| | Later in life, I used to selfishly donate blood 'for free.'
Selfishly, because it was a convenient way to get my blood checked for cholesterol levels, and I also physically used to just 'feel' better after dropping the odd pint. I didn't examine why, I just did.
I was rejected for a while after doing business in Bangladesh, and I understand why. (Imagine living there, if just visiting there renders your blood a risk. And, I had all my shots. Lots of places in the world like that, but not here. There especially. Partition plunked them down right at the exit of India's sewage disposal system, the Ganges. It's awful, and by awful, I mean, full of offal. The water everywhere is filthy, loaded with bloated animal carcasses and God knows what...)
And, I can't explain it, but I missed the occasional opportunity to give blood. The occasional regeneration of blood supply exercised something inside of me I can't fully explain, I just physically felt better when I was regularly donating blood. It was painless and convenient and they checked my cholesterol level. For the 'cost' involved, which was minimal, it was acceptable value for value.
Donating blood is one of those low cost win-win things. It's barely more altruistic than simply letting some stranger into traffic, or holding the door open for someone else. The selfish reasons for doing any of that are easy to understand; if you want to live in a civil world, then you need to help make it a civil world, period. There are ample opportunities for purely voluntary acts of selfish civility in the world.
For example, if you want to live in a world where the blood supply is garnered from the kind of folks who volunteer to give blood, the folks you regularly see at blood banks, then you selfishly support that idea, by giving blood.
If you want to live in a world where decent folks pass on the opportunity to line up with piss laden alcoholics and addicts waiting to get paid their $10 for their pint of blood, then you support the idea of blood for money blood banks. A variant of Gresham's law also applies to the paid blood bank donor market; those with pissed pants waiting in line tend to displace those without pissed pants. "If that is what donating blood is, then that is not me."
If you're nuts, you support the idea of forced blood giving. Obviously, that idea is repulsive, unless we substitute 'money' for 'blood.' Then, plenty of folks support the idea of forced giving, even as they fail to make the moral connection between 'life' and 'needs.'
The market is yet another place where OneSizeDoesNotFitAll. There are some concepts that just don't belong in the market, and some that do. Or, in my way of thinking of it, blood donors are participating in a value for value marketplace, but the medium of exchange is not currency.
In this world, as it is, our blood supply does not belong in the 'for dollars' marketplace. Ditto organs. The paid variants of those markets are fundamentally flawed, and the 'forced' variants of those would be tyranny. That leaves the fully voluntary world. If that means 'shortages', then that means shortages. That's life, in the universe, as it is.
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 4/15, 8:43am)
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 4/15, 8:44am)
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