Month: November 2006

Organ Markets

The prospect of dying for want of a kidney has concentrated Sally Satel’s mind wonderfully on how to make sure that more kidneys become available. She comes down in favor of incentive payments to donors, and suggests 4 basic models:

  1. A forward market for cadaver organs (I like this one) in which you sign up to have your organs harvested at death, and receive a small payment on signing or a large one to your estate when you die
  2. A centralized single compensator. Medicare or whoever pays a bounty for the kidney; and pays $15-20k a year for the immunosuppressant drugs which the recipient will need; but saves $66k per patient per year on dialysis.
  3. Multiple compensators. As above, but private insurers and charitable foundations chip into the compensation fund.
  4. Private contracts. The sort of market we have now, between individuals, only regulated and legal. One nice nuance, suggested by Ms Postrel’s husband, is that donors/vendors should get a year’s tax holiday, evening out the incentive between rich and poor.

2007-03-14: iran, of all places, might be the first place with an organ market.
2011-05-31:

Scott Carney’s The Red Market is a book-length investigative journalism piece on the complicated and sometimes stomach-churning underground economy in human flesh, ranging from practice of kidnapping children to sell to orphanages who get healthy kids to pass off to wealthy foreigners to the bizarre criminal rings who imprison kidnapped indigents in “blood farms” or lure impoverished women into selling their kidneys.

the trade in human flesh is brisk.
2016-12-30: Car crash victims are a major source of organ donations. What will replace them? Better stock up on those artificial organs.

Resistant Maps

artistic actions in the interconnected urban territory, a conference and exhibition that investigated the ‘resistant’ practices and theories related to the territory imaginary and how once can inoculate political viruses in the re-thinking of the space.

mapping as it relates to politics, activism, urbanism

Uninsurable

Another way to look at it is that better ability to predict risks allows us to avoid many of them. If insurers can tell which houses in an earthquake zone will fall, they can raise the price on insuring that house. This produces a more efficient market outcome that seems to be independantly desireable: fewer people will build houses that are likely to be crushed by earthquakes. Even genetic risks have controllable environmental factors; those at risk for heart disease can adopt low-fat diets, excercise, and take statins; those likely to develop diabetes can go easy on dessert. Even carriers of the infamous BRCA genes generally opt to reduce their risk, through the drastic step of removing their breasts, and often their ovaries. They do this, not to avoid high insurance costs, but to extend their lives. But what about the poor? It is hard to see any reason why insurance companies should subsidize them. If society thinks that poor families should have insurance, then society should pay for it through the tax code, not slap regulations on insurance companies to keep information from reaching the market.

the good and bad of increased actuarial fidelity

The mine hijackers

crime syndicates camp out in abandoned mines in SA and harvest gold at a constant 38 degrees, no fresh air, and humidity.

Mineral smugglers live for up to 1 year below ground without surfacing, mining illicit gold estimated to be worth nearly £400M a year for 3 international criminal syndicates.

Declaration in defense of Science and Secularism

We are deeply concerned about the ability of the United States to confront the many challenges it faces, both at home and abroad. Our concern has been compounded by the failure exhibited by far too many Americans, including influential decision-makers, to understand the nature of scientific inquiry and the integrity of empirical research. This disdain for science is aggravated by the excessive influence of religious doctrine on our public policies.

this one ought to be shouted from the rooftops