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Winston Churchill is credited with saying that "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time". I feel similarly about eugenics, except for the fact that we haven't yet found an acceptable "best" that we can put on top of the pile of horrible ones.

With the Earth's population at over seven billion now (and many experts saying we can't support much more than ten billion without plagues, famines, etc.), I predict some rigid form of population control will have to be enforced in the majority of nations, if not globally, before the end of the twenty-first century. The problem is, we haven't yet found a form of mandatory population control that isn't, in some way, monstrous.

Necessarily, you have to have things like mandatory abortion, mandatory surgery, or some form of meritocratic license to breed (with some draconian central authority deciding the terms of breeding merit). And, of course, ever since Hitler, the general public has associated eugenics with racism, murder, torture, and genocide.

0217-------------------------------------

(Tuesday morning, INT: MH's apartment)

MH: I dunno. I think I'm perfectly capable of following a moral structure without judging others by that same standard. That's the definition of tolerance.
JH: Besides, if everyone felt the same way you did, there wouldn't be any children in the world at all.
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MH: Oh, there'd be new kids, there just wouldn't be any until all the pre-existing kids were accounted for. And, of course, there'd be plenty of well-meaning people who just reproduce out of irresponsibility or mistake.
EB: You realize that you're proposing a society in which only the irresponsible and the accident-prone produce offspring. You'd breed out responsible behaviour within a few generations.
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JH: You presume, of course, that there's a responsibility gene.
MH: Look, we all know some people out there who really shouldn't be allowed to have kids, but our society has this taboo that says we can't question people's right to have as many kids as they want, whenever they want. We need to lock that shit down.
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EB: So you're proposing some sort of child rearing license, or a one-child policy like they have in China?
MH: I'm not proposing anything, I'ma just say five words: "Jersey Shore: The Next Generation".