From the Freakanomics Blog, This Idea Must Die
… So it’s an area, it’s a dimension in which we have a lot of power. We’re good at it, but the problem with this idea that every last life is valuable and every life should be saved, essentially at any cost, is that the kind of innovations that we end up making, and the expense which is exact in terms of GDP, end up being huge. So the problem is that right now healthcare costs are spiraling out of control. So almost 20% of our GDP is spent on healthcare. But much of it is not effective, okay. And it’s not effective because we hold the idea that everyone needs to be kept alive kind of no matter what. And so, we do incredibly expensive things, and we encourage innovation by pharmaceutical companies, and by medical device makers, which find solutions at any cost,…
From Steve Levitt, which I pulled from the transcript.
Even though Mr. Levitt is from the ‘left’, I find myself agreeing with him on many issues. Not all life is sacred, and to take it even further some people are biologically better than others. Perhaps to help reduce healthcare spending, it would make economic sense to ration free healthcare, especially the most expensive procedures, to high-IQ people since those individuals tend to contribute the most to the economy and society, so keeping high-IQ people alive would provide the highest ROI for taxpayer healthcare dollars…That’s similar to my idea of the high-IQ basic income. That’s why for the sake of our economy we need to abandon this liberal concept of the sacredness of life and put more emphasis on ROI, maximization of public resources, and creating optimal socioeconomic environments for the smartest people.
People like myself are pro-life for the people who are the most deserving of it. Liberals, who claim to be pro-choice, are actually pro-life for those least cognitively or economically deserving of it. They, the left, are pro-choice for people with ‘good’ genes, such as genes for high-IQ, but are pro-life for the most undesirable. The left wants a nation of biological losers, all dependent on a welfare state that will be paid for by a handful of productive people. Look at how outraged the ‘pro choice’ left was when Steven D. Levitt posited in the book Freakanomics that abortion could reduce crime. I don’t want to make this too racial, although the left was especially offended at the implication that the abortion of black babies from welfare mothers could reduce crime, the left couldn’t care less about aborting white or Asian babies. If Levitt explicitly stated that aborting the babies from rich, white parents reduced crime, I guarantee there would have been no outrage from the left.
That’s why I was kinda confused as to why Steve Sailer so strongly attacked Levitt’s premise. Even if the data and research is not 100% conclusive, it seems like something Steve should support at least tacitly. But by attacking the study, Steve is giving ammunition to his leftist, anti-HBD opposition. Steve is right about most things, but wrong on this. Mr. Levitt, to his credit, is advancing an HBD-centric solution to a long-standing social problem, and it’s understandable why this makes the left mad, but I’m not sure why Steve joined the bandwagon.
Related:
World’s ‘Smartest Man’ Supports Eugenics
The Daily View: Abortion Debate, Economic Recovery, Political Dysfunction, American Exceptionalism