I read Kornbluth's short story of this title around 25 years ago. I really took the theme to heart and have thought about it many times since. This story predicts that the productive people of society will eventually be overwhelmed by the burden of supporting the less productive people. If you have not read it, look for it. It expresses the idea better than I can in a sentence.

The situation presented in the short story seems to be a very real problem. How to handle the problem is the rub to me. I have yet to reach a conclusion as to a logical path for addressing the problem.

I have hopes for mankind to continue to evolve and become more than we are now. I hope we can become more knowledgeable, discover more, understand more, and become more ethical. The pursuit of the first three will mean nothing without the fourth thing.

To get to where humanity is now, it has taken a combination of intelligence, social structure, and a delicate balance between aggression and pacificity. What environmental factors will select our next generations ? Have we reached a point where humans can affect their progression by self-selecting, choosing reporductive paths that we believe will move us forward ?

I just do not know.

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I do think of the Marching Moron concept when I look at some of our social policies. We have had policies where we give money to parents who are unable to support their offspring. It is compassionate to do so but it fits the Marching Moron concept to a "T". The most capable people work, hold down their own family size, and give money to people to have children, people who can not manage their lives.

One solution to this: continue to be compassionate to people who need help raising their children by giving them assistance but also require them to be sterilized. If a person with children can not self support their kids, they can get help if they are sterilized. Society would not longer accept the responsibility to raise children from parents who can not manage their own lives.

I am dead against government ever being able to require people to be sterilized. As radical as the idea seems, it does put the responsibility of parenting where it should be. I have not think such a social program will prevent the Marching Morons but it may slow it down. Current changes in social engineering may be enough. Welfare families are not getting the money they used to for having more children.

This is one idea to addressing the problem. I hope the concept is considered by anyone making policy on domestic issues. This consideration may not tell us what to do as a species but it could tell us what not to do.

Don't sterilize them, just quit supporting them. Once they fall and are forced to become productive, all good things will follow. One would be less likely to go out and get pregnant if they know that they won't be supported.