Short Reply to XY

Ok, there are too many problems with what you saying and I am honestly too lazy to respond to all of them. I will like to engage the powerful Deborah Koh into the debate. I suggest that you take some Economics classes and I will just reply to some of the wild claims you made.

“By making you annoyed, or influencing you into serving their interests, they are infringing into individual liberty. A person under influence is not making decisions out of his own mind.”

I don’t think advertisements are powerful enough to convince people to sell their organs. It is quite ridiculous to suggest that advertisements and phone calls infringe one’s individual liberty. They may influence people, but they are hardly coercive. You can choose not to accept the message of the advertisement and your individual liberty is not threatened. You paint an image of organ sellers as simpletons blindly accepting whatever information is conveyed to them. I have more faith in organ sellers. In any case, even if advertisements are as pernicious as you made them out to be, this is a small problem. Advertisements on organs dealing can simply be banned just like advertisements on cigarettes in Singapore.

Anyway, in Singapore there is a heavy penalty for smuggling cigarettes from Malaysia, selling them and buying them, and Singapore has an efficient law enforcement system. Thousands of people still buy these cigarettes... because they are much cheaper. GCS thinks that a heavy penalty and poorer quality will deter people from buying marijuana from unauthorised dealers.

What GCS thinks is useless, what Milton Friedman and other Nobel Prize Winners say about marijuana legalization are more useful.

http://economics.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=economics&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prohibitioncosts.org%2F

Your argument is really problematic. I have never said that regulation will totally eliminate black markets. A black market for organs already exists and the question is how to significantly reduce it. A regulated, open market for organs will significantly reduce the size and harm of the black market. Please read the history of the Alcohol Prohibition in the United States.

Your evidence that “thousands of people still buy these cigarettes” from the black market doesn’t prove that the regulated open market for cigarettes has failed. Without a regulated, open market for cigarettes, I predict that there will be tens of thousands of existing smokers buying cigarettes from the black market. I understand that the black market for cigarettes consists of smugglers importing packs of tobacco leaves. People will buy these cheaper packs of tobacco leaves, divide them, and roll the tobacco leaves using paper before smoking them. The lack of warning labels with pictures of rotting lungs on cigarettes pack and cigarettes filters will probably lead to more smoking-related deaths.

This thinking shows that he lives in an ivory tower extremely typical of Singaporean government officials. Hahaha the civil service is for you man; don't try to run away :D :D :D

This is a cheap potshot la. Can’t believe you make this kind of unwarranted and baseless attack. Ok, going to watch my BLEACH now.