What’s Wrong with the World

Well, if there is coercion and/or theft or fraud- like taking the kidney without paying the agreed upon price, then yes there is exploitation.

However, the transaction of a kidney for money is not, in itself, exploitation. One can easily see a situation in with both parties are better off after the transaction, even if one were to view in the most narrowest of terms. In other words, the person selling the kidney may be able to live with one kidney + the money far longer than he could with two kidneys and no money.

Look, there aren't enough people on this earth who would collect garbage, clean public toilets, or do many other unsavory jobs for no paycheck. Similarly, there aren't enough donors in America.
Now, if someone pays to get a kidney, two people have a chance at a better life. Right now, a lot of people just die while on the list. I don't see how the situation that ends with more people dead becomes the moral, or the least exploitative, choice.

Suffice it to say that I do not view cleaning toilets and donating a kidney as being on a par. At all. But believe me, I'm well awaare of the hyper-libertarian position that all body parts should be for sale on the open market and that "everyone will be better off" if they are.

If I pay a poor person to sell me a kidney, am I not agreeing with the utilitarian view of man? I am not treating that person as a human created in the image and likeness of God but as an instrument that I can use to satisfy my wants or needs. That is exploitation of the most God-denying sort. It is not an argument to say that "well, now this poor person has the money he needs to live well." As Christians we are called on to relieve suffering and help the poor-- without extracting a pound of flesh.

Similarly, the scenario you sketched about the midget laid out two starkly different choices: one respects the midget's humanity and allows him to make a decision as seems best to him, the other is inherently evil, as the parents and rescuers are rather crudely deciding that the man's life may be put in jeopardy to satisfy their need. I don't think it is an excuse that their need is extreme. We are not allowed to use one another.

That goes for sex as well. It isn't merely a matter that "[i]n the case of sex, we're on very solid ground in terms of the function, and for Christians, the God-ordained intent of sex in uniting one man and one woman. Selling sex fundamentally reduces the one who is bought to a mere object-- an instrument of some purchaser's wish for pleasure (or whatever). Of course it degrades the purchaser, too.

We humans are made in the image and likeness of God. We are not free to despise, abuse, use or harm the brothers and sisters for whom Christ dies.

However, the transaction of a kidney for money is not, in itself, exploitation.

I kinda think it is: that body parts should only ever be given away for love, not money. Prostitution seems to me to be at least similar in kind.

Interesting post, Lydia.

If I pay a poor person to sell me a kidney, am I not agreeing with the utilitarian view of man? I am not treating that person as a human created in the image and likeness of God but as an instrument that I can use to satisfy my wants or needs. That is exploitation of the most God-denying sort.

Think of it like this. If you are paying the poor man very generously for his kidney, you are working together to raise your respective quality of life. Let's say that I pay an African farmer $25,000 for his kidney. As a middle class American, this is a perfectly reasonable sum for me to be expected to pay. Even $50,000 would be reasonable. The man may, at best, support his family on a few hundred dollars a year, and now has the chance to receive a windfall income worth 20-30 years of his work such that he can now dramatically increase his standard of living.

Tell me, how does that exploit him? In every respect, both people are meaningfully better off. One could argue that the third worlder far more so, as his kidney is worth in the first world a sum equal to his entire life's work, and then some. Suffice it to say, it's like he won the freakin lottery.

The only objection to this scenario is based on romantic notions about human life that ultimately ignore the very real fact that both parties are far more likely to live good, healthy lives after this transaction takes place.

More bluntly, what would Jesus do? I think he would find objecting to this scenario equivalent to wringing your hands about breaking the Sabbath in order to save a man's life or rescue his flock from danger.

I kinda think it is: that body parts should only ever be given away for love, not money. Prostitution seems to me to be at least similar in kind.

Except for the extreme spiritual difference that one is done to save a human life, and one is done to have sexual pleasure outside of God's plan and law...

But, MikeT, just because an activity has what we perceive to be a desirable intention does not mean that that activity is truly righteous. Human body parts are not properly economic commodities to be bought and sold on the open market. Good intentions and mutual benefit do not mend the matter at all. Nor does consent.

MikeT,
Perhaps I ought to explain more fully what I mean in the previous post.

You cannot sell what is not yours. Theologically, we are not our own. An analogy might serve:

What a person makes belongs to that person -- by creation. What a person buys belongs to that person -- by purchase. Nor ought we to bespoil a person of his or her domicile. It belongs to that person by occupation (that is, by dwelling, not by job).

By the same token, we are made by God. We are his by creation. He redeemed us; He bought us back. We are his by purchase. He dwells within us. We are his by residence. We are trebly God's: creation, purchase and residence. We have no right to sell what does not belong to us.

Your argument assumes that you are the owner of yourself and that along with this alleged ownership comes the right of disposal. But the assumption is false, and so is the marketplace application some wish to draw from it.

But, MikeT, just because an activity has what we perceive to be a desirable intention does not mean that that activity is truly righteous. Human body parts are not properly economic commodities to be bought and sold on the open market. Good intentions and mutual benefit do not mend the matter at all. Nor does consent.

If that be the case, then it is immoral for any form of organ transplant to take place on the grounds that if we do not have any economic power over own bodies, then we clearly have no property rights to our own bodies, which plainly means that we do not have the prerequisite ownership necessary to say "you can have my organs when I die." As an extension to this, I condemn the Red Cross and demand that all blood banks be closed immediately, as their storage of human blood is a propertization of that which is too sacred to be regarded as mere property.

Or is it really just the fact that a third world peasant might walk off with enough filthy lucre to buy first class medical care for his entire family, put his kids through school and buy enough land to live on comfortably via the sale of, for him, a mere kidney?

By the same token, we are made by God. We are his by creation. He redeemed us; He bought us back. We are his by purchase. He dwells within us. We are his by residence. We are trebly God's: creation, purchase and residence. We have no right to sell what does not belong to us.

Your argument assumes that you are the owner of yourself and that along with this alleged ownership comes the right of disposal. But the assumption is false, and so is the marketplace application some wish to draw from it.

God did not redeem non-Christians, and they are not bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. They are not the "blood-bought of Jesus" as every lay Christian should know from basic theology. The claim that Jesus makes to ownership of the Church is entirely based upon the work He did on the cross to secure salvation for the believers.

While it is also true that we do not own ourselves anymore, this is generally taken to mean (I'm a Protestant) that we no longer control our own lives, that they belong to God to guide. However, if one takes your argument literally, it means that we are entirely incapable of choosing actions that damage or destroy our bodies. If I cannot choose to sell an organ to a man who needs it to live, then I also have no right to choose to sacrifice my own life to save the lives of others because that act is utterly destructive, and willfully on my part, of God's property right in my body.

Perhaps you are being too materialistic here, as God clearly has no qualms with us taking self-destructive acts which raise up and/or save the lives of others. In fact, Jesus commended those who willingly sacrifice their lives that others may live. Yet, again, in order to do this sort of thing, we must have some control, even if not ownership, of our own bodies. Otherwise, it is not our call to make.

I find it ironic that those who usually lament the culture of death, out of what I consider a mistaken, romantic notion about the human body, would rather allow someone to die, and another to live in squalor and misery, rather than allow them to engage in an economic transaction that saves a life, and gives potential for security and prosperity to another who would otherwise never known it. This doesn't require self-ownership; self-stuardship is sufficient. We are clearly stuards of the world, so why not of our own bodies?

We are stewards of what God has given us and that means using it wisely and well. Blood is renewable; you don't harm your body by giving it to a blood bank, so I think we can take blood donation off the table. I have, in fact, heard arguments that all organ donations are morally problematic on the grounds that Michael laid out but I don't know how I feel about that. A real estate agent I worked with a few years back gave a kidney to her son; giving him life twice, as I thought of it. There was some risk to her in that donation but there was no exploitation of her, that I can see.

But I must say that I am troubled by your assertion that we would rather allow someone to live in squalor and misery than allow them to engage in an economic transaction that would secure their future. Christians are called upon to relieve squalor and poverty-- that does not depend on any sort of quid pro quo.

Where the horror of exploitation really becomes clear to me is in the reports I have read that China executes a prisoner every time a rich American comes calling with a handful of cash for a spare body part. Am I wrong in thinking that all of us would find that exploitive or morally objectionable, even though the guy was going to be executed some time or other, anyway?

I think both Lily and Michael are on to something concerning the body. It is a kind of theology of the body that I think Protestants and Catholics can definitely share: We can't say "mine" of our bodies and parts of our bodies in the same way we can say "mine" of our boots. (I'm cribbing C.S.L. there.)

But we do sell our labor, and that's often quite legitimate. I suppose that's why the midgets scenario poses a more difficult problem. Since in scenario B, no one is trying to get him to sell his body (either sexually or literally a part of his body), they are trying to get him to sell a particular type of labor on a particular occasion. It wouldn't be wrong for a woman enamored of her cat to offer to pay someone money to climb a small and non-dangerous tree to rescue her cat. So obviously this has something to do with the danger to the man's life. But it also (I think) isn't wrong to employ people in risky jobs--as firemen, for example. I _think_ that has something to do with the fact that the money is being paid to the firemen not specifically for the individual acts of heroism we might expect of them under circumstances that might or might not arise but also for more mundane acts of putting out fires and just for putting themselves at the disposal of the community, which is not in itself a matter of offering their lives.

So can we say that it is exploitative to offer someone money for a particular act of truly, seriously, life-threatening heroism?

Mike,
You and I obviously share a high regard for market economics. But that doesn't actually settle the moral issues in view at the moment.

You've gone from arguing that something is right because it leads to a consequence you approve (ends justify means), to arguing that something is wrong because you don't like where it leads (which is just the negative form of your earlier argument.)

By neither means did you actually address the argument I made. You must assess more than consequences to determine if an action is righteous or not.

If I were to argue from your side of the fence that the actions in view are moral, I'd probably argue that what you call "self-destructive acts" are really "redemptive acts" of one sort or another, and are in accord with Christ laying down his body for others. But then, He wasn't doing it for money. It was an action of love, not a marketplace exchange, not a quid pro quo. The closest I could come to finding any kind of profit motive in Christ's passion would be the Biblical assertion that Christ endured the agonies of the cross for the joy set before Him (Heb 12:2), which indirectly references self-interest -- a "gain" or "benefit" or "profit" of a particular kind.

I personally don't argue that way because I think the comparison between Christ gaining joy and our making money is too big a stretch.

Lydia,
You are right to think that this is more an issue of a "theology of the body" than an issue of the marketplace.

As such, it raises various questions: For example, I notice that after the resurrection, Christ still carried with Him the marks of the crucifixion, and that they apparently will stay with Him forever because He continually will reside in the flesh. So, I wonder, to what extent do the things done to the body endure? What are the enduring consequences (if any) of, say, dissecting cadavers for science? I know what answer I'd like to that question, but I don't know what answer is actually true. The scientists aren't even close to asking it, let alone answering it with care, precision and insight. I'd like to think that Christ's marks remain as reminders of the love that won our redemption, and that from such reminders we must not deduce that the things done to our bodies will remain, and that God will mend them all. That's what I hope happens. But, frankly, revelation is not clear on the point, at least not to me. It's an issue because, like others who recite the creed, I believe in the resurrection of the body -- not just any body, THIS one.

MikeT

If you like, I'll be happy to debate at length about who is and who is not included in the payment made through Christ's blood, and if by rejecting Him one can really establish self-ownership and accomplish independence from God. Right now, I'll simply refer to 1 John 2:2, which says that Christ is the propitiation, or payment (hilasmos), for all persons, not merely we Christians.

Michael Bauman is arguing this question so well I almost forget he's a heretic.

Lydia,

I fail to see the cause of scruple in the midget scenario. Unless he is a close friend or relative, the family should offer him money. For, they are essentially hiring someone out to do dangerous and important work. Nor would it be wrong for him to take the money. In fact, assuming he is financially responsible for others, he may be morally required to accept the money, and to provide that the money goes to his family if he is killed in the attempt.

So, George R., you agree that buying kidneys is wrong but not that offering the midget money is wrong? That's a position I can see someone's understandably taking. Still, it seems to me that there is something distasteful about offering the midget money, particularly if the parents say, "He might not want to do it, but I hear he's in dire straits for money, so maybe that will persuade him."

It seems to me intuitively (but it is a defeasible intuition) a difference between _giving_ him or his family money after the fact if he is injured or killed and offering him the money as an inducement. I think there is certainly a duty to do the former to the extent that one can.

George R, my friend, my heresy is something you must never forget (wink).

There is a flip side to this, even if we leave the exploitation question aside for a bit: do we really want to get to a place in society where we commoditize human body parts? or altruistic acts? If an altruistic act can be given a price, is there any remaining place left for real altruism?

Haven't we gone down that road far enough -- the road that says, in effect, everything can be commoditized? This, I believe, leads to a corollary -- the equation of value with price, which already has led to much destructive decision-making.

It seems to me that we're getting perilously close to Ayn Rand territory here, or to giving a stamp of approval to the notion of "homo oeconomicus."

Certainly, the whole question of commodifying both altruism and the human body are important, but I usually find that such questions come back to concrete wrongs. For example, the creation of embryos in petri dishes commodifies human beings in the eyes of society, but I think the reason it has that effect upon people's minds is because it's wrong--because objectively, the individual acts are treating babies as "made things."

So my guess is that it's wrong to pay people for individual acts of altruism, though as I say, it clearly isn't wrong to pay people to devote their lives to altruistic professions like being firemen, because when they are devoting their lives to it full-time, they aren't working other jobs.

If an altruistic act can be given a price, is there any remaining place left for real altruism?

Rob G,

How does one man demanding a price for his service preclude another man from providing the same service for altruistic reasons? Also, are you suggesting that the child should be denied life-saving assistance for the sake of altruism?

I really don't think we should allow the altruistic ideal to become so, um, lethal.

George, it's not that I'm totally unsympathetic to your view, but I'm just inclined to go the other direction on paying for specific acts of altruism. Here's a thought experiment: Suppose we imagine the midget case and sort of gradually ratchet things up. We imagine the risk as worse and worse of death, we imagine the midget as more and more reluctant, and we imagine the parents as upping the price in some sort of bargaining session. If we exaggerate all of these factors, does there come a point where you are uncomfortable with the attempt to induce him to risk his life by way of offering money?

Michael, I think you raise an excellent question about dissection of human corpses. It's one that has bothered me ever since I read Dorothy Sayers's rather macabre mystery _Whose Body_. (Good mystery novel, though.) About the only thing in that neighborhood I'm confident of is that a post-mortem to try to get evidence where murder or foul play of some kind is suspected is quite legitimate, becauase it is for the purpose of the state's honoring the value of that very person's life.

And I don't view prostitution and selling a kidney as on a par. One is slavery and the destruction of the self, the other means taking a kidney-sized risk- one that we know can turn out okay, for there are people living decent lives out there with one kidney.

Also, prostitution is sin- even when it's given away for free! You clearly don't think kidney donation is sinful. Why does it become sin when money enters the picture?
It only becomes sin when coercion enters the picture.

Also this isn't an argument for the sale of everything. I am very concerned about situation in which the death of one party is inevitable, primarily because the medical establishment has a vested interest in performing operations. Right now, the incentive to harvest organs from people who might live is probably a bit high- doctors make money by performing operations and the organs are free, but I would want to make sure that sort of incentive wouldn't go even higher.

Lydia,

I think someone could object to your calling this an "altruistic act". For, if he gets paid for it, it is not an altruistic act. Therefore, he would not be getting paid for an altruistic act.

He would be, however, getting paid for a heroic and praiseworthy act; and what on earth is wrong with that?

If we exaggerate all of these factors, does there come a point where you are uncomfortable with the attempt to induce him to risk his life by way of offering money?

Not at all. The greater the risk, the greater should be the reward. Is not this justice?

Upon reflection, what would make me uncomfortable with such transaction would be if the midget and the child were close relations. For instance, if the midget was the child's brother, remuneration would be totally inappropriate.

Now there are many who consider all men to be brothers, which is true in a way; but some take it too far. I'm thinking that it is this notion of a "brotherhood of man" that is the source of the discomfort with the financial transaction.

And to the extent that men are actually brothers such a discomfort may be warranted.

You and I obviously share a high regard for market economics. But that doesn't actually settle the moral issues in view at the moment.

You've gone from arguing that something is right because it leads to a consequence you approve (ends justify means), to arguing that something is wrong because you don't like where it leads (which is just the negative form of your earlier argument.)

I'm not sure exactly which comment you're referring to in that last part. My point is that it is clear that our stewardship of God's property right in our bodies extends to acts which utterly destroy the property for noble purposes. It is unclear that God actually has any problem with us selling our body parts to others who need them in order to live, as scripture is silent on this matter. The best we can make is conjecture, which is not Spirit-vouched.

By neither means did you actually address the argument I made. You must assess more than consequences to determine if an action is righteous or not.

Is this not what Jesus did when He said that the Sabbath law could be set aside if the end justified the means in the case of setting it aside to save a man's life?

If I were to argue from your side of the fence that the actions in view are moral, I'd probably argue that what you call "self-destructive acts" are really "redemptive acts" of one sort or another, and are in accord with Christ laying down his body for others. But then, He wasn't doing it for money. It was an action of love, not a marketplace exchange, not a quid pro quo. The closest I could come to finding any kind of profit motive in Christ's passion would be the Biblical assertion that Christ endured the agonies of the cross for the joy set before Him (Heb 12:2), which indirectly references self-interest -- a "gain" or "benefit" or "profit" of a particular kind.

Not to nitpick, but I think you are jumping off onto a tangent that is unrelated to anything I said. I did not, and would not, argue that Jesus did His work for a financial purpose. My points here are related to fundamental matters of property, something that cuts deeper than markets. There are three, not two, classes of stewardship: righteous, permissible, sinful. Jesus made it clear that we have stewardship of our body to dispose of God's property rights in our body for any righteous purpose. There is no precedent that I know of in the Bible to suggest that selling a body part that one does not need to live, to raise money for a non-sinful purpose, to save the life of another, is sinful, rather than permissible. That which the Bible does not condemn as sinful, or which is not related to that which is sinful, is permissible. Therefore, it is a matter of liberty between the individual and God.

Furthermore:

2He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for[a] the sins of the whole world.

Does not translate into salvation or ownership. Christ is sufficient for all men, but not efficient for all men. I would see your 1 John 2:2 and raise you John 6:65:

65He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."

So my guess is that it's wrong to pay people for individual acts of altruism, though as I say, it clearly isn't wrong to pay people to devote their lives to altruistic professions like being firemen, because when they are devoting their lives to it full-time, they aren't working other jobs.

I don't follow your logic here, Lydia. If it is wrong in a moment, surely it is wrong over the course of 20-30 years of making it a career. I fail to see why it's moral to ask someone to dedicate their life to fire fighting for a salary, but it's not acceptable to pay someone who is willing to do the work on a one-time basis.

Going back to the midget's case, it makes no sense to say that it's moral to ask him to do it for free, but not to do it for pay because it's possible for him to be motivated by both civic and moral duty, and the potential wealth to be gained. This is the same situation with many who serve as fire fighters, cops and servicemen in the military. Their motivations are both materialistic (to make a living) and to serve. Yet no one would argue that their desire to seek a career negates their willingness to serve their community and nation. In my opinion, there is a lot in common between the midget and someone who enlists in the military for a single term.

**It would be more accurate to your argument to say "to seek compensation" than to seek a career in the previous paragraph.

I think at least as a matter of intuition that it would probably be OK for the poor person to donate a kidney with no expectation of or insistence upon any remuneration; and for the rich person to make a generous gift to the poor person in gratitude. Distinguishing this from a market transaction might be difficult if we look at it as a strictly material thing, I suppose.

But buying and selling the body parts of healthy but poor 'donors' in contractual market transactions (however formal or informal) seems to me to be exploitation. I don't think the market transaction is any less exploitative than the market transaction involved in prostitution, even though the actual act of fornication is intrinsically immoral while the actual act of kidney donation is presumably not restricted in its licit occurrence to within the bonds of marriage.

But buying and selling the body parts of healthy but poor 'donors' in contractual market transactions (however formal or informal) seems to me to be exploitation. I don't think the market transaction is any less exploitative than the market transaction involved in prostitution, even though the actual act of fornication is intrinsically immoral while the actual act of kidney donation is presumably not restricted in its licit occurrence to within the bonds of marriage.

This argument could apply to any economic transaction between a world power and poor state. The sheer wealth of our economy, and access to it, could be enough incentive to make poor societies make sacrifices to gain access that they'd never normally make. From this perspective, trade itself between a rich society and a poor one is inherently exploitative because of the wealth difference between them.

This whole line of thought, is simply wrong, however because both parties are, in fact, quite better off after the rich man buys the organ, and the poor man now has enough filthy lucre to move out of his mud hut and into a decent quality of life for him and his family. Let's not lose sight of the fact that $50,000 for a kidney in Africa, one that one may not need at any given moment due to the myriad problems with that continent, is nothing short of winning the lottery for most people there who happen to be fit enough to sell one.

Furthermore, it also assumes that a poor African or other third worlder may not be able to objectively weigh the cost and decide that a kidney is a reasonable price to pay for being able to make, for his society, an incredible jump in wealth and social status.

This argument could apply to any economic transaction between a world power and poor state.

I think your strongest argument is the one from consequences, that is, that everyone involved in the transaction itself will be materially better off. (Even in that case it isn't quite true without making a number of assumptions: for example the poor man has now lost his redundant kidney, when he gets older he may well need it, and he almost certainly won't be in a position to buy another at the kidney market when he does).

That argument, as others have pointed out, is not dispositive. Even if we stay in the realm of consequences a kind of Kantian argument can be raised against it: at issue is not solely the material well being of the individuals involved in the specific transaction alone, but also of society as a whole, and a marketplace for live human organ farming just might have problems associated with it. And of course once we stop restricting ourselves to material consequences alone the arguments Michael Baumann raised above come into play.

In short "those involved in the transaction are materially better off", even if stipulated as true, does not tell us at all that there was no immoral exploitation involved. As far as I can tell it is just a theory of consent once removed: rather than the consent of the persons directly involved justifying the act, it is material benefit to the persons directly involved which justifies the act.

Well, no, it doesn't. Mutual material benefit to the specific persons directly involved can motivate an otherwise just act, to be sure, but mutual material benefit to the specific persons directly invovled does not serve a morally justifying purpose in itself.

Even shorter version:

MikeT's argument seems to depend on something like the following:

If:

1) the parties directly involved consent; and

2) the parties directly involved materially benefit; and

3) a similar act is sometimes and under some conditions morally licit;

... then the act cannot be an act of exploitation.

I don't see why this should be true, at all.

Furthermore, prostitution does pertain as an analogy, though it is not a perfect analogy. There are some things which ought to never be bought and sold in a marketplace, but only ought to be given out of love. Sexual intimacy is one of those things; even within a marriage a man ought not bribe his wife for sex, for example, and she should not withold sex to force him to buy her something she wants. The fact that other factors constrain licit sexual acts does not change the fact that this (that is, the requirement that it be a gift given out of love and not a market transaction) constrains licit sexual acts.

MikeT said:

"This whole line of thought, is simply wrong, however because both parties are, in fact, quite better off after the rich man buys the "organ, and the poor man now has enough filthy lucre to move out of his mud hut and into a decent quality of life for him and his family. Let's not lose sight of the fact that $50,000 for a kidney in Africa, one that one may not need at any given moment due to the myriad problems with that continent, is nothing short of winning the lottery for most people there who happen to be fit enough to sell one."

I say:

You're doing it again, Mike.

You can't determine the morality of a deed simply by affirming that you like that deed's consequences. Simply because two persons think themselves better off afterward does not morally justify a market transaction. "Better" is a concept susceptible to multiple and highly debatable definitions. Yes, after selling a kidney a poor African might be financially better off than he ever was. I don't know anyone who would deny it. But is that poor African better off, or worse off, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially? Those are different questions altogether, and not questions well answered by the marketplace. "Better" is not the same as "financially improved," or even "greatly financially improved."

The marketplace is very good at giving persons what they want. It is not good at all in helping them learn what they ought to want. Both the man who purchases pornography and the one who peddles it might think themselves better off after the transaction, but their judgment in this matter is highly questionable.

In the second place, 'every economic transaction' does not involve the corporeal intimacy involved in prostitution and organ donation, so it is obviously a nonsequitur to generalize in that way.

Right. I think one of the reasons it is particularly clear that an organ market is wrong is because human bodies are special. They shouldn't be items of sale. To my mind, this is fairly rock bottom.

Now, here's my remaining question. Is there anything else we can glean from the kidney situation that gives us some idea of "taking advantage of people" or "pressuring/tempting people with money" or "the rich making use of the poor" that can be clearly applied to situations where bodies and body parts are not for sale? That's of course what I was trying to get at with the other scenario, but I'm quite unsure about it.

"But I now do believe that there is such a thing as exploitation."

One is tempted to say exploitation is like obscenity - we know it when we see it. But do we? Or, is such a superficial judgement really a complacency unworthy of us?

Lily is on the right course when she warns against the "quid pro quo" ethos, the mode of living for the man on the make, not one signed by the Cross. Zippy takes it further by showing the subtle exploitation that can occur within even our most intimate and sacred unions. Note the perverse inversion of the Scriptural injunction to "do on to others"

Michael rightly reminds us; "The marketplace is very good at giving persons what they want. It is not good at all in helping them learn what they ought to want." I would take it a step further by saying the market is very good at incessantly distracting us from our supernatural destiny by presenting appealing and unhealthy substitutes.

It does so by placing the cash nexus and various economic principles like "comparative advantage", "enlightened self-interest" and a dubious understanding of "scarcity" at the center
of our lives. I point to some of Mike T's logic as proof of the power of these principles.

Any understanding of exploitation should include this; the morality of an act is judged on the basis of whether the dignity of each participant is both protected and advanced. If that is an understanding we can agree upon, Lydia, can any of us really say they fully understand what exploitation means? I don't think so, but I am not so sure how to articulate the reasons.

Is there anything else we can glean from the kidney situation that gives us some idea of "taking advantage of people" or "pressuring/tempting people with money" or "the rich making use of the poor" that can be clearly applied to situations where bodies and body parts are not for sale?

I suspect that exploitation has to do with the violation or subordination of the telos of a thing, and that there is a teleological heirarchy in play: that for example to exchange one's life for the life of another out of love is a great gift; to give one's life for the satisfaction of the prurient desires of another is a terrible perversion. Likewise to give one's kidney to save the life of another is a great gift; to give one's kidney for the sake of money (whatever further end one may have in mind for that money) is a terrible perversion.

This will be a very unsatisfactory situation for the average modern person, who wants to operate within a simplified and well-defined world where consent and material benefit govern without the interference of a complex underlying (and highly debatable in general, still moreso to the modern mind) teleological reality.

I'm just thinking out loud here, and that may be completely off base. But it is a very interesting question.

Likewise to give one's kidney to save the life of another is a great gift; to give one's kidney for the sake of money (whatever further end one may have in mind for that money) is a terrible perversion.

I agree. I don't think this means, though, that both people are equally at fault. My own inclination would be to say that the rich(er) person who offers money to the desperately poor person is far more at fault than the poor person who accepts the offer. It's hard to say why. I don't think it's just because we envisage the rich person as initiating the idea. I suppose that might or might not be true. Once the idea was suggested to the poor person, he might suggest it. But somehow there is this notion that the person with the inducement--the cash--is in the more powerful position, the position to refuse to engage in this transaction, despite the fact that he's the one who needs the kidney. I wonder if this just means that against my better judgement my mind has been influenced by anti-money biases. :-) (It must be from hanging around here, if so.) But I don't think so. For one thing, the person with the money is just giving up money in the exchange, not part of his body. That odd asymmetry between the guy with the cash and the guy who needs it but can get it only in exchange for something very precious to him (in one sense, more precious than cash) seems impossible to get rid of.

I began thinking about this subject years ago while reading, of all things, the children's book _Lassie, Come Home_. There's the poor Yorkshire coal-mining family, the father out of work, and the Duke wants to buy their collie. Problem: Their son is passionately attached to the collie and will be deeply miserable for an indefinite period of time if they sell it. The dog will also be miserable and will try to run away again and again. They even find this out. But they need the money. Not starving yet, but Mom looks worried when Son has a big appetite. So they sell the collie. It always seemed to me that in some sense the Duke should have _thought_ before offering them money for the dog, especially if he realized the situation with the boy. Maybe offered instead to buy the dog but let it live with them for the rest of its life, and he would show it, breed it, and have ownership of the puppies. But instead he just casually offers them money for the dog and takes the dog away, probably figuring that everybody will be better off in the transaction. In the end, the Duke himself seems to feel convicted. He realizes that the dog that has come back to them is his own, but he says, "No, there's no dog of mine here." The implication of course is that money can't make a dog belong to you in the sense that counts. A book that made me think.

Once the idea was suggested to the poor person, he might suggest it.

Sorry, that's incoherent. I mean, once the poor person thought of the idea, perhaps by having it mentioned to him by some third party, he might suggest it to the rich person who needed the kidney.

If the kidney analogy poses a moral dilemma for anyone, then the definition of exploitation will soon be confined to a very narrow, largely useless one made up of obvious examples such as human trafficking and coerced organ donations. Conservatives will find exploitation primarily in the field of sexual ethics, though some see the entrepreneurship and economic empowerment of pole-dancers as a human good and another triumph for free markets.

A clothing manufacturer relocates facilities to El Salvador to benefit from a labor-pool of workers who, unlike those of Fall River Massachusetts, will accept wages of 70cents an hour. The workers voluntarily consented to the employer’s terms and the hourly wage is preferable to the unemployment that preceded the arrival of the factory. Yet, are they not being exploited? They still cannot afford milk, much less the $150 jackets they make and the manufacturer hangs the threat of moving to a country where 40cents an hour is acceptable over their heads.

The other aspect is what is my complicity in this when I buy a jacket made under these conditions?

If the kidney analogy poses a moral dilemma for anyone, then the definition of exploitation will soon be confined to a very narrow, largely useless one...

I'm not sure what you mean by the kidney analogy's posing a moral dilemma for someone. Is the idea that if a person makes a big deal about the kidney case (and it is a _real_ situation, and there are _real_ people pushing for making organs market items), then he's probably not ready to expand the category of exploitation as far as you would do?

Well, that may be true. I'm no doubt in much that situation--having a narrower category of exploitation than yours--though my intuitions about the midget case evidently try to expand the category _farther_ than some would (like George, for example). But perhaps you should rather look at it this way, Kevin: "If Lydia comes to believe that there is such a thing as exploitation as a sui generis type of thing--where before she thought there was only force, fraud, and getting people to do intrinsically immoral things--then perhaps there is hope that some day she will even come to agree with me about too-low wages. She's closer than she was when she thought there was no such thing."

The thing is, with the kidney (and for that matter, with the collie dog in the book) we're looking at something that has this value that goes beyond its monetary value. That's certainly (and even more so) true of sex as well. And I suppose we could argue in the case of the midget that the thing that has a more-than-monetary value is his life, which he's being asked seriously to risk. And part of what I'm groping towards is a notion that the person who offers money in these cases is not rightly understanding the true, non-monetary value of the thing in question, or else he would understand better that it must be given only for love or altruism, must be handled in a particular way (e.g., letting the dog continue to live with the family she loves), and so forth.

The trouble with what I might call just "plain old" labor--not even risking life or limb, for example--is that I think we all agree that plain old labor does really have at some level a "plain old" monetary value. There's nothing _at all_ wrong with selling one's labor. In fact, it can be quite a virtuous thing to do to sell one's labor to support one's family. So at that point what you're moving towards is something like a just price concept for labor, with exploitation being the paying of less than the just price. And I'm not ready to go that direction, right now. So far, I haven't been convinced that there is a just price for labor.

MikeT's argument seems to depend on something like the following:

If:

1) the parties directly involved consent; and

2) the parties directly involved materially benefit; and

3) a similar act is sometimes and under some conditions morally licit;

... then the act cannot be an act of exploitation.

Exploitation is a subjective matter, far more so than obscenity. Many people consider it highly exploitative to pay a third worlder $1/hour to do what an American would require $10/hour to do, even though $1/hour in their country is a strong wage. There are few moral issues that are generally so based on personal opinion as economic exploitation.

In general, claims of exploitation are a form of condescension that assume that the persons involved are incapable of arriving at terms agreeable to them in an environment without coercion. I don't dispute that exploitation exists, but rather it is something that is generally in the eye of the beholder instead of objective truth.

Sexual intimacy is one of those things; even within a marriage a man ought not bribe his wife for sex, for example, and she should not withold sex to force him to buy her something she wants. The fact that other factors constrain licit sexual acts does not change the fact that this (that is, the requirement that it be a gift given out of love and not a market transaction) constrains licit sexual acts.

And this is precisely why I say that prostitution is a terrible comparison. The one giving up the organ has no such divinely-sanctioned duty to the needs of the one who is to receive the organ. Yet, no one here has said that it would be immoral for the man to just give it to him, though there has been plenty of argument that to sell it would be just crass capitalism at work rather than fluffy, feel-good altruism.

I've yet to see much understanding of my previous argument here which goes like this:

1) If we have stewardship of God's property right in our body to give part of our body away to another for free, then the lack of scripture and Spirit-vouched revelation leaves us with no authoritative basis to denounce the sale of organs to those who need them in order to live.

2) If we don't have this stewardship, then organ donation, even blood donation is inherently outside of our authority, as we have no authority to ever execute God's property right on Earth.

3) God's property right in our bodies does not end with our death, because God lives on after our death, so does His property right, and therefore no one may participate in an organ donation program because God's property is not abanoned.

You're speaking on a high level about markets, I'm speaking on a more fundamental level about property rights. The question is not ultimately whether we can sell an organ, but whether or not we have the authority to transfer possession of the organ--period--to another.

Of course, this is a perfect example of how absolute morality and situational morality exist in the real world. In the real world, it's the duty of a righteous man to prayerfully consider the ramifications of any form of organ exchange, and to consider whether or not God's plan is advanced by such an act. This is no different than our duty in other areas where scripture has no bright line test, such as selling legal weapons. Clearly, despite rumors to the contrary, God would indeed judge us based on the consequences of our decision there if we knowingly gave an evil man a weapon and he used it for a crime. The same could be said if we sold a kidney so that someone could continue a lifestyle that is abusive of their own body and just generally evil; it is indisputably immoral and wasteful to give an unrepentant alcoholic a live transplant.

Now, not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the Pharisees, I say we should err on the side of liberty, rather than risk turning our own opinions into statutes coequal with God's decrees. I would assume that like many things that God is silent on, God would expect us to use our intuition, scripture and prayer to determine the course of action most glorifying to God. Organ sales is not inherently offensive to that end.

The thing is, with the kidney (and for that matter, with the collie dog in the book) we're looking at something that has this value that goes beyond its monetary value. That's certainly (and even more so) true of sex as well. And I suppose we could argue in the case of the midget that the thing that has a more-than-monetary value is his life, which he's being asked seriously to risk. And part of what I'm groping towards is a notion that the person who offers money in these cases is not rightly understanding the true, non-monetary value of the thing in question, or else he would understand better that it must be given only for love or altruism, must be handled in a particular way (e.g., letting the dog continue to live with the family she loves), and so forth.

One could argue that someone who is mired in inescapable, national poverty might be keenly aware of the limited worth of that kidney. One kidney is fine for a reasonable, non-athletic lifestyle. A person in that situation could easily find that the level of money being offered for it would elevate their lifestyle and allow them to carry out their social responsibilities in a way that is incomparably better than without the money and with the kidney. For that matter, the person who is offering the money may be perfectly well aware of the fact that what the money can bring and do in that person's life is of a higher subjective value to that person and their dependents than the kidney.

Let's not lose sight of the fact here that if you offer a viable, poor candidate $100,000 for a kidney (just using a decent number there), that in their home country that sum could turn them from living in abject, brutish poverty to having a lifestyle akin to ours.

WEll, Mike T, I don't even have time to list all the things I disagree with in those two posts. For example, how can something exist but be entirely subjective? I mean, if it's just in the eye of the beholder, then it _doesn't_ exist.

Scripture and special revelation are not our only sources for ethical knowledge, especially concerning categories of acts that could not have been anticipated by the writers of Scripture. I'm trying to access the natural law, here.

I don't think that our bodies are our property. That's _why_ I don't believe in selling either organs or sex. Property is the wrong category. And no, we don't have the authority to donate a kidney because of our "stewardship property rights." Why bring property into it at all?

By the way, it's probably only fair to say up front that I have in another forum (not available any longer on-line, or not easily) raised doubts about dead-donor organ donation, by way of an analogy to cannibalism. If I allow single-kidney donation from a live donor, it would be only because the donor is alive and the recipient isn't waiting for and taking from a dead donor. Beyond that, I think you underestimate the seriousness of life without a kidney. In general, I think the risks are underestimated. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument I'm going to allow that live donation (not sale) of a single kidney, is morally licit.

When you discuss what you call the "limited worth of the kidney," I think you just illustrate my point: You think of body parts as having _only_ utilitarian value. That's a problem right there. That, in fact, may be at the heart of the problem.

"I haven't been convinced that there is a just price for labor."

Before we can decide if there is a just price for labor we have to answer the question posed by the very real example; is exploitation occurring?

Your reluctance to answer the question is baffling. This should not be controversial; the morality of an act is judged on the basis of whether the dignity of each participant is both protected and advanced.

"...rather than risk turning our own opinions into statutes coequal with God's decrees."

How oddly convenient. Your entire discourse is woefully absent of anything resembling Christian anthropology, you take refuge in the classic;
" fill in the blank____ is a subjective matter" and then caution us about the sin of presumption.

The fact of the matter Mike T, Christians see themselves as active moral actors with obligations that transcend the laws of supply and demand, or the changing mandates of the State. I think the point of this thread is to determine from the perspective of our faith; what constitutes exploitation. Not an argument for the commodification of body organs bracketed by noble motives and happy endings. Good Lord.

"I'm trying to access the natural law, here."

Amen. I'd like it applied to the realm of everyday life and the transcations we engage in. Are we complicit in something wrong when purchasing goods made by degraded workers or slave labor.

"I don't think that our bodies are our property."

Nor the property of another party. Hence the example I offered; a woman's body being abused 12 hours a day by a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation.

A clothing manufacturer relocates facilities to El Salvador to benefit from a labor-pool of workers who, unlike those of Fall River Massachusetts, will accept wages of 70cents an hour. The workers voluntarily consented to the employer’s terms and the hourly wage is preferable to the unemployment that preceded the arrival of the factory. Yet, are they not being exploited? They still cannot afford milk, much less the $150 jackets they make and the manufacturer hangs the threat of moving to a country where 40cents an hour is acceptable over their heads.

Before we can decide if there is a just price for labor we have to answer the question posed by the very real example; is exploitation occurring?

Hence the example I offered; a woman's body being abused 12 hours a day by a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation.

I must be frank: The only thing in your example which bothers me much at all in itself is the "hanging over their head the threat" of going elsewhere. I have some notion that there ought to be some sort of connection that develops of loyalty between employer and employee. Not an indefeasible connection, but some connection. But it would be easy enough to remove that. The employer might, for example, have some sort of contractual agreement to keep the plant open in that location for a minimum number of years--ten years, or something like that. And besides, I think that you would consider it exploitation even without that factor, whereas I'm inclined not to. The other factors really do not strike me as they strike you. Nobody's body is being abused per se by working in a clothing factory. I'm afraid that just sounds incorrect to me. If that were so we'd all have to do without clothes altogether except those made by ourselves or individually in a home, as all clothing factories would be abusing the bodies of their laborers. The fact that the workers are not making enough money to buy the products they make fazes me not at all. A man may work for an employer who makes any number of luxury goods that he will never be able to buy--sports cars, for example. I have no intuition whatsoever that employees must be able to afford the products they make. That they cannot buy milk, I'm afraid, raises again the notion of what I called a just price for labor as a _reason_ for considering this a case of exploitation: That is, it is the idea that if employees don't make at least a living wage--such-and-such amount of dollars, to buy such-and-such products and live such-and-such a life--wrong is being done them. So I'm afraid that, from my perspective, that question is prior to the question of exploitation given that I have no immediate and gestalt response to the case as one of exploitation and given that you are inclined to consider it exploitation in part _because_ the wages are not enough to buy milk. (I'm assuming you're right here. It sounds rather surprising to me that it would still be impossible to buy milk. Never? Not even some of the time?)

But that was what I raised the warning about in the main post. When it comes to just plain wages for any sort of work whatsoever and to the idea that exploitation occurs when not "enough" wages are being paid, I don't see it. And it is interesting that the more analysis that goes on here, the more clearly I see the contrast between that case and these other cases.

I don't think this means, though, that both people are equally at fault.

I too think the claim that exploitation is subjective is a claim that it doesn't exist.

Also, MikeT, I rather doubt that you and I even share the same concept of property. See here for example.

"Nobody's body is being abused per se by working in a clothing factory."

Per se? A 12 hour workday for a woman who cannot afford milk, subsists on the diet of the "working poor" of El Salvador and drinks coffee to fight off fainting spells is abusive.
http://www.nlcnet.org/campaigns/archive/elsalvador/CKMinimumwage2a.shtml
Feel free to offer stats that contradict the above.

"It sounds rather surprising to me that it would still be impossible to buy milk. Never? Not even some of the time?"

There is a huge disconnect between you and her. Neither one exists to the other, thanks to a marketplace that overcomes the logistics posed by geographical distance, but makes the whole relationship between producer, product and consumer an abstract and distant one. The American buyer gets to purchase a good jacket at an affordable price and remain oblivious to the suffering of a woman who subsists on 4.79 a day. This arrangement poses a greater moral challenge than the examples cited in this thread since we are actors in the exchange.

Yet, for some reason this example seems unworthy of real probing and the application of
natural law. Instead, the economic sphere remains free to operate under its own rules. Strange.

I believe in exploitation, I think it exists in this example and appears often in our daily lives. I wish I could be assured by distance, the invocation of "comparative advantage" and a simple closing of my eyes. Unfortunately, that is no longer an option and will become less so
as we wonder" why do they hate us?

What you should notice Lydia is you sound very much like Mike T when trying to refute my argument. Just a heads up.

Like Lydia, I've long been at a loss to understand what people mean by the term "exploitation" (which is not to say I don't think the thing exists, only that the meaning of the term isn't clear to me). Unlike Lydia, I don't think a market in kidneys would constitute exploitation. Here are a couple of questions:

Most of the talk so far seems to be focused on the case of a poor person selling a kidney. Suppose, though, that we were to say that only millionaires could sell kidneys. Would that still constitute exploitation, or not?

Suppose that Sam's brother needs a kidney. He is willing to donate, but is not a match. Likewise, Jill's sister needs a kidney, and while she is willing to donate, she is not a match. However, Sam is a match for Jill's sister, and Jill is a match for Sam's brother. They each agree to donate their kidney to the other's sibling on condition that the other do the same. Exploitation? If so, who is exploiting whom?

Suppose that Bob is willing to donate a kidney to Steve who lives in another state. In order for the donation to occur, Bob will have to travel to where Steve is located. If Steve pays these travel expenses, does that constitute exploitation?

People have sometimes sought to distinguish the buying and selling of kidneys from things like the buying and selling of things like blood plasma on the grounds that the human body will naturally replenish the latter. The same is true of the human liver. If one were to pay someone for a live liver transplant, would that constitute exploitation?

Suppose that we were to find some marketable use for people's tonsils and/or appendix. Would it constitute exploitation to buy and sell such things?

What I find troubling here is the implication that the 'market' is somehow above or beyond morality, that the 'invisible hand' functions in a sort of moral vacuum. This comes, I think, from the oft-noted tendency of modern conservatives to read "The Wealth of Nations" without recourse to Smith's other major work, the "Theory of Moral Sentiments." Modern exponents of the market economy fail to take into consideration the fact that, like democracy, capitalism only works with a moral people. Like Michael said above, "the marketplace is very good at giving persons what they want. It is not good at all in helping them learn what they ought to want," a fact that has been pointed out by conservative critics of capitalism for a very long time.

They each agree to donate their kidney to the other's sibling on condition that the other do the same. Exploitation? If so, who is exploiting whom?

The thing about money is that it is fungible; indeed it is the principle of fungibility: it is the medium by which 'everything' is made interchangeable with 'everything else'. There are some things which by their nature should not be made interchangeable with everything else: things which should not ever be 'converted' into money, not even as an intermediate step. Friendship, sexual intimacy, community loyalties, an