Flowerland: a Berkeley oasis for true anarchists?

What a relief after all those Obama and Clinton signs…

The real question for libertarians: To martyr or not to martyr?

Manuel Lora published an essay entitled “Against Libertarian Martyrdom” on LewRockwell.com a few weeks back.  It addressed a question that more or less plagues me:  what constitutes selling out?  How can you stay true to your ideals without completely dropping out?

Lora apparently has wrestled with this as well:

When libertarian friends of mine told me that they have existential issues because they are planning on taking a job in an industry that is heavily subsidized, or when I hear that a particular friend of theirs is too statist to hang around with, I decided I needed to address this issue.

First things first:  he’s got libertarian friends?  How did he find these people?  Frankly, I now have to suspect everything else he has to say.  Next he’s going to tell me he has an anarchist pony and a staunchly small-government unicorn.

The Kidney Shortage and a Cato Event

If you live in the Beltway, I extend my deepest condolences; on the bright side, however, you may be able to attend Cato’s (that’s “Stato’s” if you’re nasty) policy forum, “Human Organs for Sale?” on Thursday, February 21.  Since I am blessedly far from Washington, I’ll be watching it online instead.

There’s been coverage of the issue in so venerable a publication as the War Street Journal (that’s not my clever nickname for the paper, it’s AntiWar.com’s, I believe.)   In “Kidney Shortage Inspires a Radical Idea:  Organ Sales,” it is not “a free-market libertarian, but a prominent transplant surgeon named Arthur Matas” who has been strenuously advocating a regulated market in live-donor kidneys, though sadly not for other organs.  Naturally, there’s an academic/bureaucrat from the little college in Massachusetts who’s thwarting such efforts:

Among his opponents on the issue is a friend and colleague, Francis Delmonico. A Harvard University professor who has played a central role in shaping national transplant policy, the 62-year-old physician has several objections to organ sales. He fears such a system would attract the poor, vulnerable and unhealthy, and that altruistic donations might wither away.

“Payments eventually result in the exploitation of the individual,” says Dr. Delmonico, who also worries about encouraging black-market sales both here and in developing countries. “It’s the poor person who sells.”

Apparently Delmonico was also a transplant surgeon, so he no doubt witnessed the suffering and deaths of many on the organ transplant waitlist.  However, he clearly prefers upholding his Marxist ideals to the alleviation of real-world pain.  It’s those who are “poor, vulnerable, and unhealthy” in the abstract who worry him, not the dying patients who probably pleaded with him in vain.  Who’s more poor, vulnerable and unhealthy than they?

There’s even more breathtaking economic ignorance in his worry “about encouraging black-market sales.”  Let me get this straight:  Delmonico is saying that legalization would cause black markets?  Black markets, by definition, come about via prohibition, not legalization.  Organ sales are currently prohibited, which is exactly why there is something of a black market here and abroad.  There is very little bootleg alcohol or Tylenol out there, to my knowledge, because the sales of these items are perfectly legal, albeit with many restrictions.  This is just more of the “hordes will run amok” argument I advanced at an earlier date:  that is, that people will go crazy once a prohibited substance or practice is made legal, because people are inherently to be distrusted.

Delmonico doesn’t just spout nonsense, however.  He also puts it in practice:

Dr. Delmonico, meanwhile, has worked to maintain the status quo — and his credentials carry substantial weight. Until last June, he was president of the United Network for Organ Sharing. Under direction of the federal government, the network runs the nation’s organ-distribution system. Dr. Delmonico now serves as medical director of the Transplantation Society, an affiliate of the World Health Organization.

…Dr. Delmonico has used his influence to help kill efforts on the kidney-selling front. In 2003, several medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the United Network for Organ Sharing, endorsed legislation to allow pilot studies of payments to families that donate a loved one’s organs after death.

Dissent was strong, including from Dr. Delmonico, who testified before Congress on behalf of the National Kidney Foundation. “The sale of bodies or body parts would undermine the fundamental values of our society,” he told the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bill went nowhere.

I’m glad we have great sages like Dr. Delmonico looking out for the “fundamental values of our society.”  Where would we be without wise men like him?

Would he agree that the sale of medical services similarly degrades society?  Come to think of it, I do feel exploited on behalf of the highly-paid doctors and professors.  Education and medicine are sacred disciplines, and it is fundamentally dehumanizing for their practitioners to be paid in filthy money.  Why, those poor, vulnerable professors could be exploited if they were offered money for their services.  They should subsist on praise alone.  What do you mean, they would die without money?  Are you saying you’re willing to offend my anticapitalist sentiments for the sake of allowing a professor to sell his services?  What about the fundamental values of my, I mean, our society?!

 Ahem.  As has been pointed out before, it is only the organ donor who can’t be paid in all of this.  It is not as though doctors and hospitals think the entire process should be free of charge; the hospitalization surrounding all this can run up to the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not into the millions.  Try suggesting, however, that the doctors shouldn’t be paid and should donate these services out of “altruism.”  (Actually, don’t.  That’s the essence of the upcoming Hillary/Obamacare.)  The point is that altruism does not lead to a workable organ transplant system.

Also, there is still something of a free market in sperm and eggs and surrogate pregnancies.  I’m not suggesting that these be outlawed, although I’m rather surprised they haven’t been.  It does counter Delmonico’s implication that we do not already sell body parts.  True, sperm is pretty much just a bodily fluid, and surrogate pregnancies do not involve the actual surrendering of an organ, but if anything it’s more invasive.  Why isn’t Delmonico kicking up a fuss about reproductive markets?  (Again, please don’t.  He’s surely done enough damage as it is.)

 More to come on what I call “bioliberty.”