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Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

Should people be allowed to sell their organs? How about selling themselves into slavery or indentured servitude? Unless your answer is "yes to both", you agree that there is a line somewhere for things that aren't okay just because you entered into a contract that said they were, and it's just a matter of defining where that line is.

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I don't think this is a fair comparison. They are selling a service starting at $1 to give you ink cartridges with limits on their use. This isn't some technical gotcha or trick. Sure, there is likely some UI underhandedness that tricks people into signing up for this, and that should be called out, but the business model is not inherently abusive. People thinking they can pay $1, get an ink cartridge, and then cancel the subscription and keep the ink cartridge to use are having unrealistic expectations of a service.

> People thinking they can pay $1, get an ink cartridge, and then cancel the subscription and keep the ink cartridge to use are having unrealistic expectations of a service.

What if I pay $1, run the ink cartridge dry the first day, then immediately cancel?

I looked up pricing. Seems like their cheapest plan will charge you another $1 for every 10 pages (which is more expensive than buying a higher tier).

People are not allowed to sell their organs because it would make illegal organ harvesting harder for law enforcement to catch. People are not allowed to sell themselves into indentured servitude because it would be impossible to prove that someone agreed to it. So yes, you're right, there are things you're not allowed to agree to, for the good of society. Are you seriously suggesting that not being allowed to rent ink is in some way comparable?

Yes to both. done. although HN will downvote any yes replies to this comment because it challenges the premise of OP's point.

How can you sell yourself into slavery? Slavery is forced. if you volunteered you’re not a slave.

Factually untrue. There are plenty of historical examples of mechanisms for voluntarily becoming a slave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_slavery

Once you sell yourself, you become a slave, and have no option of reverting back to freedom. It's really not a hard concept.

It's called "indentured servitude". You get paid a lump sum up-front, then work for nothing for some number of years.

In Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance, Frederick is indentured to a band of pirates until his 21st birthday.

> In Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance, Frederick is indentured to a band of pirates until his 21st birthday.

That particular wording coming back around to bite him when it's pointed out that he was born on February 29th in a leap year...

Yes to both. Why shouldn't people get to decide what happens to the one thing that is unambiguously their own?

My body, my choice.

If it were legal to sell yourself into slavery (as it once was), we know what would happen: A lot of companies would try to push people into the position where people would feel they had no other choice to become slaves, and companies would position themselves to take advantage of this fact. We would then have a permanent class of slaves in the world, which would dehumanize them and gradually freeze the hearts of everybody who was made to interact with this system. We know this would happen because it did happen. And it was a long road for humanity as a whole to get rid of it (and we still haven’t completely).

And you would throw it all away because of some personal libertarian principle? This isn’t only about what you would like to be able to do in any given moment, it’s what this ability does to society as a whole. Your ability to someday be able to sell yourself into slavery has some value (for the principle of the thing, if nothing else), but it is certainly not worth the above-mentioned effects on society.

(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26131936>, from two years ago.)

Libertarianism is like communism. Looks fantastic on paper, but is god awful in practice.

I'm not at all sure that either looks good even on paper!

But by selling it, becomes not their own anymore. I find it weird to use freedom as a justification to destroy freedom.

oh my child is going to die unless she gets expensive life saving treatment, but luckily I live in the world of sneak where I can sell myself to get tortured to death for the amusement of Bill Gates!

My body, my choice.

day after my death: huh, Bill Gates didn't pay, but luckily my wife can always sue for the money!

Fighting a billionaire is fun!

That's a nice straw man you've built there. Let's try an alternate scenario: don't let people die because they cannot afford expensive treatments.

Now we have something else to aim for rather than policing people's bodily autonomy.

alright we want a society where it is possible for people to sell themselves into slavery which it is not possible to do today, but we will remove the most likely incentives (currently existing in our society) that would cause someone to do something so stupid?

Given your premise of a world where a billionaire wants to torture you to death, I'm puzzled as to why you'd think that the legality of a contract he's going to break anyway would matter at all.

There is nothing wrong with selling selling some portion or all of your flesh for profit.

It's morally repugnant and unambiguously reprehensible to buy any of the flesh of another person.

A market with only sellers and no buyers is ineffective at best, and given the moral reprehensibility of any buyers that do appear, the entire market is tainted and wrong. Any and all of the infrastructure to support such a market is wrong. Anyone involved in buying, aiding, or abetting slavery or organ running is guilty of committing one of the most grievous and wretched offences known to humanity.

But yeah, it's absolutely your right to do with your body what you want. It's just a complete wrong for anyone else to do what they want with your body.

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