If genetic engineering proves effective and expensive parents should have the right to sign a contract binding on their future genetically engineered child which transfers a percentage of this child’s future earnings to the company that financed the child’s genetic engineering. Besides benefiting society by promoting genetic engineering, such contracts could be freely traded and would have a market price that would provide a powerful signal about the value of different types of genetic engineering.
The general hypothetically good idea of a government is to have one group that can do such things for the common good and to avoid coordination problems. It often doesnt exactly fulfill that role, but that is an indictment of their behavior rather than license for other groups to behave the same.
Agreed. But I’m even less comfortable with poor parents not being able to buy genetic enhancements for their future children that would more than pay for themselves.
To make it less personal.… imagine that a government wanted to extend the advantages of GE to more of their citizens as possible. They don’t have the money to subsidies it right now so they offer something like your plan. Still, assume that <10% of the population is going to be engineered.
Group by genetic intervention since you don’t know which will be best.
For each couple a projection of their childs likely earning potential given their parents economic status vs the rest of the population is calculated.
If a significantly larger portion of the subjects of that same intervention beat the trend the company gets to claim X% of the tax revenue from those people for their working lives. (note, the subjects do not pay a higher tax rate than other people with the same income)
It’s a long term investment but if the intervention is good it could be worth a very large amount.
The companies interest is in making sure those kids surpass expectations.
Does this bother people the same way the OP’s suggestion does?
It strikes me that you might even be able to do this with non-GE cases. Companies could be offered a similar deal for intervening in the lives of poor, inner city youth through educational programs etc. If they win, everyone wins especially the kids and the value of the contracts could vary as the company applies new interventions or new evidence comes to light about old interventions that have been applied to subjects.
Free Range Slavery. Slavery 4.0. More pleasant for the cattle, more productive for the human ranchers.
AFAIK, an anarchist fellow named Stefan Molyneux came up with the idea of taxation as the latest iteration of slavery as the forced extraction of value by human ranchers from their human cattle.
I’m not an anarchist myself, but I like the analysis.
Slavery typically means you have a boss who directly tells you what to do, and not only during your working time but 24⁄7.
Taxation typically means you have to pay money to the boss, but the details of how you spend your time are your choice.
To bring it in the near mode, if someone would replace the law “you pay 50% of your earnings to the state” by “you pay 30% of your earnings to the state, and 20% to the Evil Corp”, you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference. Slightly different tax forms, maybe having to fill more papers. On the other hand, you would certainly notice if someone would make you a slave.
Yes, there is a common superset for both slavery and taxation, which means “someone else is using your life to make themselves even more rich”, but there is either a different word for that, or someone has to invent a new one.
Slavery typically means you have a boss who directly tells you what to do, and not only during your working time but 24⁄7.
Not at all. Slavery is human ownership. Slavery is the right to compel by force.
The interesting part of Molyneux’s analysis is looking at slaves as a herd the human rancher wants to extract value from, and showing how the value extraction strategies have improved over time. Or at least arguing that they have.
What you describe is just one of many strategies of extracting value by force from your property.
It would be very interesting to see a real accounting analysis of slavery over time. What were the margins for a US plantation? For serfs? Has anyone actually seen these numbers?
To bring it in the near mode, if someone would replace the law “you pay 50% of your earnings to the state” by “you pay 30% of your earnings to the state, and 20% to the Evil Corp”, you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.
Depends on what the state spends the money on and what Evil Corp spends the money on.
Putting aside the ethics for a moment, this is fairly close to Clinton’s Hope Scholarships. He set up a system where students got their college fees payed for in exchange for a percentage of future earnings—a doctor would repay a lot to the fund, a teacher would repay much less. Overall it would all average out. This plan failed because future teachers were much more motivated to accept the deal than future doctors. Only those who expected to earn comparatively little will take a deal that takes a percentage of future earnings—if you have a reason to expect you are going to be wealthy, you go for the fixed rate student loans.
As a minor problem, it seems like you might face something like the same problem here. If there are two companies offering these services then parents who plan on high-income kids will avoid the profit-sharing plan. Of course, parents may not be able to plan on this reliably and in secret—if all you are ordering is a kid with 200 IQ and a competitive nature, predicting their outcomes is difficult for anyone.
But as a major problem, if we can get just a little more specific in the genes we tweak.… GenEng Corp will be highly disincentivized from activating the altruism gene; the last thing they want is a contract entitling them to 2% of a world-renowned brain surgeon who works pro bono for Doctors Without Boarders. Genes for greed and competitiveness, if identified, suddenly become an investment strategy. Genes for empathy, altruism, and moral reflection are poor business. I would also expect any genes relating to musical ability and artistic expression to be considered ‘risky’; if you have a potential billionaire in the works, the last thing you want is for her to be distracted by a muse.
Oh, also, intelligence is not really so very good a predictor for lifetime earnings, but longevity and a strong work ethic should do pretty well. Even a teacher’s salary starts to look good after getting a small yearly raise for 100 years. If longevity turns out to be profitable—and surely it would be? -- then lower intelligence and motivation might even be a good idea. You don’t want people who will get bored because they are not challenged. You want people who will work two jobs reliably for many decades, and who will order up a new batch of GenEng kids with their own contracts, without questioning the system.
What does “should have the right” mean? Should current parents who invest heavily in prenatal (or other pre-competence) improvements to a child have this right?
I’m generally uncomfortable with the idea of long-term contracts that don’t have fairly clear termination options. I think people and cultures change too much over a few decades to have any clue what’s going to be right for them (let alone others) in the far future.
And if you do include the standard options (primarily bankruptcy), it’s pretty easy to game: declare bankruptcy immediately, before you have any earnings.
If genetic engineering proves effective and expensive parents should have the right to sign a contract binding on their future genetically engineered child which transfers a percentage of this child’s future earnings to the company that financed the child’s genetic engineering. Besides benefiting society by promoting genetic engineering, such contracts could be freely traded and would have a market price that would provide a powerful signal about the value of different types of genetic engineering.
I am not terribly comfortable with the idea of people being bound by contracts they didn’t sign.
I am bound by many contracts signed by Congress and they didn’t even have well-aligned incentives.
The general hypothetically good idea of a government is to have one group that can do such things for the common good and to avoid coordination problems. It often doesnt exactly fulfill that role, but that is an indictment of their behavior rather than license for other groups to behave the same.
Agreed. But I’m even less comfortable with poor parents not being able to buy genetic enhancements for their future children that would more than pay for themselves.
Not unusual in asian countries. Housing often involves cross-generation contracts. But yes, I’m also uncomfortable with that.
Huh? If you mean something like inheriting a house with a mortgage on it, that’s quite different. You can refuse inheritance.
To make it less personal.… imagine that a government wanted to extend the advantages of GE to more of their citizens as possible. They don’t have the money to subsidies it right now so they offer something like your plan. Still, assume that <10% of the population is going to be engineered.
Group by genetic intervention since you don’t know which will be best.
For each couple a projection of their childs likely earning potential given their parents economic status vs the rest of the population is calculated.
If a significantly larger portion of the subjects of that same intervention beat the trend the company gets to claim X% of the tax revenue from those people for their working lives. (note, the subjects do not pay a higher tax rate than other people with the same income)
It’s a long term investment but if the intervention is good it could be worth a very large amount.
The companies interest is in making sure those kids surpass expectations.
Does this bother people the same way the OP’s suggestion does?
It strikes me that you might even be able to do this with non-GE cases. Companies could be offered a similar deal for intervening in the lives of poor, inner city youth through educational programs etc. If they win, everyone wins especially the kids and the value of the contracts could vary as the company applies new interventions or new evidence comes to light about old interventions that have been applied to subjects.
That sound like slavery to me.
More like taxation. You are not obligated to work, but if you do a part of your earnings goes to someone else.
Free Range Slavery. Slavery 4.0. More pleasant for the cattle, more productive for the human ranchers.
AFAIK, an anarchist fellow named Stefan Molyneux came up with the idea of taxation as the latest iteration of slavery as the forced extraction of value by human ranchers from their human cattle.
I’m not an anarchist myself, but I like the analysis.
The Story of Your Enslavement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbp6umQT58A
The Handbook of Human Ownership—A Manual for New Tax Farmers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k67_imEHTPE
I don’t like the proposed idea, but let’s not expand the meaning of the words.
Slavery typically means you have a boss who directly tells you what to do, and not only during your working time but 24⁄7.
Taxation typically means you have to pay money to the boss, but the details of how you spend your time are your choice.
To bring it in the near mode, if someone would replace the law “you pay 50% of your earnings to the state” by “you pay 30% of your earnings to the state, and 20% to the Evil Corp”, you probably wouldn’t even notice the difference. Slightly different tax forms, maybe having to fill more papers. On the other hand, you would certainly notice if someone would make you a slave.
Yes, there is a common superset for both slavery and taxation, which means “someone else is using your life to make themselves even more rich”, but there is either a different word for that, or someone has to invent a new one.
Do you think a person stops being a slave if the slave owner gives them 2 hours of free time per day?
Not at all. Slavery is human ownership. Slavery is the right to compel by force.
The interesting part of Molyneux’s analysis is looking at slaves as a herd the human rancher wants to extract value from, and showing how the value extraction strategies have improved over time. Or at least arguing that they have.
What you describe is just one of many strategies of extracting value by force from your property.
It would be very interesting to see a real accounting analysis of slavery over time. What were the margins for a US plantation? For serfs? Has anyone actually seen these numbers?
Depends on what the state spends the money on and what Evil Corp spends the money on.
For it to be taxation it has to be done by a government.
But the cost to the individual is the same.
Yes, but we still don’t let private entities go around and force people to pay taxes to them.
Divorce settlements often involve men being forced to pay a percentage of their income, and student loan obligations are not discharged in bankruptcy.
Putting aside the ethics for a moment, this is fairly close to Clinton’s Hope Scholarships. He set up a system where students got their college fees payed for in exchange for a percentage of future earnings—a doctor would repay a lot to the fund, a teacher would repay much less. Overall it would all average out. This plan failed because future teachers were much more motivated to accept the deal than future doctors. Only those who expected to earn comparatively little will take a deal that takes a percentage of future earnings—if you have a reason to expect you are going to be wealthy, you go for the fixed rate student loans.
As a minor problem, it seems like you might face something like the same problem here. If there are two companies offering these services then parents who plan on high-income kids will avoid the profit-sharing plan. Of course, parents may not be able to plan on this reliably and in secret—if all you are ordering is a kid with 200 IQ and a competitive nature, predicting their outcomes is difficult for anyone.
But as a major problem, if we can get just a little more specific in the genes we tweak.… GenEng Corp will be highly disincentivized from activating the altruism gene; the last thing they want is a contract entitling them to 2% of a world-renowned brain surgeon who works pro bono for Doctors Without Boarders. Genes for greed and competitiveness, if identified, suddenly become an investment strategy. Genes for empathy, altruism, and moral reflection are poor business. I would also expect any genes relating to musical ability and artistic expression to be considered ‘risky’; if you have a potential billionaire in the works, the last thing you want is for her to be distracted by a muse.
Oh, also, intelligence is not really so very good a predictor for lifetime earnings, but longevity and a strong work ethic should do pretty well. Even a teacher’s salary starts to look good after getting a small yearly raise for 100 years. If longevity turns out to be profitable—and surely it would be? -- then lower intelligence and motivation might even be a good idea. You don’t want people who will get bored because they are not challenged. You want people who will work two jobs reliably for many decades, and who will order up a new batch of GenEng kids with their own contracts, without questioning the system.
Don’t let Robin Hanson hear that.
What does “should have the right” mean? Should current parents who invest heavily in prenatal (or other pre-competence) improvements to a child have this right?
I’m generally uncomfortable with the idea of long-term contracts that don’t have fairly clear termination options. I think people and cultures change too much over a few decades to have any clue what’s going to be right for them (let alone others) in the far future.
And if you do include the standard options (primarily bankruptcy), it’s pretty easy to game: declare bankruptcy immediately, before you have any earnings.
“Should have the right to enter a contract” means, generally speaking, that the legal system will enforce this contract.
People can enter into any contracts they want, the question is whether these contracts are enforceable.
In this case there is, of course, the issue of the contract binding a third party (the child).
I don’t understand the specific consequences of buying such a contract from the ones who signed it.
You buy the contract from the person who provided the financing and in return get the payments from the genetically enhanced person.
I’m reminded of this novel.