Crazy Ideas Thread - October 2015

Gunnar_Zarncke

This thread is intended to provide a space for 'crazy' ideas. Ideas that spontaneously come to mind (and feel great), ideas you long wanted to tell but never found the place and time for and also for ideas you think should be obvious and simple - but nobody ever mentions them.

Rules for this thread:

Each crazy idea goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
Voting should be based primarily on how original the idea is.
Meta discussion of the thread should go to the top level comment intended for that purpose.

If you create such a thread do the following :

Use "Crazy Ideas Thread" in the title.
Copy the rules.
Add the tag "crazy_idea".
Create a top-level comment saying 'Discussion of this thread goes here; all other top-level comments should be ideas or similar'
Add a second top-level comment with an initial crazy idea to start participation.

Rules for this thread:

Each crazy idea goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
Voting should be based primarily on how original the idea is.
Meta discussion of the thread should go to the top level comment intended for that purpose.

If you create such a thread do the following :

Use "Crazy Ideas Thread" in the title.
Copy the rules.
Add the tag "crazy_idea".
Create a top-level comment saying 'Discussion of this thread goes here; all other top-level comments should be ideas or similar'
Add a second top-level comment with an initial crazy idea to start participation.

If genetic engineering proves effective and expensive parents should have the right to sign a contract binding on their future genetically engineered child which transfers a percentage of this child's future earnings to the company that financed the child's genetic engineering. Besides benefiting society by promoting genetic engineering, such contracts could be freely traded and would have a market price that would provide a powerful signal about the value of different types of genetic engineering.

Putting aside the ethics for a moment, this is fairly close to Clinton's Hope Scholarships. He set up a system where students got their college fees payed for in exchange for a percentage of future earnings -- a doctor would repay a lot to the fund, a teacher would repay much less. Overall it would all average out. This plan failed because future teachers were much more motivated to accept the deal than future doctors. Only those who expected to earn comparatively little will take a deal that takes a percentage of future earnings -- if you have a reason to... (read more)

3HungryHobo11y

To make it less personal.... imagine that a government wanted to extend the advantages of GE to more of their citizens as possible. They don't have the money to subsidies it right now so they offer something like your plan. Still, assume that <10% of the population is going to be engineered. Group by genetic intervention since you don't know which will be best. For each couple a projection of their childs likely earning potential given their parents economic status vs the rest of the population is calculated. If a significantly larger portion of the subjects of that same intervention beat the trend the company gets to claim X% of the tax revenue from those people for their working lives. (note, the subjects do not pay a higher tax rate than other people with the same income) It's a long term investment but if the intervention is good it could be worth a very large amount. The companies interest is in making sure those kids surpass expectations. Does this bother people the same way the OP's suggestion does? It strikes me that you might even be able to do this with non-GE cases. Companies could be offered a similar deal for intervening in the lives of poor, inner city youth through educational programs etc. If they win, everyone wins especially the kids and the value of the contracts could vary as the company applies new interventions or new evidence comes to light about old interventions that have been applied to subjects.

1Dagon11y

What does "should have the right" mean? Should current parents who invest heavily in prenatal (or other pre-competence) improvements to a child have this right? I'm generally uncomfortable with the idea of long-term contracts that don't have fairly clear termination options. I think people and cultures change too much over a few decades to have any clue what's going to be right for them (let alone others) in the far future. And if you do include the standard options (primarily bankruptcy), it's pretty easy to game: declare bankruptcy immediately, before you have any earnings.