Once upon a time, eugenics was all the rage. It was nascent during the reconstruction era and persisted into the 20th century. It grew out of biological evolutionary theory and emphasized reproductive fitness. In brief, the theory asserted that there are differences in individual fitness and that the more fit living things will survive better and reproduce, eventually becoming a greater part of the population. The ability to compile and evaluate statistics about various human measurements made inferences hard to resist. Of course, researchers were plagued by small sample size, omitted variable bias, and social biases of the day (for example, phrenology inferred fitness characteristics from skull shape).
People employing eugenic thinking, overwhelmingly, supported theories that their own type of person was among the more fit. Eugenicists didn’t promote theories of their own un-fitness. In the progressive era of the early 20th century, eugenics met the prevailing attitude that government could be employed to resolve social and economic ills. This era is when the income tax emerged, prohibition was enacted, the Federal Reserve was formed, and various labor regulations were enacted.
The result was that policy sometimes pursued greater ‘fitness’ among its populations. Rather than systematically encouraging the supposedly more fit with economic incentives, most policy was geared toward reducing the reproductive success of supposedly less fit people. These included forced sterilization, institutionalization, and economic exclusion. Besides rejecting basics individual human dignity, the harm was all the more tragic given that fitness was often poorly specified. That is, policy criteria weren’t dependably related to fitness. Fatal conceit, indeed!
One of my favorite ways to argue is to grant premises and then change details on the margin to see whether the conclusion changes. Let’s do that. Let’s grant that there are innate differences between people that are related to biological success. Since survivability is related to resource acquisition, let’s grant also that economic success overlaps at least somewhat. Taking that as granted, does pursuit of the historical eugenic policy still follow?
It does not.
There are two mistakes that eugenicists and various sorts of racists and xenophobes made. They assert or imply 1) that fitness characteristics are stable and systematically identifiable, and 2) that policy needed to intentionally select for the fitness characteristics.
The first point disqualifies intervention all on its own. Just as an infinite combination of different proportions and types of labor and capital can be combined to create the same level of output, the same can be said for whatever characteristics produce survival and reproduction. To identify specific proportions, types, and combinations as ‘best’ is a bit of folly. Given the diversity of potential inputs, there can be multiple cost minimizing input bundles that achieve the same output! Similarly, there can be multiple talents and biological characteristics that result in flourishing and success. If this weren’t damning enough to eugenics, the successful traits probably vary with time, biome, culture, and legal regimes. The target for eugenicists is both ill-defined and moving!
The second point, that policy can pursue a more fit population, is also less proactive than the actual policies that were historically adopted. To give you an idea of the logic, there is a famous quote by George Bernard Shaw:
“…every 5 years or every 7 years, just put them there, and say, sir or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can’t justify your existence; if you’re not pulling your weight in the social boat; if you are not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive…” –George Bernard Shaw
His idea is that people who don’t produce enough for society ought not be permitted to consume and occupy its resources. His argument is that government can help to end such parasitic behavior and people.
Importantly, the task of evaluating the contribution of each member of society in an objective and ‘value-free’ way is 1) not achievable due to the lack of necessary knowledge, and 2) not necessary because voluntary interactions already do it.
Shaw thought that people ought to contribute more than they consume as a normative opinion. But, so long as interactions are voluntary, people won’t consume more than they produce as a positive statement of fact. If someone works or otherwise toils for themselves in isolation, then they must produce enough to survive. If they exceed subsistence, then they necessarily produced more than they consumed.
Furthermore, if someone engages in voluntary transactions, then they have enjoyed gains from trade. And if the result is that they do any more than eat and survive, then again their contribution to others exceeds their own consumption. With voluntary interaction, people only consume resources equal to or less than the value that they produce for themselves or others. And, given that others traded voluntarily, they only traded because they gained more value from the transaction than they gained too. Therefore, there is no need for a 3rd party to enter the relationship, brief though it may be, in order to measure the values produced, exchanged, and consumed. As a matter of logic, the axiom of broad self interest and the premise of consent ensures that Shaw’s desired outcome is achieved without either government intent or without anyone knowing which goods and services ought to be valued highly/lowly.
Of course not all voluntary action is transactional. Some people are loved and valued by others by virtue of their relationship, such as a parent or offspring. It could be that they are disabled and unable to produce adequately for themselves or transact with others. Instead, in the terminology of economics, they produce value for others apart from their labored efforts. In turn, their caretaker provides resources and sustenance. Therefore, even without an explicit trade, voluntary behavior reveals when value is provided as a positive matter.
Therefore, under conditions of consent and adequate voluntary interaction, there is no need to pursue government selective pressure. Everyone who lives by their own resources or by another who freely provides the resources is necessarily not a drag on society and necessarily does not consume more resources than they produce. The government intervention is simply the preservation of property rights and freedom of association – which is not what eugenicists advocated.
If the logic is so neat and tidy, then how did eugenics remain popular of the course of decades? The predominant answer that I suspect is that eugenicists don’t respect all people’s subjective values, even when pursued via consent. They have in mind values matching or adjacent to their own and they take great displeasure in their surrounding society which deviates from their own insights and values. It’s not unrelated that George Bernard Shaw advocated for socialism. He imagined that it would be hist version, and not someone with whom he disagreed, or didn’t value.
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