If it were legal to sell yourself into slavery (as it once was), we know what would happen: A lot of companies would try to push people into the position where people would feel they had no other choice to become slaves, and companies would position themselves to take advantage of this fact. We would then have a permanent class of slaves in the world, which would dehumanize them and gradually freeze the hearts of everybody who was made to interact with this system. We know this would happen because it did happen. And it was a long road for humanity as a whole to get rid of it (and we still haven’t completely).

And you would throw it all away because of some personal libertarian principle? This isn’t only about what you would like to be able to do in any given moment, it’s what this ability does to society as a whole. Your ability to someday be able to sell yourself into slavery has some value (for the principle of the thing, if nothing else), but it is certainly not worth the above-mentioned effects on society.

(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26131936>, from two years ago.)

Libertarianism is like communism. Looks fantastic on paper, but is god awful in practice.

I'm not at all sure that either looks good even on paper!

But by selling it, becomes not their own anymore. I find it weird to use freedom as a justification to destroy freedom.

oh my child is going to die unless she gets expensive life saving treatment, but luckily I live in the world of sneak where I can sell myself to get tortured to death for the amusement of Bill Gates!

My body, my choice.

day after my death: huh, Bill Gates didn't pay, but luckily my wife can always sue for the money!

Fighting a billionaire is fun!

That's a nice straw man you've built there. Let's try an alternate scenario: don't let people die because they cannot afford expensive treatments.

Now we have something else to aim for rather than policing people's bodily autonomy.

alright we want a society where it is possible for people to sell themselves into slavery which it is not possible to do today, but we will remove the most likely incentives (currently existing in our society) that would cause someone to do something so stupid?

Given your premise of a world where a billionaire wants to torture you to death, I'm puzzled as to why you'd think that the legality of a contract he's going to break anyway would matter at all.

There is nothing wrong with selling selling some portion or all of your flesh for profit.

It's morally repugnant and unambiguously reprehensible to buy any of the flesh of another person.

A market with only sellers and no buyers is ineffective at best, and given the moral reprehensibility of any buyers that do appear, the entire market is tainted and wrong. Any and all of the infrastructure to support such a market is wrong. Anyone involved in buying, aiding, or abetting slavery or organ running is guilty of committing one of the most grievous and wretched offences known to humanity.

But yeah, it's absolutely your right to do with your body what you want. It's just a complete wrong for anyone else to do what they want with your body.