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free trade & free markets international affairs property rights

Idaho Foils Foul Harvest

Paul Jacob defends an apparent abridgment of free trade.

One can be for free trade yet still demand, while sticking to principle, certain restrictions on international trade.

The State of Idaho has demonstrated one sort of restriction compatible with a free society’s free-​trade rules. “As of July 1, it will be illegal in Idaho for health insurers to cover an organ transplant or post-​transplant care performed in China or any country known to have participated in forced organ harvesting,” explains Frank Fang in The Epoch Times (No. 508, A5). The legislation had been passed unanimously in both legislative houses earlier in the month and was signed by the governor on April 10.

Idaho wasn’t the first state to do this, following Texas last year and Utah this year, with its law going into effect on May 1.

The problem to be addressed? The suspiciously short waiting time for organ transplants in China, especially after the Chinese government cracked down on the Falun Gong decades ago. 

“In 2019, the independent China Tribunal in London concluded that the CCP had been forcibly harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience for years ‘on a substantial scale,’ with Falun Gong practitioners being the ‘principal source’ of human organs,” according to Mr. Fang.

This is not protectionism. And it really isn’t any unwarranted regulation on trade. For even in the freest of societies, with 100 percent free trade and freedom of contract, the sale and purchase of stolen goods is unlawful.

Rightly prohibited.

If anything has been taken away unjustly, it’s the internal organs of political prisoners by the Chinazis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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4 replies on “Idaho Foils Foul Harvest”

Federal law ought to block purchase from foreign and domestic entities of insurance offering such coverage. In the case of provision of coverage by foreign entities, detection would be difficult; therefore, accordingly, penalties should be very great.

Insurers, like anyone else, should be liable for facilitating the actual theft /​receipt of actual stolen property.

But I wouldn’t preemptively forbid an insurer to cover collision damage in County X just because that county has a high auto theft rate or corrupt government.

A more appropriate analogy would not refer merely to the region in which the insurer or client did business, but to the organization with which the insurer did business. A ban on doing business with a organization known for using stolen parts would be perfectly appropriate. 

The Chinese state is very much running the trade in organs in China.

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