[null and void]

*shrug* why buy a kidney when the fruits of stem cell research will allow you to grown a new one that is a perfect tissue match?

[dr_lew]

... but if you recall that the median estimate from value of statistical life studies is around $5 million, and 60,000 people die each year from the kidney shortage, that gives a total of $300 billion in the gross value of these lives.

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

[BobbyT]

The real motivation for the ban on compensation for organs is that not every single last individual in the country (no wait, the world) could go out and buy one. Regardless of the dreadful state of affairs we have now, if there is someone somewhere who can’t afford it, it should be denied to all. In other words, “better they die”.

It’s the same as the objections to “sweat shops”. Because the wages for the jobs created, though they may be 5-10x the next best alternative, are still very low in terms of developed countries, the left wants them banned. $1/hour for manual labor? How dreadful. “Better they starve”.

This kind of meddling also brings us things like net “neutrality”, and with the way things are headed, socialized medicine: ban any service with different options or upgrades, so that instead of having competing options to improve the service you have everyone forced into the perpetual lowest common denominator.