Interesting side note on china during the one-child policy era. This policy was enforced on the masses but highly educated people were given waivers. If you were a engineer, professor or any highly skilled professional you were encouraged to have lots of children.
China’s one child policy was mainly about population control but also had a eugenics component to it as well.
> China’s one child policy was mainly about population control but also had a eugenics component to it as well.
IMO, traditional societies have had a fascination with eugenics for practically centuries. 19th and early 20th century thinkers were deeply fascinated by it, and the idea didn't really get tabooed until Nazi Germany adopted as part of its agenda and that horrified the whole world for centuries to come.
For that reason, many posters with western values might find the accusation of eugenics to be quite harsh. But IMO, the social stigma against eugenics isn't nearly as prominent in non-European societies and it's even softly encouraged and openly talked about in some cases.(Singapore's SDU est.1984 being a good example)
To be clear, I do not endorse eugenics in any way. Also, I mean eugenics in purely: "Adding incentives for reproduction among certain people in society to promote what are perceived to be desirable traits within said society" and not "Genocide everyone who isn't of high blood".
> China’s one child policy was mainly about population control but also had a eugenics component to it as well
That seems like a ludicrous leap to jump to.
Surely some far more obvious reasons are: better educated people are better able to judge whether they can afford to look after a child; people in skilled professions earn more money, and are more likely to afford to look after a child.
Maybe I am dumb, but what's wrong with so called "Positive Eugenics"? I.e encouraging people with good genetic qualities and here, good resources for children's upbringing, to have more children?
It seems the problem is in the use of force. Apart from that, if there's a group of people that would make better than average parents, and whose kids would be more likely to contribute more to society than they consume, then shouldn't that group be encouraged to have and adopt as many kids as they can afford to support?
No problem was ever solved by deliberately reducing the potential number of people available to solve it. If humanity faces resource constraints, the way to solve them is to get as many net-positive-resource people as possible working on solutions.
One person could devote one lifetime to solving a problem. Or, they could have 4 kids, everyone devotes half of one life time (the other half to raising kids), and now there are 2.5+ lifetimes of effort spent on the problem.
We aren't facing resource constraints, we're facing overuse of resources. The problem of overpopulation is not one of an inability to feed, house and water people - the problem is the impact we have upon our own environment.
The single greatest thing we could do to improve our species' odds of survival today is reduce ourselves in number. Because we are currently causing a mass extinction event.
Just because one was barred from university or wealth doesn’t mean that the political entrenchment was eliminated. If I was a wealthy family that rubbed elbows with other wealthy families, such that all my family friends were from wealthy families, any success I gather would also have me nepotize my family friends into whatever companies I make and whatever government success I achieve.
China’s one child policy was mainly about population control but also had a eugenics component to it as well.