If you weren’t aware, last summer it was made known that a new reality show was being shown in the Netherlands.  The idea was contestants would be vying for the organs of a terminally ill woman.I’m as big of an advocate of organ donation as there is.  While this concept may appear a bit tacky, winning organs on reality television is one step closer to an ultimate ideal: a free market for organs and tissues. 

Centering organ transplants around a donation-only system is the economic equivalent of a price ceiling; it just so happens that the price being ceilinged is zero.  A great example of a price ceiling is rent controls. Common in some urban areas, a rent control stipulates the maximum price that an owner can charge for a given apartment. The advantage of a price ceiling is, of course, a low price, theoretically affordable for a larger number of people.   In either case, organs or housing rentals, suppliers may not charge more than a legally codified price.  No one can argue that rent controls make housing more widely affordable, or stipulating a donation-only system for organs does the same thing for the organ “purchase” (the service of a transplant is another issue).  The disadvantage is a gap between the number of willing consumers at market price and the number of willing suppliers at market price – a shortage. 

The reason is simple.  A higher price motivates a greater number of prospective sellers into the market.  The quantity of sellers is the largest supply-side indicator of total market-wide supply in a given industry.   

The only current induction a prospective organ or tissue seller is altruism.  Noble though it is, altruism is not, by and large, a sufficient trigger to meet market-wide demand for organs and tissues.   The result is clear: we have a huge shortage of suppliers (donors) relative to the demanders (those in need of organs). 

I’ve signed the back of my driver’s license, and I hope other readers and commentators of The Only Orthodoxy have too. That being said, in a market where an organ supplier can auction their organs and tissues to a high bidder – or, at their discretion, continue to freely donate — the number of suppliers will inevitably grow.  Ergo, the number of people whose lives could be saved by organ and tissue transplants also inevitably grows.
 

The chief argument against free-market organs and tissues will be the inevitable inequality between organ sellers and organ buyers. Undoubtedly, buyers would predominantly come from a wealthier background, while sellers may only be doing so out of financial desperation due to being lower on the economic ladder.  To counter this argument, I present the case of the greater good.  My proposal leads to potentially saving the lives of x new people, who happen to be directly slanted upward toward the higher end of the socioeconomic ladder.  The status quo – organs by altruism – will save the lives of some fraction of x people, call it z.  Z people happen to be randomly sorted along the same ladder.   

The question for the believer in the status quo, altruism-only method of organ and tissue delivery is simple: Is the loss of X-minus-Z lives worth having a randomized sorting of donors/sellers?  I contend it is not.In the interim, consider complying with your state’s requirements to donate your tissue and organs, and tell your family of your decision.  But whenever you’re asked, remember that the more efficient means to deliver organs and tissue is a market-based approach, and not the status quo.