it’s a very appropriate punishment for their parents’ misdeed to let the child die
Doesn’t it strike you that that’s not very fair to the child?
For that matter, it’s not remotely fair to the parents either; productivity is not solely determined by parents’ genes plus upbringing, still less by what the parents can know about their genes plus upbringing. Consider, for instance, the following scenarios. In all of them, by “net positive contribution” I mean “net positive economic contribution”, which I’m pretty sure is what you have in mind by that phrase.
Two intelligent and hardworking people have a child. The child loses the genetic lottery and ends up much less intelligent than average, or suffers from some condition that greatly reduces her capacity for work. (Perhaps both parents had a very harmful recessive gene, but didn’t know it.) She is not able to make a “net positive contribution” to the world.
Two highly productive people have a child. Between the child’s conception and adulthood, society changes (e.g., because of technological innovation) in such a way that the sort of work that made the parents highly productive is no longer viable; maybe machines can do it so much better that no one will employ humans to do it. It turns out that the parents were decidedly sub-average in other ways, and the child is too. He is not able to make a “net positive contribution” to the world.
Would you say that these children deserve to die because of their parents’ misdeeds in having them? This seems to me an absolutely untenable position; it requires you to hold
that having an economically unproductive child is a crime deserving terrible punishment
that this applies even if you had no good reason to think your child would be economically unproductive
that the fact that this punishment involves the death penalty for the child is not a problem
all of which seem absurd.
A world run the way you seem to prefer would not be one I would want to live in.
Doesn’t it strike you that that’s not very fair to the child?
For that matter, it’s not remotely fair to the parents either; productivity is not solely determined by parents’ genes plus upbringing, still less by what the parents can know about their genes plus upbringing. Consider, for instance, the following scenarios. In all of them, by “net positive contribution” I mean “net positive economic contribution”, which I’m pretty sure is what you have in mind by that phrase.
Two intelligent and hardworking people have a child. The child loses the genetic lottery and ends up much less intelligent than average, or suffers from some condition that greatly reduces her capacity for work. (Perhaps both parents had a very harmful recessive gene, but didn’t know it.) She is not able to make a “net positive contribution” to the world.
Two highly productive people have a child. Between the child’s conception and adulthood, society changes (e.g., because of technological innovation) in such a way that the sort of work that made the parents highly productive is no longer viable; maybe machines can do it so much better that no one will employ humans to do it. It turns out that the parents were decidedly sub-average in other ways, and the child is too. He is not able to make a “net positive contribution” to the world.
Would you say that these children deserve to die because of their parents’ misdeeds in having them? This seems to me an absolutely untenable position; it requires you to hold
that having an economically unproductive child is a crime deserving terrible punishment
that this applies even if you had no good reason to think your child would be economically unproductive
that the fact that this punishment involves the death penalty for the child is not a problem
all of which seem absurd.
A world run the way you seem to prefer would not be one I would want to live in.