Niklas Hageback - Idiots Breed Idiots: Why Men Are No Longer Created Equal

Idiots breed Idiots

- why men no longer are created equal -

Idiots breed
Idiots

Why men no longer

are created equal

Niklas Hageback

Cover Design: Andreas Nilsson

ISBN: 978-91-88667-54-0

2018 Logik Frlag

Box 22120, 250 23 Helsingborg, Sweden
www.logik.se | www.logikpub.com

kontakt@logik.se

Contents

Introduction

Idiots breed idiots ( bai chi yun yu bai chi )

- Peasant Daily 1991, Li Peng ( ),

former Prime Minister, Peoples Republic of China.

The knowledge-based economy and the ongoing automation of workplaces are rendering low skilled workers permanently unemployed, and as their numbers are expanding into a sizable part of the population, their meagre tax contributions, or rather lack thereof, make them over a lifetime a net financial burden. Upon such economics, the maintenance of the societal and welfare edifice cannot be sustained and risks social unrest and ultimately collapse. It is the unsolvable equation where the too few are having to subsidise the too many .

The objective of most governments, whilst rarely explicitly stated, is to improve the quality of their populations, in such areas as health and well-being, but also including their economic value. Spending on education serves as the conduit for such aspirations; however the hard-learned lessons in many countries are that the effort to upgrade the workforce does not mean throwing more money on education; many of their low skilled citizens are simply not receptive to intellectually demanding work. The economic return on educational investments fails to materialise, and this scenario is being realised in many developed economies in Europe and the US. The ongoing regression in educational standards is manifested, and statistically highlighted, through faltering PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) scores. And why is this? Is it because the genetic limits to our cognitive endeavours have been reached?

Yet, governments continue to spend seemingly indiscriminately on education, indifferent to the poor results, or maybe because of them. The reason for this is that most educational policies rest on the long-reigning assumption of a tabula rasa : with the right environment and training, anyon e can become anything , as the genetic component that regulates the foundation for cognitive abilities is identical for all at the onset of life. In essence, humans are seen as pieces of Lego ; one easily replaceable by another. This lofty but idealistic political ideal stems from an erroneous interpretation of United Nations declaration of mans equal value. Whereas the ideal of equality holds true in a philosophical sense, the knowledge-based economies demand for advanced skillsets has only accentuated the insight that human cognitive abilities differ greatly. This notion of equality has been thoroughly rebuked by the latest science; it is just simply the case that we are all born with differing inherited capabilities, whether in an intellectual or physical capacity, and that sets limits on what our realistic future aspirations might be. If the falling educational trends are based on genetics rather than mediocre pedagogy, such a society is at risk to become mired in less fortunate circumstances as the lack of economic development and lapse into poverty, due to the low economic value of its human capital, underpins its downfall.

Facing such dire circumstances, the only realistic economic transition governments can expect is the replacement of low-paying manufacturing work with low-paying service work. The prospect of finding employment requiring the abstract analytical and creative capabilities not likely to be replaced by computers will only be an option for the relatively few. Moreover, ample statistics show that with low cognitive abilities come other detrimental manifestations, all burdensome for any society: higher rates of crime, in particular violent crimes, higher rates of alcohol and drug abuse, and a higher incidence of illness, both physical and mental.

But what can be done to rectify an increasingly gloomy outlook for the future, with mass unemployment in the cards? Improving the cognitive ranks of a countrys population can be done through various means, carefully selected immigration being one of them by only welcoming and encouraging immigrants with documented high abilities however, the competition for these is global, and attracting them difficult. Boosting waves of emigration by its own unskilled is no longer a viable option, as borders are to an increasing degree closed to such; thus many OECD countries are stuck with this growing underclass, and are in fact adding to it through allowing for Third World immigration, under the pretext of claims to refugee status. Another proposition is to facilitate and endorse couples who have detailed desirable genetic traits to breed more offspring, but that is a generation-long plan, with the potential pay-offs decades away. And then there is the reverse, reducing the number of future children with low-performing or malfunctioning cognitive features. However, attempts to improve the quality of the human stock come with a dark and sinister history.

The elimination of unwanted human traits, whether targeting perceived physical or intellectual characteristics, has a long history. By the early 20 th century, when science had advanced far enough to allow for more systematic efforts, it culminated with the Nazis Aktion T4 crafted to apply euthanasia to exterminate from its population the disabled and others considered inferior. Already criticised by the contemporary German population, and hence prevented from full scale roll-out, it was prosecuted in the war-crime trials and branded as genocide. Whilst at one time declared outright murder, once improved prenatal diagnosis over the coming decades after World War 2 became possible, the efforts to remove the unwanted albeit this time in the form of abortions, and under the pretext of more altruistic considerations did reach new heights.

As abortion rates are on the increase for a widening array of identified disabilities, does this mark the beginning of a slippery slope , where the end goal is to perfect the human being, this time not out of ethnic, gender or other preferences, but from the perspective of economically viable societies? As maps of genetic profiles of preferred cognitive abilities are, to an extent, already a reality, will it come to serve as a decision-making tool to prevent the birth of humans that are unlikely to be productive in the knowledge-based economy? But given the topics contentious nature, the public debate has been conspicuously absent.

Idiots breed Idiots - or why men no longer are created equal is the first book that discusses in detail the emerging trend of perfecting the human being, where any foetus considered defective has become a legitimate target for abortion. Where other books tip-toe around this silent revolution now underway that is dramatically changing society in ways we yet have to fully comprehend, Idiots breed Idiots will take the economists view on the preferred composition of the ideal demographics in the changing economic landscape, leaving aside the philosophical pondering on efforts to improve the human stock. As the pressure on welfare systems in developed countries is mounting, leading to unsustainable demands on fewer and fewer to bear a greater financial burden, societal norms are quickly changing. In many countries, the voluntary rates of abortions of foetus with diagnosed mental retardation are now approaching 100 percent, this despite better means and resources to look after disabled individuals. The rationale to do so, whether only indirectly endorsed and as such coated in philanthropic terms, it is in the best interest of the child , it still seems that economic realities are pushing parents-to-be towards these hard choices with marked impacts on the entire society.