This just boils down to “humans aren’t aligned,” and that fact is why this would never work, but I still think it’s worth bringing up. Why are you required to get a license to drive, but not to have children? I don’t mean this in a literal way, I’m just referring to how casual the decision to have children is seen by much of society. Bringing someone into existence is vastly higher stakes than driving a car.
I’m sure this isn’t implementable, but parents should at least be screened for personality disorders before they’re allowed to have children. And sure that’s a slippery slope, and sure many of the most powerful people just want workers to furnish their quality of life regardless of the worker’s QOL. But bringing a child into the world who you can’t properly care for can lead to a lifetime of avoidable suffering.
I was just reading about “genomic liberty,” and the idea that parents would choose to make their kids iq lower than possible, that some would even choose for their children to have disabilities like them is completely ridiculous. And it just made me think “those people shouldn’t have the liberty of being parents.” Bringing another life into existence is not casual like where you work/live. And the obligation should be to the children, not the parents.
Historically attempts to curtail this right lead to really really dark places. Part of living in a society with rights and laws is that people will do bad things the legal system has no ability to prevent. And on net, that’s a good thing. See also.
There is also the related problem of intelligence being negatively correlated with fertility, which leads to a dysgenic trend. Even if preventing people below a certain level of intelligence to have children was realistically possible, it would make another problem more severe: the fertility of smarter people is far below replacement, leading to quickly shrinking populations. Though fertility is likely partially heritable, and would go up again after some generations, once the descendants of the (currently rare) high-fertility people start to dominate.
This just boils down to “humans aren’t aligned,” and that fact is why this would never work, but I still think it’s worth bringing up. Why are you required to get a license to drive, but not to have children? I don’t mean this in a literal way, I’m just referring to how casual the decision to have children is seen by much of society. Bringing someone into existence is vastly higher stakes than driving a car.
I’m sure this isn’t implementable, but parents should at least be screened for personality disorders before they’re allowed to have children. And sure that’s a slippery slope, and sure many of the most powerful people just want workers to furnish their quality of life regardless of the worker’s QOL. But bringing a child into the world who you can’t properly care for can lead to a lifetime of avoidable suffering.
I was just reading about “genomic liberty,” and the idea that parents would choose to make their kids iq lower than possible, that some would even choose for their children to have disabilities like them is completely ridiculous. And it just made me think “those people shouldn’t have the liberty of being parents.” Bringing another life into existence is not casual like where you work/live. And the obligation should be to the children, not the parents.
Historically attempts to curtail this right lead to really really dark places. Part of living in a society with rights and laws is that people will do bad things the legal system has no ability to prevent. And on net, that’s a good thing. See also.
There is also the related problem of intelligence being negatively correlated with fertility, which leads to a dysgenic trend. Even if preventing people below a certain level of intelligence to have children was realistically possible, it would make another problem more severe: the fertility of smarter people is far below replacement, leading to quickly shrinking populations. Though fertility is likely partially heritable, and would go up again after some generations, once the descendants of the (currently rare) high-fertility people start to dominate.