Universalism is the reason why common-sense proposals like those of Greg Cochran will never be official policy.
From the Greg Cochran link:
A government with consistent and lasting policies could select for intelligence and achieve striking results in a few centuries, maybe less. But no state ever has, and no existing government seems interested.
It’s worth pointing out that at least part of the opposition to government-run eugenics programs is rational distrust that the government will not corrupt the process. If a country started a program of tax breaks for high-IQ people having children, and perhaps higher taxes for low-IQ people having children, a corrupt government would twist its policies and official IQ-testing agency to actually reward, for example, reproduction among people who vote for [whatever the majority party currently is]. It’s a similar rationale to the one against literacy tests for voting: sure, maybe illiterate people can’t be informed voters, but trusting the government to decide who’s too illiterate to vote leads to perverse incentives.
a corrupt government would twist its policies and official IQ-testing agency to actually reward, for example, reproduction among people who vote for [whatever the majority party currently is].
Absolutely. It would start with: “Everyone (accepted as an expert by our party) agrees that the classical IQ tests developed by psychometric methods are too simple and they don’t cover the whole spectrum of human intelligence. Luckily, here is a new improved test developed by our best experts that includes the less mathematical aspects of intelligence, such as having a correct attitude towards insert political topic. Recognizing the superiority of this test to the classical tests already gives you five points!”
Also, governments are notoriously bad at making broad and costly social policies that will only give a return on investment “in a few centuries or less”. We’re not talking just beyond the next elections, the party, the politicians, even the whole state may not even exist by then.
From the Greg Cochran link:
It’s worth pointing out that at least part of the opposition to government-run eugenics programs is rational distrust that the government will not corrupt the process. If a country started a program of tax breaks for high-IQ people having children, and perhaps higher taxes for low-IQ people having children, a corrupt government would twist its policies and official IQ-testing agency to actually reward, for example, reproduction among people who vote for [whatever the majority party currently is]. It’s a similar rationale to the one against literacy tests for voting: sure, maybe illiterate people can’t be informed voters, but trusting the government to decide who’s too illiterate to vote leads to perverse incentives.
Absolutely. It would start with: “Everyone (accepted as an expert by our party) agrees that the classical IQ tests developed by psychometric methods are too simple and they don’t cover the whole spectrum of human intelligence. Luckily, here is a new improved test developed by our best experts that includes the less mathematical aspects of intelligence, such as having a correct attitude towards insert political topic. Recognizing the superiority of this test to the classical tests already gives you five points!”
Also, governments are notoriously bad at making broad and costly social policies that will only give a return on investment “in a few centuries or less”. We’re not talking just beyond the next elections, the party, the politicians, even the whole state may not even exist by then.
“Will”.