In the comment section of a recent blog post Henry Harpending makes an argument that keeping busybodies busy with harmless stuff like trying to close the acheviment gap (and such efforts mostly have empirically been shown to be useless or at the very least vast misallocation of resources) is good for us:

I don’t see any problem at all with this. Concern with “closing the gap” sucks energy from people who would otherwise pursue causes that lead to bullying and pushing people around, like gun control or right to life or eugenics. Gap closing does cost us a lot of money, Head Start and beyond, but otherwise is a fairly harmless preoccupation.

Of course trouble follows when any of these become too popular. Eugenics at the beginning was genteel liberals urging the poor to have fewer children, i.e. harmless, but when it became mainstream it lead to massive abuses. Let us hope that we can keep the lid on the the gap closers.