One thing that bugged me about Idiocracy

[Lago PARANOIA]

So while watching stupid people acting stupid is always good for a laugh or two, one of the things that really made me uncomfortable was the uncurrent of eugenics. You know what I'm talking about--all of the stupid/unfit people are breeding. Where have I heard that before? Why didn't Mike Judge just make it so that instead of that plot point there was like a stupidity-causing disease or meteor that came out of nowhere? People managed to destroy it and set up society to be all automated just in time, but the damage was done. That whole plot point totally tainted my enjoyment of the movie and I resent you for that, Mike Judge.

[DSMatticus]

I don't think it's suggesting genetics is the cause of the stupidity. It seems like the stupidity is implied to be culturally inherited (stupid raises stupid?).

[ckafrica]

Go figure I thought that was the best part of the movie. That and the army guy becoming a pimp.

[RobbyPants]

I just took it as a funny piece of entertainment and enjoyed it. Maybe he's pushing a point of view, but it seemed pretty tongue-in-cheek to me.

[Juton]

The meme that only dumb people are breeding has been floating around for a while now. Also if you can make a movie insulting just dumb people, without any racial, cultural or religious connotation it seems like a no-brainer, almost everyone thinks they are smart and surrounded by a sea of idiots.

Lago is right that their is a subtext of eugenics in the film, it seems like a cautionary tale. I don't think it's an actual call for eugenics though, but I live under the notion that intelligence isn't mainly genetic and sorting the smart from the dumb is very difficult.

[DSMatticus]

I'm still not sure eugenics is even a solution to the problem proposed in Idiocracy. I feel like it's more a cautionary tale about letting cultural influences encourage stupidity and discourage intellectual thought, as opposed to "what happens when stupid people breed! Dun dun dun!"

[Username17]

The Earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound.
Children no longer mind their parents, every man wants to write a book,
and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.

-Username17

[Swordslinger]

So while watching stupid people acting stupid is always good for a laugh or two, one of the things that really made me uncomfortable was the uncurrent of eugenics. You know what I'm talking about--all of the stupid/unfit people are breeding. Where have I heard that before?

The sad thing is that the point is pretty relevant. Humanity needs more smart people or it's going to end up killing itself off. It really is something we need to watch out for.

People can't stop crap like global warming in a democracy if most of them are too stupid to know it exists. So either democracy needs to go away or we need to start getting a smarter populace.

[Vnonymous]

Eugenics is fucking charity. If I'm about to have a kid, and a test tells me that my child will be born blind and developmentally disabled due to a chance affliction, you can bet that that child will not be born. Wiping out genetic diseases and disabilities is a good thing. I don't care that cystic fibrosis doesn't get to live anymore if it means that no more children get born with cystic fibrosis.

When one person is born, by definition a shit ton of other potential people don't get to be born. If we have any obligation to those children at all, it is to make sure, as hard as we can, that they are not born seriously disabled or crippled.

For similar reasons, I support a total ban on drinking and harmful drug use for pregnant women.

[DSMatticus]

Vnonymous, that's... not really eugenics. Well, it's vaguely eugenics, but it's a far different sort of eugenics than the sort giving Lago the creeps.

[Fuchs]

Another question to ponder is: Are children such a drain on finances that the more you have, the less education you can afford for them? (At least in a system where most public schools are worthless compared to private schools.)

[DSMatticus]

Schools aren't the only problem. There have been quite a few studies that show getting parents involved in maintaining a learning environment at home and over the summer is a significant factor, and that requires parental attention. Multiple children is a big drain there.

Really, children should be going to school year round. And now that I'm no longer in highschool, I feel completely okay saying that. Funny how my opinion changed...

[Juton]

Really, children should be going to school year round. And now that I'm no longer in highschool, I feel completely okay saying that. Funny how my opinion changed...

I'm well out of highschool and I think this is bullshit. Summer vacation was literally all I had to look forward to all school year. There are a lot of ways you can improve education, lets start with the ways that don't crush a young person's soul.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Eugenics is fucking charity. If I'm about to have a kid, and a test tells me that my child will be born blind and developmentally disabled due to a chance affliction, you can bet that that child will not be born. Wiping out genetic diseases and disabilities is a good thing. I don't care that cystic fibrosis doesn't get to live anymore if it means that no more children get born with cystic fibrosis.

When one person is born, by definition a shit ton of other potential people don't get to be born. If we have any obligation to those children at all, it is to make sure, as hard as we can, that they are not born seriously disabled or crippled.

For similar reasons, I support a total ban on drinking and harmful drug use for pregnant women.

You do realize that when America had a eugenics program they forcibly sterilized a large number of people for no other reason that they were poor, and that when the Germans did it they killed millions of Jews, right?

Eugenics isn't a "charity". It's enforced genocide.

[RobbyPants]

When did America do this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just never heard this before.

[tzor]

I'm reminded of a famous sci-fi short story. The country (for reasons that still don't make sense) decided to pass the "TSTL" law (too stupid to live). Any really stupid criminal (like those who rob banks using thieir own easily identifiable paper bank slips as the demand note) was sentenced to death for being "Too Stupid To Live." The result, Darwinnian selection resulted in an entire planet of super criminals.

Yea, it doesn't quite work that way, but it was a nice story.

[Username17]

When did America do this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just never heard this before.

It begins in the 1920s. The Racial Integrity Act is actually repealed by the Supreme Court in 1965. Forced sterilizations and legal punishments for "miscegenation" happen in the United States right up until Loving vs. Virginia.

-Username17

[The Vigilante]

When did America do this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just never heard this before.

LMGTFY : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_i ... ted_States

[tzor]

When did America do this? I'm not saying you're wrong, I just never heard this before.

Wikipedia Article

Compulsory sterilization

In 1907 Indiana passed the first eugenics-based compulsory sterilization law in the world. Thirty U.S. states would soon follow their lead.[27][28] Although the law was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court in 1921,[29] the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law allowing for the compulsory sterilization of patients of state mental institutions in 1927.[30]

Some states sterilized "imbeciles" for much of the 20th century. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1927 Buck v. Bell case that the state of Virginia could sterilize those it thought unfit. Although compulsory sterilization is now considered an abuse of human rights, Buck v. Bell was never overturned, and Virginia did not repeal its sterilization law until 1974.[31] The most significant era of eugenic sterilization was between 1907 and 1963, when over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United States.[32] Beginning around 1930, there was a steady increase in the percentage of women sterilized, and in a few states only young women were sterilized. From 1930 to the 1960s, sterilizations were performed on many more institutionalized women than men.[33] By 1961, 61 percent of the 62,162 total eugenic sterilizations in the United States were performed on women.[24] A favorable report on the results of sterilization in California, the state with the most sterilizations by far, was published in book form by the biologist Paul Popenoe and was widely cited by the Nazi government as evidence that wide-reaching sterilization programs were feasible and humane.[citation needed]

Men and women were compulsorily sterilized for different reasons. Men were sterilized to treat their aggression and to eliminate their criminal behavior, while women were sterilized to control the results of their sexuality.[34] Since women bore children, eugenicists held women more accountable than men for the reproduction of the less “desirable” members of society.[24] Eugenicists therefore predominately targeted women in their efforts to regulate the birth rate, to “protect” white racial health, and weed out the “defectives” of society.[24]

A 1927 Fortune magazine poll found that 2/3 of respondents supported eugenic sterilization of "mental defectives", 63% supported sterilization of criminals, and only 15% opposed both.[35]

Although the following events were not explicitly justified through the by-now-discredited eugenics movement, they certainly fit the older pattern. In 1970’s, several activists and women’s rights groups discovered several physicians to be performing coerced sterilizations of specific ethnic groups of society. All were abuses of poor, nonwhite, or mentally retarded women, while no abuses against white or middle-class women were recorded.[36]

For example, in 1972, United States Senate committee testimony brought to light that at least 2,000 involuntary sterilizations had been performed on poor black women without their consent or knowledge. An investigation revealed that the surgeries were all performed in the South, and were all performed on black welfare mothers with multiple children. Testimony revealed that many of these women were threatened with an end to their welfare benefits until they consented to sterilization.[37] These surgeries were instances of sterilization abuse, a term applied to any sterilization performed without the consent or knowledge of the recipient, or in which the recipient is pressured into accepting the surgery. Because the funds used to carry out the surgeries came from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, the sterilization abuse raised older suspicions, especially amongst the black community, that “federal programs were underwriting eugenicists who wanted to impose their views about population quality on minorities and poor women.”[37]

Native American women were also victims of sterilization abuse up into the 1970s.[38] The organization WARN (Women of All Red Nations) publicized that Native American women were threatened that, if they had more children, they would be denied welfare benefits. The Indian Health Service also repeatedly refused to deliver Native American babies until their mothers, in labor, consented to sterilization. Many Native American women unknowingly gave consent, since directions were not given in their native language. According to the General Accounting Office, an estimate of 3,406 Indian women were sterilized.[38] The General Accounting Office stated that the Indian Health Service had not followed the necessary regulations, and that the “informed consent forms did not adhere to the standards set by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).”[39]

Euthanasia programs

One of the methods that was commonly suggested to get rid of "inferior" populations was euthanasia. A 1911 Carnegie Institute report mentioned euthanasia as one of its recommended "solutions" to the problem of cleansing society of unfit genetic attributes. The most commonly suggested method was to set up local gas chambers. However, many in the eugenics movement did not believe that Americans were ready to implement a large-scale euthanasia program, so many doctors had to find clever ways of subtly implementing eugenic euthanasia in various medical institutions. For example, a mental institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk infected with tuberculosis (reasoning that genetically fit individuals would be resistant), resulting in 30-40% annual death rates. Other doctors practiced eugenicide through various forms of lethal neglect.[40]

In the 1930s, there was a wave of portrayals of eugenic "mercy killings" in American film, newspapers, and magazines. In 1931, the Illinois Homeopathic Medicine Association began lobbying for the right to euthanize "imbeciles" and other defectives. The Euthanasia Society of America was founded in 1938.[41]

Overall, however, euthanasia was marginalized in the U.S., motivating people to turn to forced segregation and sterilization programs as a means for keeping the "unfit" from reproducing.[42]

[sabs]

Rich White people in America do down right scary things, in the name of Civilized Society.

News at 11.

[Doom]

In other countries, it's rich brown/red/yellow people.

[Psychic Robot]

Rich White people in America do down right scary things, in the name of Civilized Society.

News at 11.

bloo bloo bloo those richers with their white skin

cry me a fucking river.

[MfA]

Humanity needs more smart people or it's going to end up killing itself off.

We have more than enough smart people, we simply need less people ...

[DSMatticus]

Juton, that's a matter of expectation. The transition period is the hard part, once it's the norm it's just the norm. Also, the main problem isn't a break, it's the length of the break. Children's performance noticeably detoriates over the long summer, leaving schools to spend the first part of the next school year to re-teach the end of last year.

I think just cutting the break into smaller chunks and spreading them around would be a big improvement.

[Swordslinger]

We have more than enough smart people, we simply need less people ...

That too. We should honestly enforce benefits for getting abortions and choosing to not create a new mouth to feed.

Right now the US is just the opposite where people on Welfare get more money for having more kids. Fucking stupid.