Well, so far the focus has been the maximization of individual freedom. This ends up to be a simultaneous local optimization problem for billions of people. And such problems often do not tend to create a global optimal solution via local optimization. So, perhaps the right perspective is to do global optimization of aggregate individual freedom. To formalize this, let’s assume that we can quantify individual freedom via “Freedom Quanta” or FQ.
The situation you proposed is an extreme outcome of local optimization of the FQ of a single person at the cost of the FQ of everyone else. In a just society, people should aim to increase their FQ, but only if they don’t impose a FQ cost on others that outweighs their individual gain, because that would mean that the global aggregate FQ would decrease. We would need to apply utilitarian-like reasoning to the question whether an action increases or decreases aggregate freedom. So, we always need to ask ourselves at least two questions:
- Does something increase the freedom of a specific individual?
- Does it increase or decrease the freedom of others?
Those questions should lie at the heart of any rational politics, in my opinion.
Any by the way, discussing aggregate individual freedom opens up a new path for defining a fractal society: A fractal society is a society in which aggregate individual freedom is optimal (given the current state of technology, the economy, and the resource bases).
So, can we tie this definition back to the previous discussion about evolution and eugenics? I think the main point should be to optimize individual morphological freedom for everyone. It’s not too far fetched to envision a future in which adult gene therapies will become ubiquitous, so that the genome that a person starts with is less of an issue. That’s not to say that it doesn’t matter what genome a person is born with, but in the big scheme of things, it’s more important what a person can evolve into, due to highly developed human enhancement technologies. Even if people’s genomes were homogenized in the mid-term future due to some standardized gene optimization, whether that’s driven by private interests, or government regulation, or medical insights, or even economic pressures, in the long-term future people will still be free to re-shape their own bodies and minds in the ways that they intend to – and why not? With the technology of the long-term future those changes should well be reversible and rather low in risk. Morphology becomes and expression of personal identity, rather than an imposition by natural or societal forces.
What’s still critical in this vision is that the initial morphology and upbringing of an individual can shape their preferences about their future morphology. That’s not to say that these preferences will be necessarily easily predictable or could easily be shaped towards any specific socially imposed norm.