(July 11, 2015 at 7:17 pm)Pyrrho Wrote:(July 11, 2015 at 7:11 pm)Parkers Tan Wrote: I can't speak for her, but it seems like the natural next step once you grant the government the power to determine who can reproduce, because that process will either be random and arbitrary, or it will have criteria.
Bureaucracies detest randomness, and will surely move to establish criteria. And while genetic fitness is not the only criteria I can conceive, it is the one which, I believe, would prove most alluring.
Mind you, I'm not thinking you support it.
I was thinking more in terms of limiting the number of children each person could have. With the second option of the poll, the expressed goal is to prevent starvation, not to genetically engineer humanity.
The goal of eugenics could be introduced by a supporter of it in situations in which there is not a population problem. Or it could be introduced when there is a population problem. So I see it as a completely separate issue, not as a natural or logical extension of the ideas in the opening post.
I get what you're saying, but I'm simply pointing out that others are quite happy to treat that distinction as meaningless once we grant the government the power of sterilization, and I have no doubt at all that politicians would pander to the uncomfortably large segment of the electorate that is still, in this day and age, quite racist.