Why? Why shouldn't these people be free to make that choice for themselves?
> To approach it another way, as long as one group of people has an economic benefit from abusing another group, there’s a problem.
How, exactly, are you defining 'abuse'? Is it abuse to offer someone money to do something? It's hard to see how it could be abusive to give someone an option that they didn't previously have.
There is now an incentive for the people who control the system to reduce the level of social assistance, because in so doing they increase the number of people who "voluntarily" submit to risky experimentation.
This proposal seems like adding a new option on an individual level, but on a social level it paradoxically leads to a situation where that group has less choice.
It's like playing the game of chicken on a road where the first person to swerve from a head-on collision loses. Paradoxically the winning move is to visibly remove your own choice by throwing your steering wheel out the window.
More choice is not always better.
That's quite the logical leap there. And is one that could be made about literally any effort to help the poor, so, i'm not quite sure you've made your point.
It's a nice concept, but ethics (and the idea of politeness) are largely relativistic to the interpreter/actor. Even with the idea of normative ethics being dictated by culture and point-of-view out of the way, there are layers to every ethical/moral choice within each doctrine of thought.
Ask people around the world about the ethical treatment of animals, prisoners of war, children, spouses -- you'll get different answers from every individual, with strong weights towards certain behaviors dictated by regional culture and upbringing/experience.
tl;dr : I may think that it's being polite not to spit on me for being a member of a lower caste. YOU might think i'm being polite for opening the door for someone behind me.
Neither opinion is wrong, it's framed by the culture and the person.
In modern developed society it should never be the case that a person's best economic choice is to sell their health and life for money. It's just not necessary for people to be in that position unless someone wants them to be in that position. Why would anyone want that?
What's the motivation for crating those conditions, and if people do want to put people in that position, how can the rest of us trust that the safeguards someone who would want that would put in place are sufficient and robust?
To approach it another way, as long as one group of people has an economic benefit from abusing another group, there’s a problem. There’s no way you can ever be certain enough that such a system is being administered fairly and competently. The bureaucratic and ethical abuses and mistakes we get already are bad enough.
Finally, I f anyone is in such a desperate situation that this looks like a good option, then surely there must be other ethical options available for society to intervene?