I've enjoyed all of your essays, and I look forward to new ones coming out, which is why I pay to read - it's worth the money and then some. I also look forward to buying the book when it comes out.
But anything that suggests eugenics makes me uncomfortable; you've alluded to it in your previous pieces but this was quite overt. The Machine is a reification of the people who control it - technocrats, at least some of whom are eugenicists. These people already believe they have the right to decide who lives and dies, who is of value and who isn't, who gets to take their place in the fourth industrial revolution and who doesn't. These people are the true robot men and women - soulless and inhuman. The others we see on the street are sick; sick because society is sick. Free them and the technocrats (The Machine) is gone. And this is what has impressed me in your previous writing - the conviction that people can and will be free from it. Your words have been so hopeful, and I know in the coming weeks they'll be hopeful again, not to mention solutions-focused.
This piece veers close to espousing some outcomes that The Machine itself wants. But, of course, that doesn't mean that I intend to stop reading your work: I can disagree with you on some things and still agree with your overall goal.
"Rather than condemning population reduction, it should be applauded, and governments should institute strict population control measures." - Implicit in this is the idea that governments are benign and objective, which I don't think they are. Over the last couple of years, pretty much all of them have shown a tendency towards authoritarianism. Every corrupt and corruptible system of government would protect itself and its paymasters, and punish those who are troublesome, resulting in the removal of those with undesirable traits and tendencies. Eugenics, in other words. That power, the power to decide who gets to reproduce and who doesn't, should never rest with a government made up of corrupt men and women.
"...we do need institutions to train and elevate honorable and qualified men and women of good character to perform the functions of governing." - This doesn't relate to eugenics, I'm just too cynical to think this would end well. The last thing I want is more experts telling me what I can and can't do.
I've enjoyed all of your essays, and I look forward to new ones coming out, which is why I pay to read - it's worth the money and then some. I also look forward to buying the book when it comes out.
But anything that suggests eugenics makes me uncomfortable; you've alluded to it in your previous pieces but this was quite overt. The Machine is a reification of the people who control it - technocrats, at least some of whom are eugenicists. These people already believe they have the right to decide who lives and dies, who is of value and who isn't, who gets to take their place in the fourth industrial revolution and who doesn't. These people are the true robot men and women - soulless and inhuman. The others we see on the street are sick; sick because society is sick. Free them and the technocrats (The Machine) is gone. And this is what has impressed me in your previous writing - the conviction that people can and will be free from it. Your words have been so hopeful, and I know in the coming weeks they'll be hopeful again, not to mention solutions-focused.
This piece veers close to espousing some outcomes that The Machine itself wants. But, of course, that doesn't mean that I intend to stop reading your work: I can disagree with you on some things and still agree with your overall goal.
"Rather than condemning population reduction, it should be applauded, and governments should institute strict population control measures." - Implicit in this is the idea that governments are benign and objective, which I don't think they are. Over the last couple of years, pretty much all of them have shown a tendency towards authoritarianism. Every corrupt and corruptible system of government would protect itself and its paymasters, and punish those who are troublesome, resulting in the removal of those with undesirable traits and tendencies. Eugenics, in other words. That power, the power to decide who gets to reproduce and who doesn't, should never rest with a government made up of corrupt men and women.
"...we do need institutions to train and elevate honorable and qualified men and women of good character to perform the functions of governing." - This doesn't relate to eugenics, I'm just too cynical to think this would end well. The last thing I want is more experts telling me what I can and can't do.