SemiConscious Dot Org

For years now, our great Nation, preoccupied with such fripperies as war, terrorism, erosion of civil liberties, and economic collapse, has sadly turned a blind eye to one of the worst injustices ever perpetrated in the history of the world. This egregious oppression goes on right under our noses, day after day, and no one does a thing about it. The cry of this maligned and persecuted group has often been ruthlessly drowned out, yet they shall never be silenced! If you listen very closely, you can hear their voices pleading for justice:

“Why, O Why, Will No One Let Us Sell Our Organs to the Highest Bidder?”

But fear not! Martyrs for the sainted cause of organ-selling have a champion in libertarian reporter John Stossel!

(Above: Freddie Mercury, minus the gayness and talent)

This tireless Apostle of Free Markets, last seen heroicially defending the rights of price gougers to exploit humanitarian tragedies for monetary gain, has turned his fearsome rhetorical guns on those Jacobin nogoodniks who imperiously lord over the last vestige of medicine not subject to the grandmotherly kindness of the Profit Motive.

Or, to put it another way, those who don’t think that you should be able to sell or buy a kidney are a bunch of fucking Commies:

Why isn’t someone with two healthy organs allowed to put one on the market? Because in 1984, U.S. Rep. Al Gore sponsored a law making the sale of organs punishable by five years in jail. Congress couldn’t contain its enthusiasm; the bill passed 396 to 6.

So giving someone a kidney is a good deed, but selling the same kidney is a felony.

When I confronted Dr. Brian Pereira of the National Kidney Foundation about that, he said, “The current system functions extremely well.” I asked him how the system could be working “extremely well” when 17 people die every day because they can’t get kidneys. He said that the “desperate (situation) doesn’t justify an unwise policy decision.”

The Kidney Foundation fears that poor people would be “exploited.” But what gives the foundation the right to decide for poor people? The poor are as capable as others of deciding what trade-offs to make in life. No one forces them to give up an organ. To say the poor are too desperate to resist a dangerous temptation is patronizing.

But gatekeepers like Dr. Pereira say there should be “no barter, no sale of organs. That’s where we have to step in.” When I asked him who that “we” is that has the right to “step in,” he replied, “The government (and) the professional societies.”

That conceit—that the government and “professional societies” must decide for all of us, and the underlying hostility toward commerce—kills people.

Truer words were never spoken! Why should a bunch of “doctors” have the right to decide, on the purely arbitrary basis of “medical need,” who should have first crack at those sweet, sweet kidneys? And if a rich guy wants to buy his way to the top of the transplant list, who are these bureaucrats to say he can’t? And the little girl who was ahead of him because of her greater “need?” Well, maybe she should have taken greater personal responsibility and not been born poor! Bad choice on her part, but why should the rich have to unduly suffer for it?

And why stop at kidneys, anyway? You only need one eye to see, one lung to breathe, and one ball to procreate, right? You could walk perfectly well with a missing toe or two. And once a guy played Major League Baseball with only one arm. Your kid was run over by a truck? Sure, that’s a bummer, but don’t compound the emotional loss with a monetary one – sell off his undamaged organs to pay the hospital bills! (And maybe a nice new car or vacation getaway. Hey, you’ve suffered enough.)

No doubt, there are many Bleeding Heart Bedwetters who will envision all sort of “slippery slope” scenarios that could stem from the selling of human organs for profit. However, such people are Communists who hate America and Free Enterprise, and should all just move to China.

Ahhh, Seattle. Since moving here from the East Coast, we have come to appreciate and even love the eccentricities of our adopted hometown. It takes all kinds to fill a city this large and diverse, and we do indeed have all kinds here.

For example, there’s the guy who tapes advertising slogans to homeless people:

“So much traffic goes by these sign holders, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if they could advertise themselves and me at the same time?’ ” he said.

A 22-year-old economics major who tore through the University of Washington in three years, Rogovy packed his knapsack with cash, a few peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and three professionally printed posters advertising his venture, PokerFaceBook.com. Then he hit the streets.

The idea was simple: Pay panhandlers a few dollars to let him attach a glossy, green PokerFaceBook ad to their own signs, and drivers scanning the beggars’ rumpled, hand-lettered pleas would inevitably notice his.

Thus was born “Bumvertising,” a name Rogovy has trademarked, and a concept that has suddenly won him national, even international, attention.

And people say the American entrepeneurial spirit is dead!

Of course, we are quite confident that, given the large number of tofu-nibbling bleeding-heart bed-wetters in this city, there will be a large, mewling outcry. The librarian who blogs here, for instance, and spends every day working with homeless families, will probably be moved to a foul-mouthed tirade when he reads this story.

But in truth, young Rogovy is a shining example of the new Compassionate Conservatism that has swept this country since the Supreme Court thoughtfully placed Dear Leader in power five years ago. Expecting taxpayers and government programs to alleviate poverty and homelessness is soooo Old Europe. No, the way to lift the homeless off the streets is through the grandmotherly kindness of the Free Market. After all, if one advertisement nets our enterprising bum five dollars, then twenty advertisements would rake in 100 dollars! Heck, he could use the stickers to cover up holes in his clothing, thus relieving him (and us) of the financial burden of buying him some new ones! Glory!

At this juncture, our only obligation to this Raggedy Rockefeller is to lower his taxes, so that the big nasty gummint won’t take any of his hard-panhandled earnings to feed or clothe any other bums, thus denying them the self-empowering experience of panhandling while covered in advertisements!

If the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has taught us anything, it’s that a humanitarian catastrophe is the best time to indulge in unfettered, predatory capitalism. It is more than our right to do so, it is in fact our religious obligation as conservative Christians. Because if Jesus said anything, it was “Every Man For Himself.”

Or something like that.

Cry a tear of compassion for the poor, maligned, misunderstood, Apostle of Free Markets that is the humble price gouger. These brave, selfless martyrs endure the slings and arrows of Nattering Nabobs, on both the Left and Right, who accuse them of exploiting the humanitarian tragedy of Katrina to raise prices astronomically.

Balderdash! As Libertarian reporter John Stossel helpfully explains, the charging of exponentially higher prices to victims of a humanitarian tragedy is not, as so many fools assume, the action of a predatory scumsucker, but in fact an extraordinarily compassionate act of grandmotherly kindness:

Politicians and the media are furious about price increases in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They want gas stations and water sellers punished.

If you want to score points cracking down on mean, greedy profiteers, pushing anti-”gouging” rules is a very good thing.

But if you’re one of the people the law “protects” from “price gouging,” you won’t fare as well.

Consider this scenario: You are thirsty — worried that your baby is going to become dehydrated. You find a store that’s open, and the storeowner thinks it’s immoral to take advantage of your distress, so he won’t charge you a dime more than he charged last week. But you can’t buy water from him. It’s sold out.

You continue on your quest, and finally find that dreaded monster, the price gouger. He offers a bottle of water that cost $1 last week at an “outrageous” price — say $20. You pay it to survive the disaster.

You resent the price gouger. But if he hadn’t demanded $20, he’d have been out of water. It was the price gouger’s “exploitation” that saved your child.

It saved her because people look out for their own interests. Before you got to the water seller, other people did. At $1 a bottle, they stocked up. At $20 a bottle, they bought more cautiously. By charging $20, the price gouger makes sure his water goes to those who really need it.

Do you understand now? The price gouger is charging many times the normal market value for a product you need to stay alive and have no other source for—because he cares about you! He loves you, in fact, and he has kindly raised his prices so that those nasty water-hoarders will not buy up all the water and selfishly keep their own kids alive with it. And besides, if you didn’t want to pay through the nose for necessities of life in a disaster-ravaged city, you shouldn’t have lived in a place filled with poor black people who don’t vote Republican to begin with!

I think you all owe the price gougers an apology. Maybe if you say you’re sorry very, very nicely, they’ll forgive you and allow you to empty your bank account to keep from starving.

Behold the power of the Free Market! Glory!