This house will legalize the sale of organs.

First, I will briefly discuss the nature of ELO ratings. An ELO rating is generally an integer that can be used to compare one person's skill in some field to another person's skill. ELO's do not scale linearly, rather the distribution of ELO values is reminscent of a bell curve. On this particular site, all new debaters have an ELO of 2000. The first few debates can dramatically change this -- by hundreds of points in some cases. However, for each debate won, you can expect a smaller and smaller increase in your ELO. This is simply the nature of the ELO rating system.This is relevant, as it pertains to my opponent's request in Round 1 that he face an opponent with a 3000 ELO -- a particularly high rating that only a few people on debate.org would possess. The opponent's ELO is just under 2300, a rating considerably lower than 3000. Now the opponent stated he wanted to debate someone with a higher ELO than himself, a much more reasonable request. However, this desire was not made clear until this round, after the debate was already accepted. My accepting this debate was not a choice brought on by indifference to my opponent's wishes, but instead was the result of reasonable thinking. My opponent's debate had been in the challenge period for a while and I know that 3000+ ELO'ers are rare. Given those facts, it was acceptable for me to accept this debate. Where We StandNow, my opponent has stated this round that this debate should be considered a tie. I also reject this. In my Round 1 clarification, I gave the opponent plenty of material to work with. What's more, the opponent is the affirmative claimant, so he should already have a case prepared. The fact that he chose not to post that, but instead post a short paragraph explaining why he thinks this whole thing should be a tie, demonstrates a laziness and short-sightedness that is not deserving of a tie. As it currently stands, my opponent is losing this debate. He made a claim in the debate title, but provided no arguments supporting that claim. What's worse, he didn't even make the attempt to. Now, my opponent has a few rounds left to post an argument. Let us hope it is a good one, so that this debate can proceed as it was meant to.A Brief Counter-ArgumentIn good faith, I will present a few reasons why the house should not legalize the sale of organs. This will be brief and generalized, as I do not have a case to specifically cater them to.1. Devaluation of Human LifeIn today's world, except for rare cases, a dead human is generally worthless to the living, in any urgent sense. It's possible that the body will be used for scientific research, but the gains from any one body are so small that there is little motive to let a human die for that purpose. In the world my opponent proposes, the sale of organs would be legal. A reasonable assumption is that hospitals would have the right to harvest and sell these organs once a patient has died. This would give the hospital a massive incentive to allow some patients to die, by providing them with shoddy healthcare, as the rewards from letting them die far outstrip the punishments. When you turn a human body into something more valuable dead than alive, there becomes an incentive to simply let them die. 2. Liability Issues.If we were to allow the legal sale of organs, this would drastically increase the amount of human organs in the marketplace, naturally. This would mean that any given organ might move between multiple third party sellers. If something ended up being wrong with the organ, due to mishandling or lack of proper care, and this organ was placed into a patient who later died as a result, it isn't clear who would be at fault. It's possible that the hospital would be to blame, but they'd point the finger at these third party companies who would all claim it was someone else's fault. Due to the lack of oversight inherent in the capitalist selling of free-market goods, it wouldn't be clear who should pay when an organ is mistreated. If no one is getting punished for mishandling, then mishandling will become more common, leading to waste and the endangerment of patient's lives. Only in today's world, with the controlled, non-profit and immediate transfer of organs can proper oversight be insured. And that'll do for now. I look forward to the next round and dearly hope that my opponent makes some good arguments.