Alvin Roth

speaker

677 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 11 May

Alvin Roth’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas · 353 | Alvin Roth on the Economics of Morally Contested Markets · 11 May 2026 podcast

You shouldn't be able to sell body parts.

You shouldn't be able to buy them.

That commoditizes people in a way that we just shouldn't do.

Yeah.

The other more nuanced argument is only poor people are going to want to sell their kidneys and they're going to be coerced to do this terrible thing, which is a wonderful thing if they do it altruistically to save someone's life.

But it would be a terrible thing if they did it just in order to be paid.

Right.

So those are the two arguments.

And that it would corrupt the medical profession and do things like that.

So there's a parallel argument to be made.

Another market I talk about in my book is the market for blood and blood plasma.

So that's different than kidneys.

You can give blood or plasma frequently, whereas you only have one extra kidney.

But

Also, it's against the law in many parts of the world to pay plasma donors.

And plasma is on the World Health Organization's list of essential pharmaceuticals.

Plasma itself and the pharmaceutical products that can only be derived from human plasma.

So if you wanted to start a hospital anywhere in the world, the World Health Organization says you must have a bunch of plasma products.

Those are essential pharmaceuticals.

You can't operate your hospital without it.

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