[extropy-chat] Proposed bill to ban cloning stirs debate abouthuman life

[Dan]

On Thursday, February 03, 2005 7:44 PM The Avantguardian
avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com wrote:
>> Smith argued that "cloning is cloning
>> is cloning" and said that even
>> therapeutic cloning is immoral
>> because "it reduces nascent human
>> life to the status of a mere commodity,
>> a natural resource ripe for the harvest."
>
>      Well I hate to break it to Smith but
> human life has been commodofied for a
> long time. Apart from the buying and
> selling of slaves that only ended in the
> mainstream a little over 150 years ago,
> you now have a situation where people's
> time is commodified as labor.  Time is
> the stuff that human life is composed of
> and by working 8 hrs a day, a person is
> essentially selling 1/3rd of his life to the
> highest bidder.

Minor quibble: that's only if someone works 8 hours from cradle to
grave.  Given that most people will only work for a part of their adult
life -- say, from age 18 until 65 or something like that and maybe only
40 hours per week not figuring in other time off -- it's a lot less than
a third of their lives.  (Actually, figuring working 8 hours a day, 5
days a week, with two weeks vacation...  That amounts to 2000 hours per
year -- about 23% of a year.  If a person lives to be 75, but only works
between 18 and 65, then she or he will have sold about 14% -- roughly
one seventh -- of her or his life.)

Also, another minor quibble: not everyone sells that time to the highest
bidder.:)  A lot of people just seem to fall into jobs.  If more people
would consider taking the best job -- or, at least, trying to choose the
best from a range of jobs -- I think the world economy would be much
more efficient.  But I think many settle for less -- for whatever
reason: tradition, force of habit, fear, ignorance, social pressure.

> So how much
> commodification of human life is too much?

Apparently wherever the given person -- Smith, etc. -- arbitrarily draws
the line.

Later!

Dan
    See "Anarchism, Minarchism, and Freedom" at:
http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/Anarchism.html
    See "Objectivism, Anarchism, and Atlas Shrugged" at:
http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/RSVP1993.html
    See "Family, Social Order, and Government" at:
http://uweb1.superlink.net/~neptune/FamilySOG.html