"Ensuring that your population's basic needs can be met comfortably by mandating a livable wage is essential to creating and maintaining demand in the economy, after all you cant squeeze blood from a stone"........
"Wait, why are you only writing the last bit down?"
"We could solve a lot of problems with providing livable wages or you know.......... not do any of that."
Fascinating idea....... Can you please expand on this "squeeze blood from stone" idea of yours?
It is true that you can't draw blood from a stone cause stones don't have blood. However, a stone is "dead" in the sense that it was never alive. The plebs have blood in them. So if crush the pleb's hopes and dreams to make them emotionally dead inside like a stone. We would draw blood from them and never fix any systemic issue.
The really insidious part here is thay the authors see the means testing as an important component. You have to be clean from drugs, not psychotic, etc. To donate, so it creates pressure to abstain from drugs, risky sex, etc. Because it could jeapordize your income stream.
They are making an explicit argument for putting moral requirements on access to welfare.
Oh yes, this is a total social-engineering-for-the-worst-reason-ever point of view
The Role of Chattel Slavery in Homelessness Reduction
Im almost certain this is illegal here, and it really obviously should be everywhere. Like 'you cant buy or sell blood' feels like a law that would get booked the first time someone tried to buy or sell someone's blood.
About 2% of US Exports is blood or blood related products.
I think we can do better than that though. 
oh no you see they don't buy your blood, they give you your platelets back so totally A-OK
People fight against it in the US, as the alternative they're often given is selling drugs, sex, etc. I haven't seen it irl, but have seen videos of people upset that they were limited in how much blood they could sell since it left them with less palatable alternatives.
Im almost certain this is illegal here, and it really obviously should be everywhere.
Even if you're in a country where paid blood donations are banned, selling drug products manufactured using blood or blood components is likely very legal, and happens all the time.
The UK, for example, exports £200M of blood products annually. Canada exports $80M a year.
Not trying to troll, genuine question here.
The way this is framed as a solution to poverty is disgusting but what is wrong with being paid for a blood donation? Blood is needed for medical applications, can't be manufactured, and will be sold at a profit anyways, so why shouldn't the donor be compensated?
It's killed a lot of people.
https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/05/24/uk-contaminated-blood-scandal/
Desperate people sell their blood. They lie about drug use and infections because they need money. High-risk Prisoners had to sell blood at under the going rate, and then this was covered up for profit.
Things have got better with more rigorous testing, but there's always the risk of a new illness or drug that falls through the current tests. There's a reason that most countries ban it.
Jeeeeeeesus christ okay yep, fucking horrifying. That makes a lot of sense and demonstrates why this is a bad fucking idea. Thank you.
and will be sold at a profit anyways
Not in a sane world
"If I don't take advantage of desperate people, taking their literal blood for pennies, someone else will"
I think I could have worded my reasoning better but I do not appreciate being equated with a zionist colonizer.
Regarding the issue I want to make it more clear that my perspective is that of someone who regularly donates blood (because it feels good). I produce blood, which is arguably a form of labor. This blood is then harvested and sold, however I am not compensated but find the idea of compensation appealing. I have noticed that many people in this thread seem to be opposed to something I support and am genuinely trying to understand how I might be wrong.
I hope this didn't come off as needlessly confrontational but I feel that I was misunderstood and was compared to something I find repulsive. Which hurt my feelings a little bit.
Sorry, it was mostly for comedic purpose. A less jerk answer
In a sane world blood shouldn't be a commodity.
Even if it isn't a commodity but you still use money to incentivize donation, you run into the problem of "the law is equal for everyone, neither billionaires nor homeless can sleep under a bridge" wink wink.
Of course, blood save lives, and perhaps there are shortages of blood in countries where they don't incentivize donation with money, but I don't know if that's true.
If you live in a country where you have to pay for basic healthcare, and you have an option to be paid for a blood donation you would have done anyway, then by all means take them dollars. The issue is that people who shouldn't be donating - either because it will put them in danger (e.g. they are already too weak), or because it will put the recipient in danger (e.g. because they have some serious infection) will now be encouraged to donate. This is why pretty much every other country bans payments for blood donation.
I do this when I can for extra cash, I also do freelance and an etsy store, but plasma money still helps. Here is my beef(s) with it:
I have noticed more and more people donating in the past few years as shit gets worse. With more people doing it, centers can offer less per person because "who gives a fuck?" I know what they take out of me is worth a lot more than what they give me...so it is just a bleak and shitty situation while you are doing it...but hey, money, right?
Yep this has been my experience as well. I'd add to that list - a power outage in the middle of a session. None of the staff knew what to do. Big open building full of stations, all active, all down mid process.
After the confusion died down and the staff had been told what to do, they were offering to continue or at least put the partially-centrifuged blood back. I said no thank you for the possible embolism and dipped. I'm an engineer. I know those machines are engineered very well, but I also know the limits of engineering and edge case testing.
Add to that 2 or 3 incidents years later where they wrapped my arm so poorly afterwards that I started bleeding everywhere after a few. One of those being a time I specifically asked them to be careful because that exact person fucked it up last time.
I don't strictly need it these days so I've stopped. But yep, just yet more indignity and danger for the poor, go USA!
I think it's more about the exploitation than anything else.
The author successfully correlated crime with poverty, but instead of offering a good solution to the wealth inequality, they instead think more exploitation would be the solution.
Yeah that makes sense. Coming from that angle I can see how this could open things up for even more exploitation. I was thinking more "well if this is happening anyways might as well get paid, right?" Rather than "this is going to be an incredibly degrading new form of exploitation that should not be encouraged."
Sell? Wtf, I donate plasma every 2 to 3 weeks here in the UK for free. I want my pay cheque
read as: "crime" is so clearly caused by poverty that is enforced by capitalist state violence that it registers as a reduction when you give people a bit of money for their literal blood
i did this all throughout college, and I'm pretty sure they infected me with something because i get rashes every other month or so in the crook of my elbow in both arms right where they used to stick me
that's your blood meeting at the usual spot because it thinks it is due to be drained again
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
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