If you were required to be an organ donor, you’d save lives while setting yourself free. You’ll also give someone else a chance at taking the spot you had at work and your apartment.
If you were required to be an organ donor, you’d save lives while setting yourself free. You’ll also give someone else a chance at taking the spot you had at work and your apartment.
I guess this question has to be looked at from multiple dimensions.
From a purely economical and short-term perspective, maybe yes. Every human not contributing to society at an at least average level, is consuming ressources and driving up the costs. No matter if it’s due to illness, disability, depression, age, weakness, missing intelligence etc.
From a social perspective, such a program quickly can turn into a nightmare: First of all, everyone would be under pressure. If you’re not a constant top performer, you’d feel like a burden on society. And the bar to be a top performer would constantly rise as more and more people on the ‘lower end’ decide to end their lives.
Second, it’s impossible to quantify the value of a person holistically. People can provide no direct economic value and still be an important member of society. Like emotionally supporting others, being loved, providing jobs etc.
Furthermore - in a society where at some point the ‘weak’ are expected to ‘voluntarily’ end their lives, people would be constantly scared. No one would be willing to take any risks because getting injured, getting a depression etc. would be like an implicit death penalty. This would again lead to devastating effects on economy.
I personally think that everyone should be allowed to end their lives if they really deeply want it. But this should never be expected, actively promoted or pushed for. And I think it should involve at least a consultation with a medical professional to avoid hasty decisions due to a temporary crisis.
I mean, yes, but I really don’t think anyone is arguing for the opposite when talking about legal euthanasia and I find it disingenuous to even suggest it. Let’s not forget that almost anyone can commit suicide regardless of it being legal or medically assisted and this has been the case and will be the case for the entirety of human history. Look at Japan and similar countries/societies where the cultural and societal pressures already have the consequences you described without it being legal.
Arguing for legal euthanasia is really just saying that people should have a safer, more informed and more dignified option if they really intend to make that decision, and guaranteeing that even the people who currently can’t end their lives on their own can still exercise that right if they want to. If you want to prevent pointless suicides the right way to do it isn’t to take away the possibility entirely, it’s making sure that society doesn’t give people reasons to want to kill themselves.
EDIT: I’ve just realized that I initially misread OP’s question which specifically asks about “voluntary” euthanasia. The comment I’m replying to is more relevant to the original discussion than my response. Still can’t shake off the feeling that speaking about something like this even purely hypothetically can only do more harm than good in current times, as it’s very easy to imagine that once the concept of “voluntary euthanasia” begins floating around, people who want to argue in bad faith against legal euthanasia will just conflate the two to make the rational side look like a death cult.
It’s so SIMPLE, yet so hard for so many to grasp.
These arguments are kind of dripping in slippery slope fallacy. That’s a potential outcome but by no means the only one. I’d hazard that’s a pretty worst case interpretation. I think your average person doesn’t evaluate themselves solely through the lens of economic value. Capitalismwould nudge people toward your slope, but I don’t think humans would totally cooperate with the effort.