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I mean it at the systems-level, much as everyone else who uses the term does.
While I disagree that the current financial barrier to reproduction was an intentional design choice (and rather the inevitable outcome of an aging population trying desperately to keep an asset price bubble inflated until they're dead), I don't think it necessarily holds for other eugenics systems either. It is not the fault of the retarded that reality is biased against them, but the fact remains that it is, and in a zero-sum system [where paying for them to exist ostensibly comes at the cost of fertility for everyone who isn't retarded] that has consequences.
Eugenics simply asks "how many more fingers do you want on that scale?", and I contend that even an answer of "none" is still doing eugenics, at least from the perspective of those who would be on the low side of it.
It's probably important to note that genetic improvement is the private-est property you could ever have, which creates a huge liability for communists because that is (or quickly becomes, for capital begets capital) impossible to redistribute. Even the most milquetoast socialist would bristle far more at the thought of "trickle-down genetics" than they do its economic counterpart, which is arguably the root of why others are correct to worry about permitting that in excess of the current reality-dictated base rate.
Seems we both agree that we want to see the financial sector greatly reduced in size. That’s one of the major cancers contributing to the stultification of the industrial sector. The reality of what you’ve described has been known among eugenicists forever, and that’s where they’ve had the hardest time presenting their case. The cold equations are just as you say. So, civilizations decide where they’re going to draw the line at. I’m of the view that sooner or later these problems are going to catch up with us. Obviously outright murdering people or forcibly sterilizing them is just out of the question (and for a hundred different reasons). But then of course there’s the real worry of an ordinary man and woman being prevented from marrying or reproducing. If I was about to marry a woman I was in love with and we were preparing to sign the documents and some state licensed physician comes in and says, “Oh I’m sorry but you see, we’ve determined you wouldn’t fit our preferred reproductive selection model, so your application for marriage is hereby nullified and prohibited;” my only response is going to be to look at them and say, “Who the fuck are you dude?” This is always the worry people have. It’s with the logical implications of where a society like that leads you. It has nothing to do with the science.
We’ve known eugenics works. We’ve practiced it for thousands of years. It works with plants. Dogs. Horses. Why wouldn’t it work with humans? (Behind the scenes, we know it works, and geneticists themselves will admit it to you.) It’s the policy prescriptions and how they’re implemented. Do we permit an “anything goes” unrestrained right to free choice as we currently have, except reward privileged marriages that are eugenically certified with financial benefits? Do we offer them permanently free housing for life if they follow state guidelines? Do we give enhanced social security benefits for individuals that undergo voluntary reversible sterilization? I think there are many ethical ways to practice eugenics, but I don’t know how to clear the board mentally with those people to have a level headed discussion about it.
My response to that is slightly different and delivered slightly under the speed of sound.
Well, let's assume you're out of room for all of your population to be economically viable, so you go across the border and kill the people currently occupying that space who don't decide to answer the eugenics question the way I would. That's still outright murdering people, it's just that it's not your people you're murdering.
I also take the slightly more aggressive view that 'forcibly sterilizing' can also be accomplished by intentionally destroying the social systems/commons that made reproduction possible in the first place, especially if the people doing that are past breeding age and just want to prop up their retirement (or avoid having to ever engage productively with the opposite sex if not) at the expense of others being able to afford families. So yeah, I legitimately do think we've forcibly sterilized more than a few people, and it's kind of a small wonder that they don't answer the eugenics question in the above way given that's the norm for humanity.
Well, that's kind of why you have the kind of secret society bullshit that tends to go along with discussion of eugenics. My answer tends to be "don't- if population control has to happen, then it'll happen naturally at a socioeconomic inflection point no matter what anyone else does; we can and arguably should sort it out then, and not before or after". (Of course, that also tends to mean that any martial virtue is selected out of your society, like what happened in Europe in the two Great Mass Suicides around 1915 and 1940.)
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