Why is it Wrong to Sell Your Body? Understanding Liberals’ vs. Conservatives’
journals.sagepub.com
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Plenty of things rightfully live outside of the market framework. You can't pay a teacher to give you a better grade, you can't pay to get a promotion at work, you can't pay to win a olympic medal.
Market fundamentalist logic is to try and jam markets into more and more places in our lives under the logic of: well, if you can't come up with a reason this shouldn't be a market, then we're going to turn it into a market.
I've never seen a rich person manning a supermarket till.
Really, any job is a health arbitrage to some extent. White collar office workers develop diabetes, back problems and obesity.
There's two factors: the price per "unit of health" lost, and extent to which the swap is voluntary. Clearly, anything involuntary is bad. Though... I have 4 mouths to feed, even if a desk job gives me a bad back and RSI, I'll still do it, and try to work around those, like it or not.
The "extent" is a different story a bit. Selling a kidney seems extreme and endows someone with an immediate disability. Is it worse, though, than playing in NFL? I guess yes. But then _donating_ a kidney is a noble and well-regarded thing. So... maybe selling one is OK too?
I wonder if you sorted "health arbitrages" by the severity of health loss, if you'd find their societal acceptability follow some well-defined cutoff.
I see prohibiting the sale or use of someone's body as asserting ownership over it.
How about self-mutilation?
Is it strictly wrong to prevent people from committing suicide?
The act, yes. The only argument I can think of against it would be that a birth resulting from such a union would carry a very high risk of defect. Assuming effective birth control, it's none of my business.
> How about self-mutilation?
Yes, without reservation.
> Is it strictly wrong to prevent people from committing suicide?
Yes.
It's also wrong to force people to wear clothes in public?
Is it wrong to discourage someone from lying?
What if someone doesn't see the edge of a cliff and are about to step over it? Would you pull them back from it?
Absolutely not. If you don’t want to be around someone who isn’t vaccinated, set up an area on private property where they aren’t allowed. Your property, your rules.
> It's also wrong to force people to wear clothes in public?
Yes.
> Is it wrong to discourage someone from lying?
Sure. Fraud is a crime, lying isn’t.
> What if someone doesn't see the edge of a cliff and are about to step over it?
A bystander has no requirement to intervene.
> Would you pull them back from it?
Yes, without question. Just because something is the right thing to do doesn’t mean it should be the law, backed with threat of violence.
I thought your argument was about autonomy. If you had pulled them back, it would have been the result of thinking that you know better than the person about to accidentally walk off the cliff and acting on it.
I can see you have a strong distaste for moral busybodying, but I think there is an argument for discouraging people from wandering into unforeseen circumstances (not necessarily by the state).
The same applies to the trades, any job demanding physical labor (e.g. manufacturing), and to an even greater extent due to the surrender of agency, the military.
I know if I did need the money I’d try making it a career. However, gay sex work doesn’t have the same power dynamic issues straight SW does, so I’m not sure I’d feel the same way if I was a straight woman.
It's about literally selling one's body or renting it out, not selling pictures of it.