Forums → The Tavern → Your blood or your money?
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Which would you rather donate? I thought about this as I passed a blood donation drive, and saw quite a few people lined up. You never really see people lined up to donate money, do you? There are two likely reasons for this:
1) It takes more time to donate blood, and there are less places to do it. Hence, lines.
2) You don't have to spend as much conscious effort replenishing your lost blood compared to your lost money.
But, I still feel like people are much more okay with donating blood. Which is kind of weird, if you think about it. I mean, you literally need blood to live. Your life will be much more difficult without money, but losing money is much less lethal than blood loss. You are giving part of what enables you to live to some random stranger, and people (at least where I live) do this seemingly on the spur of the moment.
Furthermore, it can be quite uncomfortable and time consuming (depending on methods used). You can't start a conversation about blood donation without someone bringing up a story about how it took the technician 500 tries to find a vein. The blood loss also leaves you noticeably weaker. Some of my thinner friends can't engage in physical activities for quite a while after donating blood.
AND, while you are constantly replenishing your blood, you only have so much of it at any single moment. Its not like money, where there is no upper limit to how much you can possess. Sure, bigger people have more blood, but it isn't like people can be comfortably blood filled to the point where donating a gallon or so is no big deal. There are no super bloody people the way there are super rich people.
With blood, its like pretty much every healthy person is lower middle class. We can give up a little without dying, but there will be consequences.
It takes at least 4 weeks to replenish the blood cells lost during donation. Working for four weeks full time at a pretty low wage job, you can make about 1000 dollars. But, somehow, donating blood seems like it is a lot easier than donating 1000 dollars. Granted, you don't have to actively "work" for your blood, but you are still giving up something crucial that takes a similar amount of time to replenish.
So, which do you value more? Your blood, or your money?
- 53 Replies
I probably value my blood more.
I don't have a real answer for it, but I guess because my blood is mine, while the money I spend or earn hasn't been flowing through my veins.
My money,I dont need all my blood to live.
Yes, but you don't need any of your money to live.
I probably value my blood more.
I don't have a real answer for it, but I guess because my blood is mine, while the money I spend or earn hasn't been flowing through my veins.
But, its like you said. You earn money. You don't really earn your blood, your body just produces it. Also, when you donate, you give more or less ten percent of all the blood in your body (you donate one pint, you have about 10-12 pints). So, would you rather donate ten percent of your total wealth (savings, college savings, stocks and bonds, etc), or ten percent of your total blood?
I'd rather donate my blood. I can get that back without doing much. :P
I would rather donate blood. Blood doesn't cost money because I can just reproduce it. Also money is money and you have to work to get it back.
During Christmas time, I have a money giving problem. You here a person say, "Donate to the poor!" and I end up emptying my pocket.
Your body will be producing blood until you die, at which point you'll have no use for it anyways. Money isn't the same situation. With money, you can't say wether or not you'll actually keep making the money you currently are, and if you stop making this money, you may still need the money.
What i'm trying to say is, if your body stops making blood, it's because your dead and the blood is useless to you anyways. If you stop making money, it's still useful to you and you still need it. So blood will always be useful and unending as long as you live, but the same can't be said for money.
During Christmas time, I have a money giving problem. You here a person say, "Donate to the poor!" and I end up emptying my pocket.
But, how much money do you carry around with you relative to your total money? You probably still aren't donating 10% of your total wealth or a months wage, both of which could be compared to the amount given when donating blood.
I would rather donate blood. Blood doesn't cost money because I can just reproduce it
Blood isn't free, your body has to spend energy replenishing the supply. If you have never had a hard time getting food, this really is not an issue, since you can simply eat more to make up for this. However, if you did not have the means to get more food, donating blood could be very inconvinient to you. It probably takes about 600 calories to replenish the blood loss, which (over the span of four weeks) is hardly anything to an average person in a first world country.
Blood given during a blood drive is not enough to make you weaker and, you get like free donuts and apple juice.
Also, money requires work to resupply (unless you win the lottery) blood does not.
They both take time and energy. Okay, so far we have two estimates for the cost of blood donation:
1) 10 percent of wealth. This is surely too high, since there is no upper limit of wealth.
2) A months wage. This is also too high, since (as has been noted) it takes more effort to work than to make blood.
So, lets add a third estimate. We'll assume a mean hourly wage of 20 dollars, and an average price of 10 calories = 1 cent. So, given that it takes probably an hour to donate blood, and about 5-6 bucks to buy food to replenish blood, that gives us 25 dollars in lost opportunities. BUT, you also are not supposed to engage in strenuous activities for the rest of the day. We'll consider this inconvenience to be worth about five dollars (yes, this is fairly arbitrary. But it is more than 0 dollars and less than 10, so five seemed alright).
Therefore, we now have a rough opportunity cost of blood donation at 30 dollars.
So: would you rather donate a pint of blood, or donate 30 dollars (AKA half a new video game) to a charity of your choice?
I'd rather donate blood because it comes back, money doesn't. And it doesn't take that long. My high school does it as a program about 3-4 times a year. So, yes I value my money more.
I try to donate both of them equally.
Blood donation effects my weight in long run.
Blood donation effects my weight in long run.
Lose 40 pounds in 4 weeks, donate blood daily!
Lose 40 pounds in 4 weeks, donate blood daily!
No, really I lost a lot of weight for no reason at all after donation
So, most people seem to value money more than blood. But, this in the context of voluntary donation. What if we changed the context? Ignoring the impossibility of this next question, which would you respond to worse (and why, obviously):
A 100 dollar tax increase, or a mandatory, yearly payment of a pint of your own blood? Assume that if you refuse either to make either payment, you will face jail time.
Yes, not everyone can give blood. And it would be impractical to conduct an operation of this scale. But that isn't the point of this question. While I have much less of a problem giving my blood away than my money, the idea of my blood being taken away is much more horrifying. A "blood tax" sounds like something out of a horror movie, while a simple tax increase sounds like... real life.
OP has asked an interesting question. To add to this, the peer pressures of social conscience may have something to do with it: blood donation in the current social dynamic has a much higher "heroism" status due to advertising that we have a constant shortage of blood for transfusion, which in turn leads to proposing that blood has a market value due to demand and should be treated as such. Opportunity cost, after all, is the reason why I've donated money on a regular basis, but have not yet gotten around to donating blood: at no point in my day have I been able to drop what I was doing, queue up, and donate said blood.
I don't have a real answer for it, but I guess because my blood is mine, while the money I spend or earn hasn't been flowing through my veins.
You know... your blood may be yours, but your blood cells die every coupla months and your marrow and kidneys produce new ones, right? The blood that you have in you now have no red blood cells in common with the blood that you had in you five months ago!!!
A similar rationale is used by Jehovah's witnesses in refusing blood transfusions. Some of them will permit autologous blood transfusions (where you donate your own blood for retransfusion later on, if the need arise), but since they believe it is the carrier of their sacred life force, to take somebody else's would be a violation of the highest order, requiring excommunication.
You know... your blood may be yours, but your blood cells die every coupla months and your marrow and kidneys produce new ones, right? The blood that you have in you now have no red blood cells in common with the blood that you had in you five months ago!!!
Only Dr. Strop would bring this up.
I would donate money. While it is good to donate blood lots of people do it. I am not that type that is the Universal Donor or receiver so my blood couldn't help tons of people. My money on the other hand would help whoever I wanted.
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