Michael Kinsley has an intriguing article in MSNBC this morning  on Democracy and Traffic Jams.  The brunt of Kinsley's article is an examination of the motivations for applying market motivations to (formerly) public goods.   He starts by examining the the central London experiment for a congestion tax:

...all eyes are on London, where the authorities have imposed an $8 daily “congestion charge” on anyone driving a car into the city center. This has had the desired effect of dramatically reducing traffic and making the drive much easier for those who choose to pay. But the experiment remains controversial.

The controversy, in Kinsley's view is that consumers are now paying a tax for something they used to get for free.   Additionally, the tax is NOT directed towards road maintenance but rather towards the far more abstract goal of simply reducing the number of cars that participate.  Yep, there's some grumbling from the usual suspects ("but this will hurt the poor the most!") but all of this is pretty straightforward econ to me.   Any bickering about this solution (as Kinsley points out) is almost exclusively partisan.

This side argument made by Kinsley, however, was a bit weird:

But the counterargument is also strong. It is easier to see in the case of a one-on-one deal. For example: Should a rich person who needs a kidney replacement be allowed to buy one from a healthy poor person? The answer of all the advanced democracies is: no. Human kidneys should not be part of the dollar economy.

...The difference between kidneys and traffic charges is that only one side of the traffic deal is voluntary.

The *real* difference between kidneys and traffic charges is something altogether.   The polities of advanced democracies take a very strong stance towards the inviolability of the individual.   People, unlike products, can not be subdivided into constituent parts and resold.  The assumption of inviolability permeates our institutions and assumptions about others.  It's one of the underlying reasons that debates around abortion, stem cells, cloning, and genetic engineering are so fierce and front-and-center.

For example, we easily talk about how the the basket of rights associated with an inviolable human are unalienable.   No matter what you or anyone else does, your right to free speech (for example) can't be absolutely separated from you the individual.   Your right to free speech doesn't apply to your right hand, your mouth or any specific component but rather the entire abstract individual. 

It's a little shameful, really -- a skilled political commentator like Kinsley should know better than this.