The Evolution of an Idea

A number of folks posted on Social Darwinism:
PD Kong, argues that the issue about Spencer is that he lacks both observation AND a mechanism of transmission for his claims. It is interesting to note that Darwin himself believed in an idea of pangenesis, which held that characteristics were passed on physically by gemmules. This sounds suspiciously like Lamarck, and acquired traits. Thus, according to Darwin:

"It is universally admitted that the cells or units of the body increase by self-devision, or proliferation, retaining the same nature, and that they ultimately become converted into the various tissues and substances of the body. But besides this means of increase I assume that the units throw off minute granules which are dispersed throughout the whole system; that these, when supplied with proper nutriment, multiply by self-division, and are ultimately developed into units like those from which they were originally derived. These granules may be called gemmules. They are collected from all parts of the system to constitute the sexual elements, and their development in the next generation forms the new being; but they are likewise capable of transmission in a dormant state to future generations and may then be developed.)"

Classier Hoenig, saw Social Darwinism as a new dress for old ideas. I thought the Midnight Ponderer’s contribution raised interesting issues. Even if we got rid of the “Marching Morons”
or the idiocracy (in the worst of all possible worlds) there would be a new set of folks who would fill in the gap. The issue is the prevalence of capitalism. And one doesn’t have to rail about the injustices of capitalism to get this outcome. It could strictly be an outcome of the differentials between talents of individuals. As Nozick argues in State, Anarchy, & Utopia, differentials in outcome could be completely fair, if voluntarily arrived at. We all agree to pay a basketball star a little form each of us to see him or her play. The star does well, gets more than us, and they do well, and we do less well. So the question is: “How do we handle those that have lower status in our society?” I mean, one major critique of Nozick’s approach is that a differential in talent does not have to be very large (in fact quite small…) to get an inordinately large difference in compensation. I just have to be half a second faster than you, and I get paid twenty times as much to play the same game. Is that fair, even if it is the impersonal free market that determines it? There will always be an underclass (due to these differentials in talent, no matter how small in a capitalist system), even if that underclass is a lot brighter than the earlier underclass that had been, well, er,… “liquidated.”