Eugenics and Evolution

A claim I have seen in discussions of eugenics is that modern institutions, in particular those of the welfare state, prevent evolution from working, make it easier for the unfit to survive and reproduce, and that humans should intervene. There is a legitimate point in that claim but putting it in terms of fitness is misleading; in the evolutionary context fitness is defined by the ability to get copies of your genes into future generations. The complaint is not that a welfare state lets the unfit survive and so makes the population less fit but that the characteristics that lead to fitness in a welfare state are by other criteria less desirable, lead to less economic growth, less scientific progress, a population less able to defend itself against aggression, less of something else the person making the argument views as more important than evolutionary fitness. Sometimes the implicit background to the argument is the worry that at some point in the future civilization will collapse on a population no longer able to deal with that environment.

What characteristics are selected for, hence what characteristics make you fit, are different in a welfare state than under laissez-faire, in a society with reliable birth control than in one without, in a polygamous society than in a monogamous one, in a rich society than a poor one. A rich society with reliable birth control produces very nearly the same selective pressures as a welfare state, since in both how many children you produce and bring to adulthood depends mostly on how many you want not on how many you can afford.

Implicit in the complaint that a welfare state, or anything else, is distorting evolution is the idea that the result of evolution is desirable, that evolution is on our side. In one sense it obviously is. We, like all other living things, are elaborate machines produced by evolution, depend on the machinery it designed to stay alive.

But there are three other senses in which it is false.

To begin with, evolution is not on the side of our species as against others; it designed both me and the squirrels that most years eat my apricots before they get ripe — this year we got lucky. It also designed the disease organisms that eat me.

Second, my evolution optimizes me not my species. A characteristic that increases my extended reproductive success at the cost of yours is selected for, not against, even if the benefit to me is less than the cost to you. This is the biological equivalent of market failure, the fact that rational for each is not necessarily rational for all.

Third, what evolution is optimizing me for is reproductive success. That is, metaphorically speaking, the objective of my genes — but not my objective. I would like to have lots of children and grandchildren, an objective I share with my genes, but that objective trades off against other things I value that my genes don’t.

It follows that evolution is not our friend — or our enemy. It selects for some traits I approve of, some I do not. In evaluating political or social changes one should take account of their effects on what is selected for. One might support some policies specifically for their effects on what is selected for, eugenic policies with the decision made by a government or parents.

From the eugenic standpoint the three alternatives are to do nothing intended to effect the genetics of the population, to have government make decisions intended to affect it, to have parents make such decisions and government allow them to. How does either eugenic approach compare with the alternative of doing neither and leaving the decision to nature, evolution unguided by human efforts to control its results?

One argument I have seen is that evolution, a decentralized optimizing mechanism like the market, can be expected to do a better job than a government in improving the genetics of the population just as the free market does a better job of coordinating economic activity than central planning. The problem with that argument is that we expect to approve of the outcome of a market because what it is maximizing is the extent to which people get what they want. What evolution is maximizing is reproductive success, the ability of the individual to get copies of his genes into later generations. That is what my genes “want” but not what I want for myself, still less what I want other people to maximize.

In a welfare state, even in a sufficiently rich laissez-faire economy, being too stupid to use birth control competently might increase reproductive success. I don’t want to be surrounded by stupid people. Male reproductive success is increased by being good at getting women pregnant and then dumping them; I don’t want to be surrounded by skilled con men either. The government can be expected to do a bad job of eugenics for the same reasons it can be expected to do a bad job of economic planning but evolution cannot be expected to do a good job of eugenics for the reasons the market does a good job of economic coordination.

Libertarian eugenics, eugenics driven by the decisions of individuals or couples, looks like a closer analogy to the market. It shares the market failure problem with other forms of evolution — I will be making choices based on my welfare and that of my descendants, choices which could lower the welfare of you and your descendants. It targets the goals of humans not of their genes; that is, for humans, an advantage over “natural” evolution. Market decisions are sometimes made by parents for their children but usually by individuals for themselves; eugenic decisions are partly for the people making them but also in large part for their descendants. But when the decisions are made the descendants are not present to make them; the parents are the best proxy available since people value the welfare of their children and grandchildren.

I conclude that libertarian eugenics is likely to produce better results than either alternative.

Is There An Alternative To Evolution?

For all of the alternatives I have discussed so far the genetics of the population are controlled by evolution, maximize individual fitness. They produce different results only because what characteristics increase fitness depends on the environment.

Is there an alternative?

There might be. If we develop sufficiently advanced genetic engineering we could have a future in which the genetics of the population are determined not by what genes produced reproductive success for their bearers but by what genes some people chose for other people to have, with the choice made in either a centralized manner by government or a decentralized manner, probably by parents for their children.

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