Financial Times Discovers Libertarian Eugenics, Again
Oh, how quaint. The FT 'discovers' that social Darwinism, thinly cloaked as 'libertarian eugenics,' is making a comeback. (Perhaps it never actually left the boardrooms and think tanks.) This 'new' phenomenon, where the powerful decide who gets to thrive based on their genetic and economic 'fitness,' is less a 'rise' and more a perpetual undercurrent, especially when unfettered capitalism meets a
conveniently Malthusian worldview. The language of 'freedom' always seems to morph into the 'freedom' to let the 'unfit' perish when the powerful are talking. We might recall that the notion of 'natural selection' within human societies was a favorite pastime of early 20th-century industrialists and their intellectual cheerleaders. (See: Andrew Carnegie or Herbert Spencer’s 'Survival of the
Fittest,' a phrase Spencer coined, not Darwin.) It's the same old tune, just remixed with a tech-bro beat and a venture capitalist's smile. How many times will we pretend 'new' theories justifying inequality aren't just old prejudices repackaged for a new generation of wealth hoarders?