-alive.html?unlocked_article_code=1.q08.lByu.be2kJi8CQCl-&smid=url-share

Both of these are about concerns that are rooted in people being poor. Instead of messing up the market we should just give poor people money. Create a carbon tax and maybe land-value tax (aka property tax with building value exemption) and distribute that money evenly among the population.

@AlexanderTheGreater among which population. The US population, or the world population

US. We are talking about US laws that only affect people transacting in the US.

Who in the US is eligible is another question. My preference would be only citizens or anyone who has paid a certain amount in taxes (~100k). That's because I also want trivial immigration that in essence allows everyone who isn't a known criminal to live and work here. But that would likely cause issues if everyone in the country gets UBI.

just give poor people money

@AlexanderTheGreater No, people have agency. You can give young people money (one thing Sweden does well), but poor people over 21-25? Just need strong policing.

@skibidist that might be reasonable in a vacuum. In reality you'll instead have concerns about people without money impact all policy discussions which will lead to solutions with dead weight loss, like minimum wage, affordable housing unit minimums and similar. Just giving people money is a route to address these concerns, if you share then or not, without making the economy less efficient. Arguably poor people also get more utility from that money than wealthy people do from the marginal dollars they lost.

Take someone who like a lot of the population was born, and still is, involuntarily poor. With a restricted ability to climb the wealth ladder, limited ability to defend themselves legally, especially when against a wealthier interest, and being unhappy with seeing wealthier people living a reasonable life. Being unable to access jobs that empower the country because they are right at the building things by hand end of things rather than the building machines that build other machines end of things. Imagine this person then being incentivised to sell a body part that they might then later need, and once it's on the table as an option isn't that incentivising the government to neglect them (and you) even more, after all, if they want more food or a short holiday once a year selling a kidney is always an option.

I have a theory that a person's stance on the legality of selling organs usually has more to do with their philosophy about the government's ideal role in addressing inequality/poverty, than it has to do with their philosophy about body autonomy/integrity.

Similar poll in a rationalist-adjacent discord.

why are there so many libertarians in these communities

Also why does Orangey have a different opinion than you

@ItsMe Orangey doesn't like engaging with questions of specific numbers. He didn't seem to grasp the kidney question but I suspect he would be pro-legalization if he tried harder to wrap his head around the concept of legalization. He generally likes organs.