In his most recent column George Will writes on “assortative mating”:
Those favored by genetics and by family acculturation of the acquired social capital (the habits and dispositions necessary for taking advantage of opportunities) tend to go to school and then to work together. And they marry one another, concentrating advantages in their children.
Hence today’s interest in what is called privilege theory, which takes a dark view of the old couplet “All men are by nature equal/ but differ greatly in the sequel.†The theory leaps from the obvious to the dubious. Obviously some people are born with, and into, advantages, congenital and social. What is dubious is the conclusion that government has the capacity and duty to calibrate, redistribute and equalize advantages.
Consistent with the president’s recent musing over the solution to low voter participation, isn’t there a simple solution to the problems of inequality abetted by assortative mating? Just have the government determine who should have whose children. And take the societally vital task of child rearing away from parents so that children might be reared to promote greater social equality? Maybe Huxley was on to something.
I think that the key phrase in Mr. Will’s column might be “suitable partners”. Is it possible that it’s a lot easier to change the economy and the society than it it to change what men and women consider to be “suitable partners”?
How about a different modest proposal, to minimize the inequality of inherited advantage, we tax it?
BTW/ if Will means IQ, that appears to be somewhere around 50% heritable, which means that two high-IQ partners will tend to have children whose IQ will regress towards the mean. If we are talking about something like height, which I think is more like 90% heritable, then there is less regression. Of course, I picked this stuff up from a guy hired and fired from the New York Times this week for having written to Steve Sailer, so there are other levelers society can employ to control rewards for merit.
Lol at PD’s comment about the NYT!
And are you thinking of Huxley, or Plato/Socrates?
Yes, the idea does goes back to The Republic but have you ever read Brave New World?
Yeah, I’ve read it, though that was decades ago. More depressing than 1984.