Repugnant markets

[sawyl]

Today's edition of Analysis focused on repugnant markets. It wondered why there was a general repugnance about people selling organs for cash, why it's not possible to bet on your own death but it is possible to take out life insurance and the rights and wrongs of dwarf throwing. In the end it concluded that dwarf throwing was wrong, because of its harmful externalities, and that selling organs was probably no bad thing especially if you could arrange it so that people who wanted to help a loved one but couldn't because of tissue type mismatches could trade for a suitable replacement.