Recently, the story of a female star has made "surrogacy" a hot topic. Surrogacy is not legal in China, but it is legal in some countries, including some states in the United States. Ukraine and India also have specialized surrogacy industries. But even in places where surrogacy is legal, people will have an instinctive resentment to think of it. Where does this counterfeeling come from, and is it reasonable?
For example, a couple now decides to only provide eggs and sperm because they are unable to have children, or simply because they do not want to have children, and ask another woman to do the work.
Maybe you think this is a moral and ethical problem, maybe you think it's just an economic problem, or maybe you just don't like it. It is not easy to understand this matter, so I might as well sort out the logic from a purely rational point of view.
Harvard professor Michael Sandel published a book called "What Money Can't Buy", which provides a very strong anti-surrogacy reason.
Sandel has two reasons. One is to buy and sell good things at a clear price, which will "corrupt" this good thing. For example, if you spend an afternoon with a beloved girl and talk about life and art, you think it is very beautiful. Later, you knew that it was because your mother saw you too withdrawn and paid for the escort service. Would you feel uncomfortable?
Another reason is that it will make society more unequal.
Even if the act of surrogacy did not harm the surrogate mother, nor did it harm any specific person, it also harmed one thing-our perception of society.
Couples seeking surrogacy have a lot of money, while surrogate mothers are short of money or have no money. Surrogacy transfers part of the money from the rich to the poor, and the money status of both parties seems to be more equal. So why does Sandel say that society has become more unequal?
Because allowing surrogacy can only make the amount of money for participants become more equal, but it makes the utility of money more unequal in society as a whole.
As we all know, Buffett loves to drink Coca-Cola. Buffett is very rich, but no matter how rich he is, the Coke he drinks is exactly the same as the Coke I drink. And as long as I want, I can drink more Coke than him. In the enjoyment of Coca-Cola, Buffett and I are very equal.
The inequality in the amount of money does not mean the inequality in the utility of money. This is because there are many good things in the world that cannot be bought with money. You are not a rich man, but you can be younger and healthier than the rich man; you have more free time than him and look handsome than him; your wife does not know why, but just loves you instead of him.
If the society is like this, you will feel that although income in this society is unequal, it is okay. No matter how much money the rich have, they can only buy some luxury goods. We can accept a society in which the utility of money is very limited, and the rich cannot do whatever they want. This includes that the rich have to face the problem of birth, old age, sickness, and death like the poor.
In such a society, the comparison between people is multidimensional. You have a lot of money, but I have great knowledge; you are beautiful, but I am strong. Money is not the only important thing. People can have a variety of pursuits, and people's lives are relatively free.
But if money can buy everything, it's completely different. If you spend money to hire someone else to serve you as a soldier, you can make genetic customizations for your offspring, you can send your children to a good university, and you don't even have to have children yourself, and you can buy lifespan, then money is too useful.
Such a society becomes a one-dimensional society: Any two people standing together, just look at who has the money. Then there is no point in pursuing other things. You can only think about how much it is worth when you do anything.
Life in such a society would be very painful.
What we are really worried about is not whether a society where we can do whatever we want with money will appear tomorrow. What we are worried about is the trend of change. We hope that society will move towards more and more equality, and we are worried that society will move towards inequality.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the overall trend of social development has become more and more equal. For example, things like washing machines have no effect on the lives of the rich, and they don't have to wash clothes by themselves. The washing machine allows ordinary people to live a life without washing clothes by themselves. The washing machine promotes the equality of people in life.
And many good inventions are driven by the rich. Tesla's first electric car was a luxury sports car. We should thank the rich people who bought those cars. Even if they are just for coolness, they actually promote the growth of Tesla, which makes it possible for Tesla to provide relatively inexpensive electric vehicles to the market today.
This is the role of the market: to reduce scarcity and make it more affordable for more people. This mechanism of the market can reduce inequality.
Why can I buy a sports car but not a kidney? Because kidneys all grow from humans. If you buy a kidney, others have to lose a kidney.
Such trading may increase the supply of human kidneys on the market, but it will not automatically upgrade human kidneys to artificial kidneys. If we want to replace human kidneys with artificial kidneys, what we have to do is to prohibit the sale of human kidneys.
If there is a medicine that can improve people's lifespan, even if it sells very expensively, it can only be used by the rich first. It increases the inequality in the utility of money, and we recognize it. Because the market can automatically make this medicine cheaper, everyone can use it in the future.
But if this medicine must be prepared using the lifespan of the poor, for example, if a rich man spends 100 million US dollars, he can use the poor man’s ten-year lifespan for one year, and he can use the money to "top up" his lifespan. , It won't work.
Because this medicine does not reduce inequality, it makes society more unequal. Today someone agrees to sell for 100 million U.S. dollars, and tomorrow someone will agree to sell it for 10 million, 1 million, or even 10,000 U.S. dollars. Even if the poor are voluntary, we cannot allow this to happen, because a society where money can do whatever they want is terrible.
This is why we can accept the treatment of infertility and the development of artificial uterus, but we are unwilling to accept surrogacy.
In short, inequality in the amount of money can sometimes promote equality in the utility of money, but inequality in utility is inequality. We like equality.
The pursuit of equality may be an irrational obsession, but since I am not Buffett, I choose to stand on the side of equality.
