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Oh, this is a bit old already, but since you expressed genuine confusion, I figured I'd address it. Trafficking is engaging in trade of other humans, and surrogacy fits that definition perfectly.
This sounds like one of Stevenson's Persuasive Definitions i.e changing the meaning of a word without changing its elicited feelings. If this is trafficking, then trafficking is now not inherently immoral, as is typically implied (no one talks about traffickers as ethical people). For you to get to that point, you would have to demonstrate that surrogacy was immoral. Which is your view, I realize, but no one in this thread has put forward a convincing argument for that.
I was under the impression that it always was defined as the trade in human beings. My objection to it is that buying and selling other people is inherently immoral. Asking what's wrong with it is like asking "what's wrong with sexual exploitation?".
No, I don't think that the common usage of the term.
From DHS:
Wikipedia:
and Merriam-Webster:
So no, human trafficking by common usage is not considered to include any and all instance of people buying other people. The key point is the coercion by various means and intention to use the purchased human in forced labor or prostitution.
In my defense, in my language "human trafficking" would literally translate to "human trade".
Anyway, you're really ok with people just purchasing children? If Bill Gates started buying up kids of all ages by the thousands, it would be fine as long as he just wants to become their legal guardian, and not to force them to do anything that's not expected of kids?
I reject the use of "purchase" in both the surrogacy context and this example. It strikes me as the non-central fallacy.
In any case, if Bill Gates were to pay for surrogacy or adopt kids until he had 1000, I would be skeptical that he could provide the kind of fatherly relationship I think many people expect a father to have with his children, adopted or otherwise. More likely, he just pays for their schooling and housing and lets them grow up as if he just had one kid. Does giving 1000 kids a great shot in life negate the probably less-than-ideal fatherly relationship he may have with them? That might be an interesting conversation, but it certainly would not make sense to try and apply the negative connotation of "human trafficking" to such a situation. Not to me anyways.
The "non-central fallacy" was just Scott's way of saying "I can't point to anything wrong with what you're saying, but I don't like how you're using it rhetorically".
To be clear, what I meant would look more like this. After we decide whether that's buying a person, we can move on to what's the difference between that and surrogacy.
Right so I specifically picked a relatively functional billionaire for the example, to evoke the image of him providing decent housing and education to the kids he's buying. It might even feel justifiable from a utilitarian perspective, but to me treating the parent-child relationships like they're stocks on an exchange is already a horror in itself.
Technical correctness is the lowest form of being correct. What exactly about the objection "you're equivocating between the common emotionally charged example and the technically valid yet quite different in chargedness one" don't you like?
If nothing else, then the fact that the way something is emotionally charged is mostly a question of propaganda, not of how true and accurate something is. But aside from that the question that was raised in his blog post (is taxation theft?) is deep and valid, with equally deep and valid answers. You can go with a straight up "No. It's a binding relationship between the rulers and the ruled, that comes with rights and duties on both sides." or with "Yes, but it's necessary for a civilized society" or whatever. He picked the laziest way to address it.
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