If people started trying earnestly to convert wealth/income into more kids, we’d come under Malthusian constraints again, and before that much backsliding in living standards and downward social mobility for most people, which would trigger a lot of cultural upheaval and potential backlash (e.g., calls for more welfare/redistribution and attempts to turn culture back against “eugenics”/”social Darwinism”, which will probably succeed just like they succeeded before). It seems ethically pretty fraught to try to push the world in that direction, to say the least, and it has a lot of other downsides, so I think at this point a much better plan to increase human intelligence is to make available genetic enhancements that parents can voluntarily choose for their kids, government-subsidized if necessary to make them affordable for everyone.
If we made “spend money on kids” cool again, do you think we automatically get selection-for-intelligence for free, or is there another missing bit?
If people started trying earnestly to convert wealth/income into more kids, we’d come under Malthusian constraints again, and before that much backsliding in living standards and downward social mobility for most people, which would trigger a lot of cultural upheaval and potential backlash (e.g., calls for more welfare/redistribution and attempts to turn culture back against “eugenics”/”social Darwinism”, which will probably succeed just like they succeeded before). It seems ethically pretty fraught to try to push the world in that direction, to say the least, and it has a lot of other downsides, so I think at this point a much better plan to increase human intelligence is to make available genetic enhancements that parents can voluntarily choose for their kids, government-subsidized if necessary to make them affordable for everyone.
There would likely be some selection process, but that would be very slow compared to all the other factors at play.