Fall 1996 – Issue 50 - Stanford Lawyer - Stanford University

Are you concernedby the way
some ofthese markets depend on
there being an economic gap
between sellers andbuyers?
Very much. If we see a market that
wouldn't exist except for the fact
that people are in desperate poverty,
there's something wrong.
Libertarians might argue that it's
a choice issue: Ifyou'drather sell
a kidney, than, say, sellyour
child into slavery making rugs,
then sell your kidney.
Well, they would, and it's a rather
powerful argument. They carry it
all the way, too. Many libertarians
would maintain that if someone
says, "Your money or your life,"
and you choose to give up the
money, that's a perfectly rational
decision. You and I tend to think
that's coercion, and therefore we
shouldn't let it happen. But the
issue of what's coercive is very, very
complicated, because it depends on
what we think people ought to have
as a matter of right; then if they are
put in a position where they have to
give that up, we say it's coercive.
Libertarians think that coercion
is a lot narrower category than
some other people think it is. But
everybody believes there's some
Sit-in protest by children in servitude, New Delhi, India
such thing as coercion. It has to do
with a current buzzword in legal
scholarly circles: "baseline"-what
you start out with that others
shouldn't be able to force you to
gIve up.
If you think there's a pretty big
baseline-like people shouldn't
have to give up a kidney even if
they're starving-then the whole
economic system could be considered
coercive, because it's getting
people to choose to give up their
kidneys. But if we see the baseline
as much narrower, so coercion has
to involve the threat of physical
violence, then the focus is more
conservative.
That's a complicated issue and
one reason I had to write a lot of
philosophy in this book.
I worry about the people who are
selling, in effect, themselves.
Yes-but the implications go way
beyond those individuals. Markets
touching on people's personhood
affect not just the sellers, but also
everyone in their general situation-and,
in some sens , all of us.
If you decide that something
inside the body, or something that
was formerly thought to be inseparable
from a person, is a commodity
belonging to a person, it could
end up being bad for that person.
Take baby selling: What if we
decided that a woman's capacity to
bring forth babies is a commodity
that she owns? At first it looks
good for her, because now she has
more wealth. But if that wealth is
taken into account when they
decide whether to give her welfare,
then it's bad for her.
Why do you say it affects all of
us?
There's potentially a domino effect.
Suppose we say that people are
unique and not marketable objects,
but at the same time we permit the
selling of children. A child who has
been acquired that way would have
a confu ed self-conception: "If I
was a market object, how did I
change over into being a unique
person?" The concepts are contradictory.
And suppose a kid who was
purchased says to my kids, "I was
worth $50,000. How much are you
worth?" That would be pretty confusing
to my kids.
Beyond that, it's not much of a
stretch to speculate that, depending
on the culture, light-skinned babies
might command higher prices than
dark ones, and boy babies more
than girls. If parentage is con idered,
babies from high-IQ or tall
stock might also go for a premium.
Price differences like these might
even be advertised.
This would change what all
kids think of them elves, whether
or not they personally have been
sold. And since each of us begins as
a kid, it perhaps changes what
everybody thinks about being a
human.
What can we do about it?
I don't have an easy answer. One
solution is politically impossible:
redistribute th wealth, so that we
don't have people so desperately
poor that they're doing things that
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FALL 1996 STANFORD LAWYER 13