Bribing people to sterilise themselves, Part 2: Get the snip, win a blender says India.

Great Debates
21

Is it ethical to offer free birth control to poor people? How is that different than offering free permanent birth control? How is that different than offering a small incentive to accept birth control?

Rather than offering a tiny incentive to accept birth control, this group is offering a small chance at a large prize. If people would rather have a small chance at a big prize than a sure chance of a tiny prize, so what?

In my opinion, everyone who does not want to have any more kids should be offered every help possible to allow them to not have more kids. There are enough kids with parents who didn’t want them in the world. People who don’t want children shouldn’t have children. It’s a simple concept–every child should be a wanted child.

22

If peoplw really want to get sterilized, free surgury would be more than enough to fill the clinics. If you were in the business of being nice, maybe you could put them in a nice hotel for a few nights before, make a little vacation out of it.

Why would you need to offer incentives for something people want? I mean, nobody has to bribe me to take birth control. Heck, I seek it out and pay good money for it. It’s a valuable thing for someone who really doesn’t want to get pregnent
.
So the only reason you’d need to offer incentives is if you are trying to change people’s minds…in other words, to reach people who do not normally want to be sterilized, even if it were free. This is shady. Getting people to change their minds via education, knowledge, friendship, etc. is one thing. If you think your message willl sell, go for it. See if you can get them to see things your way.

But using people’s vulnerabilities (in this case, lack of money) to make a major life decision they would not normally make, is shady- be it paying a poor girl to marry you, paying a poor man to cut off his arm for your amusment, or paying a poor couple to sterilize themselves for your social engineering fantasy.

And this is the meat. Outside of perhaps China, there has never been an aggressive sterilization program that wasn’t actually about eugenics. And there has never been a eugenics program that did not have something very unwholesome- often genocidal- at its core. It’d be vey hard to convince me that this program was the exception.

Or the short version- think of how many wanted, needed, prayed for sterilization surguries (or for that matter, any surgry) that 20,000 cars would pay for. Why on earth would any good-intentioned program ignore that, and instead use those resources to entice people to do something they definitively (as they require outside incentives) don’t want to do.

There is no non-nefarious explaination. It’s eugenics. It’s just as ugly as it was a century ago, and it does not belong in the modern world.

23

But you’re okay with it being eugenics so long as they’ll do it for free, right? You only object to it being modern-world eugenics if they’re also being offered something else of value?

24

I think he’s saying offering free sterilization is great, if that’s what this was about there wouldn’t need to be prizes.

even sven is winning me over.

25

You might consider that offering poor people the sterilization option for free with incentives will reduce the use of condoms resulting in an increased incidence of STDs.

26

Somehow going by the large family size condoms are not in common use with great frequency …

27

I guess that’s where we differ. I don’t care what it’s about; I’m not interested in whether the end justifies the means if I have no problem with the means. If someone values the prize or the sterilization that much, who am I to argue with them in either case?

You apparently want to negate their consent in the former case but not the latter; I don’t want to negate their consent at all.

(That said, I’m honestly not seeing what’s so special about throwing in a prize. Think of a straight-up charity fundraiser – and then think of a raffle that likewise raises money but also hands out a cash prize to one ticket-buyer. Think of a blood drive that merely thanks donors – and then think of one that rewards 'em to boot. Think of a call for volunteers to join the military – and then, y’know, mention the paycheck and benefits. Is it ever odd to add in that extra element? Isn’t the consent what matters?)

What matters to me is whether the people in question are won over. Doesn’t that matter to you? Shouldn’t it trump the other concerns?

28

it should be worldwide with appropriate valued prize incentives for each country.

29

How can somebody give consent if they are being deceived? A gambling-based contest is deceptive.

A charity raffle is not the government asking people to modify their bodies. It’s gambling with small amounts of easily replaceable money. There are places that pay set fees to everyone who donates a pint of replaceable blood. I’m not sure that this relates at all to the OP’s linked story. Your last example is essentially just paying people to work. I guess using that logic, everybody is a volunteer who is compensated.

30

Look, even the most die-hard libertarians typically make an exception for consent obtained by “force or fraud”. Of course I’m with you if the odds of winning are smaller than advertised, or if only half the prizes in question exist to be awarded, or whatever. But how can you make a blanket statement branding all gambling-based contests as deceptive? It’s not even possible, on your view of things, for people to decide for themselves given correct information?

Again, that’s my point. I don’t care whether volunteers are compensated or uncompensated; I care whether they’re volunteers. I don’t care whether folks choose to donate blood for altruistic reasons or selfish ones; I just care whether they do so choose. I don’t care whether a charity asks for money via straight-up fundraising or a possibly-rewarding raffle; I merely care whether they’re asking, rather than, y’know, *** telling.***

So if that red herring is out of the way – if it’s irrelevant whether pay is in play – then it seems you’re pegging your objection to the irreversibility of the choice. Again, though, I don’t care whether someone consents to something reversible or irreversible; I merely care whether they in fact consent.

So, by all means, lay out why consent is impossible since gambling-based contests are supposedly deceptive by definition; that’s the argument that would sway me. And be sure to mention all other practices which – also being allegedly deceptive by dint of being gambling-based – should, in your view, likewise be banned.

31

This is never going to work. Everyone in India remembers the Emergency, and everyone remembers sterilization radios (one of the major incentives for the national government’s 1976 sterilization drive was a free transistor radio; virtually none were ever actually delivered.)

32

So how exactly are the sterilisations performed?

Because if the bribe is a blender… well, I can think of a very parsimonious way of doing this.
(I’ll let myself out)

33

I’ve been seeing the thread title as “Get the snip, with a blender says India” for a while myself.

34

They cannot give odds because the contest relies on you being first to volunteer in order to receive the car. Second and so on get motorcycles down to blenders. In order for this contest to work you have to hide each individual’s odds of winning by not letting them know if somebody already volunteered first. You get sterilized and then you find out your position.

To get at your question more generally, no, I absolutely do not think people are capable of understanding the odds in most gambling. Humans do not exhibit the mathematical ability to understand an odds ratio without other cognitive biases creeping in. Just go to google scholar and look up “cognitive bias gambling”. The decision to gamble is an emotional as well as rational one, and looming in the brains of those who participate, whether they readily admit it or not, is that they are the one who will get the best prize. This is because rare events stand out in our calculations.

To put it more bluntly, the point I was making is that your examples suck and do not reflect the situation we are discussing except in the sense that a Person A is interacting with a person/organization B. Charities are not governments, blood banks are charities, and joining the military is not gambling. These are true in addition to the fact that all these actions are readily reversible. You only focus on the fact that people volunteer to engage in these activities while ignoring the fact that they are fairly compensated for their participation.

This contest is unethical because it will not compensate the participants. It creates a false sense of being able to obtain compensation by playing on the gambling fueled imaginations of the participants. All except a lucky few will be compensated. This is true in addition to the points made above about the compensation being unsuitable for the needs of those likely to participate.

I guess if I work hard to ignore almost everything but the fact that those who participate are actually participating without the threat of being shot, then, ya, its good and shit.

35

You are applying the paradigm of the nuclear famiily as norm in situations where it isn’t appropriate and should really be discouraged. In tradiational rural societies not everyone is encouraged to have children, only those with the possibility of being able provide for them. Furthermore, family is not just the small grouping of father, mother and offspring. If the farmer and his wife don’t have children chances are some other family member will. These children will then become the heirs to the farm who will by tradiation support the elderly farmer and his wife (along with other family members).

36

But they know that ahead of time, right?

I’m not sure I’m ignoring it; I’m saying it’s up to each volunteer to decide whether the compensation – or, as with said raffle, the shot at compensation – is fair. That’s the moral magic of consent: it’s not up to me to decide whether the compensation is fair, it’s up to the would-be participants who accept or reject the offer as they see fit.

So, yeah: in the examples, I only focus on the fact that each volunteer decides whether the shot at compensation is worth it – while mentioning that some folks volunteer for identical stuff without compensation. In this contest, volunteers are likewise free to decide whether they think the shot at compensation is worth it, sure as some folks freely do the same things without compensation.

::spit-take:: Care to rephrase that?

Likewise, except I don’t need hard work to get there; I need to work hard when convincing myself to override someone else’s consent, not when defaulting to allowing it. (I likewise hope other folks will need to work hard when convincing themselves to override my consent, not when defaulting to allowing it.)

Again, I need a better reason to stop a consenting adult from voluntarily engaging in offer-and-acceptance; it’s something I’m extremely reluctant to do, for reasons that may well be “emotional as well as rational”. (At that, should we override every decision that’s “emotional as well as rational”, or only those involving gambling?) (And, at that, you’re human; are you capable of understanding an odds ratio?)

37

I have a hard time arguing with peoples’ imaginations. I do not know if they know. I do not know if the rules are made clear to them at all. I do know that the structure of the contest as stated cannot provide individuals’ odds when they participate. With what I do know, the only information people can use when engaging in the contest is their hopes.

So you think it is ethical to materially manipulate people into making long-term irreversible decisions based on their short-termdesires: as long as they agree to do so. That it? Why don’t you come up with 3 examples of this that might actually match the situation then? How come you focus on 3 completely ethical exchanges?

Which once again totally ignores the fact that in all of your examples, if I decide that I was not properly compensated for my involvement, I can disengage in the activity and replace my losses (except maybe time). A poor Indian does not easily get to have their vasectomy reversed; if it is possible at all.

Why would I? There are roughly 10 prizes. Expectations are 20K to 30K participating. Almost nobody is being compensated and many of the prizes are of questionable value to people in a province prone to drought.

My work is even easier than yours. I don’t allow myself, or allow my government, to offer up cynical contests that rely on the faults of human nature to get me to behave in a specific way; to make large sacrifices for tiny short-term gains. I prefer that my government addresses poverty, ignorance, poor irrigation, and cheap access to birth control. These are all linked in that they are the activities of government that steadily improve my lot as an individual. On the other hand, a short-term contest that disconnects me from my balls may give me something in the short-term (on the miniscule chance that I win a prize), has never been scientifically shown to curb population growth, and addresses zero of the serious problems people face.

Since you aren’t actually arguing the cognitive biases that people readily show while gambling, then I guess it is safe to conclude that you are supportive of governments deceiving its citizenry to get them to do what they want.

38

Yeah, “as long as they agree to do so” is something I value greatly.

Because I can’t think of any unethical ones that parallel this ethical one. I could do it by postulating consent forms signed by twelve-year-olds, I could do it by postulating false advertising or a gun to the head, but my imagination fails when asked to come up with something troubling that likewise involves a voluntary round of offer-and-acceptance from a consenting adult.

Absolutely not; insert that bit about “deceiving” and you’ll get the precise example you were gunning for. That strikes me as an all-important shift, moving from talk about “emotional as well as rational” to, y’know, straight-up “deceiving”.

I don’t feel like stopping people from making reversible or irreversible decisions; it’s their call, not mine. Still, I find your reasoning here intriguing: would you accept this offer? Why or why not? Seems to me like you can understand an odds ratio…

I guess I have more faith in people.

39

Put his balls in it?

40

Actually, I am applying whatever paradigm comes from living in the back room of a cheif’s house in rural South Africa- which is where I am composing this very post. You are right that the extended family is important. But the cheif’s mother gets the best room in the house. The various childless relatives live in chilly outbuildings, and come around at meal times along with the beggars, dependent and often resented by people who see them as a burden. While families usually yake care of them, there is always a risk that some new wife will be sick of cooking for you or want to turn your room into a sewing room, and your closest connection to the main household is now a great grand nephew who only knows you as the creepy old lady who lives out back. Next thing you know, you are moved in to a closet, deeply aware that everyone is just waiting for you to die.

Anyway, farmers have kids because they need farmhands and helpers for their cottage industries. At least, this is what four years working with poor, rural people has taught me.