Lessons from the Eugenics Movement

I cannot give an expert opinion on whether or not anthropogenic climate change is going to be a problem or whether government policies to stop it are going to be a solution, but I can recommend that we take a moment to pause and think about the burden of proof required to justify the states' management of our lives.

I think one of the lessons from the eugenics movement should be that the step from academic exercise to state policy should be a bit more arduous.  It was a crackpot theory based on an oversimplified, nascent understanding of genetics, proposed by otherwise intelligent, successful and respectable men.

Had it remained a mental medicine ball inside the minds of gray-haired academics, it would have been fine.  Even if a few nuts had devoted themselves to the culture and voluntarily congregated on an island to try the experiment on themselves, I would have been fine with that too. But they didn't, and the planners didn't wait for volunteers before they enlisted the arms of state.  It was only at that point that a silly idea became an evil one.

It is the same way for any Utopian fantasy.  It's all fun and games until you force others to play along.

If you want to gather with 12 other families on a communal farm and "live off the land" because that's how you interpret Marx and Malthus, good luck and godspeed.  But don't enlist a gang to force me to milk "our" cows.  I am not your slave.

If after your first undergraduate economics course you think we need an elastic money supply or that we need to "stimulate the economy" during a recession, make it happen with your own wealth, not mine.  I don't work for you.

If for some reason you think healthcare is a right of every human being, spend your life providing it to them for free.  Don't pass laws forcing me to provide X to my employees or to buy Y from the state's chosen insurer.  If the doctor's office becomes any more like the DMV, I will find you, and you will not be glad that I did.

Truly good ideas, like liberty and free exchange, prosper without the use of force.