HBD, Social Engineering, and Does this Contradict Individualism?

Update: Some of the comments have suggested implementing voluntary or incentive-laden programs to dissuade people from having children. For some reason, people still find this inhuman. Apparently, allowing one to have control over his own body is inhuman!

The HBD discussion eventually veers into implications for public policy. The obvious, and most commonly mentioned, topics include the futility of diversity programs and lifting the ban on taboo avenues of research. While these positions are sometimes voiced in mainstream discourse, other more extreme policies exist almost entirely amongst the HBD-osphere. These policies vary from benign measures such as fixed academic tracking to more intrusive endeavors like forced sterilization. These potential initiatives, evoking images of totalitarian and fascist government regimes have been relegated to science fiction and fantasy movies. The typifying example is Gattaca, a 1990's movie tacitly supporting The Blank Slate in a society where jobs are predetermined by genetically engineered traits.

Because acceptance of HBD represents a social sin of the highest order, almost all adherents are unafraid to offer opinions free of patronization or euphemisms. As a result, HBDers regard empathy as generally subordinate to efficiency and fairness in judging potential political innovations. People are considered inherently valuable, but in the context of a program, they're considered capital or economic quantities rather than unique personalities.

So what are these programs? I'm mainly thinking of sterilization (distinguishing between forced and voluntary), widespread IQ testing, adopting Chinese style academic tracking and testing, , very limited immigration, and placing people into value groups based on economic worth (doctor worth more than janitor). That's a sparse list. Please add more in the comments.

I'll focus on sterilization because it's the most polemical, and probably most effective, suggestion. Most people consider sterilization to be cruel and inhuman. Of course, I disagree. Provided that genetics, especially as the relevant population increases, predicts future behavior, it's justifiable that certain individuals will undoubtedly have children who do nothing to support society. In fact, many of these individuals will be a destructive and parasitic force. Sterilization programs would identify incubators of potential anti-social persons and stop the problem before it begins. Ostensibly, individuals with low-IQ and violent criminals would be the prime targets.

But with all these programs, isn't the government becoming an intervening force bordering on an authoritarian system? Don't we want to limit the reach of government? Yes, but sometimes it's necessary that government protect its productive constituency, such as with police officers and the military. It's also necessary that government spends its scarce resources efficiently. Thus, it must classify and sort people according to their ability and their potential, including that of their future children. In doing so, the government commits a sin against individualism: grouping individuals into faceless collectives.

This seems to contradict a widely held premise within the HBD community: an individual, through his innate ability AND work ethic, should have the freedom to pursue success and accomplish it based solely on his own merit. Yet, by not allowing Laquisha and Jerome to have children, aren't we unfairly assuming their children will be of similar IQ and act like those within that IQ range? OK, yes we are and this does contradict treating everyone as an individual.

But government deals with societies and concessions to that society must be made. Individuals vary and in the process of dispassionately grouping individuals, we do a disservice to a scant few. However, with such large sample sizes, variation will be nonexistent and our society will undoubtedly prosper from these initiatives. Thus, the objective of government is successful: assuring progress and stability of society. I'll appeal to utilitarianism. I've heard others in the HBD-osphere agree that utilitarianism should guide most political decisions as maximizing utility is the best approach for large scale societies. Occasionally, we'll miss out on undiscovered genius, but society's well-being must be the preeminent factor in political decision making.

So, while these programs do mirror other social engineering ventures, they're justified by countless studies linking objective test scores and real-world achievement. The HBDer can simultaneously support the ideals of freedom and individualism, while also noting the existence of group characteristics and subsequently applying previous experimental conclusions in avoiding a dsygenic society.