An Approach to Eugenics

Stocks keep going up. The S&P 500 has risen over thirty points in the past two days alone. We predict at the minimum dow 18000 by the end of year and S&P 500 at 2100. The creative class is being rewarded with rising stock and real estate prices for the value these individuals bring to society. The left seeks economic crisis so the wealth creators lose money. Not going to happen. Technological and economic progress is unstoppable. Web 2.0 valuations, Bay Area real estate, Facebook stock, bitcoin, tuition, healthcare, gas prices, energy, oil …all will keep going up with no end in sight. In a form of social Darwinism, those unfit to thrive in this economic boom are being pushed to the margins where they belong. So much money to be had in so few hands. So much prosperity in the kingdom of Palo Alto.

The Audacious Epigone has some interesting statistics about abortion and eugenics

We believe conservatives can come around to eugenics if it’s marketed as a way to reduce entitlement spending and crime. The idea of eugenics may seem repugnant, but we predict it will be inevitable as the entitlement spending problem spirals out of control. Now now, but maybe within the next fifty or so years eugenics will be given serious consideration. While America is encumbered by political correctness, other countries such as China are taking the lead. From edge.org:

Chinese eugenics will quickly become even more effective, given its massive investment in genomic research on human mental and physical traits. BGI-Shenzhen employs more than 4,000 researchers. It has far more “next-generation” DNA sequencers that anywhere else in the world, and is sequencing more than 50,000 genomes per year. It recently acquired the California firm Complete Genomics to become a major rival to Illumina.

The BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets of sets of IQ-predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications. These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually—but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of “preimplantation embryo selection” might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness.

Does this pose a threat to the American economic and foreign policy hegemony? Not yet, but by failing to take advantage of our scientific ingenuity, we risk economic malaise and general degradation of the populace. The technology for Eugenics already exists, it’s just that those who do advocate it have to fend off scurrilous attacks and loss of credibility.

We have argued eugenics could help solve many of the otherwise persistent problems that plague American society such as crime, poverty, and out of control entitlement spending. To outright dismiss the potential good that can come from a trial eugenics program shows a deference to irrational emotion than objectivity and reason. A benefit of eugenics is that no one dies (depending on your definition on conception), unlike abortion. The process and gradual and painless.

Unlike eugenic programs of the past, this trial program would be elective rather than mandatory. The first step would be to make the concept of eugenics more palatable to the general public with a media campaign involving books, documentaries, commercials and brochures about how selective reproduction can improve society. One approach is that couples or individuals with genes that produce unfavorable phenotype would be offered some sort of monetary reward for not procreating. Since poverty seems to a hereditary along with IQ, those who are the poorest would probably more the most inclined to take-up the offer. The eugenics program could be spit into two division: a program for individuals harboring genes that we know produce undesirable characteristics and those who are severely economically disadvantaged where there is no yet identified biological marker, but we do know a hereditary component exists.