The 1961 short story, Harrison Bergeron,<\/i> imagines a future where everyone is equal. No one is allowed to be smarter, better looking or more physically able \/ talented than anyone else. People who are too pretty, smart, etc., are required to wear handicaps designed to bring them down a notch or three. <\/p>\n
I may have mentioned this once before, but I just saw an article that reminded me …. <\/p>\n
Years ago, I was speaking with a professional colleague who believed that the government should compensate her for the extra money she had to spend on rent. <\/p>\n
Her argument went like this. If she was a man, she could live in a cheaper area of town, because she wouldn’t be as likely to get attacked. But as a woman, she had to live in the safer areas of town. This was, in effect, a tax on women, so the government should give her a deduction, or rent assistance, or something. <\/p>\n
I didn’t have the sense to ask her at the time, but I obviously should have asked her for the limiting principle. <\/p>\n
Should the short get a tax deduction? How about the ugly? Studies consistently show that taller and more attractive people make more money. <\/p>\n
Imagine the bureaucracy you could create on the back of such a principle. In addition to tall privilege and hot privilege<\/a>, you’d have “raised in a two-parent home” privilege. “Your mother was not on crack” privilege.” “You grew up where there were stores with fresh vegetables in reasonable walking distance” privilege. <\/p>\n There’s no end to what you could justify once you accept the idea that the government should make everyone equal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 1961 short story, Harrison Bergeron, imagines a future where everyone is equal. No one is allowed to be smarter, better looking or more physically able \/ talented than anyone else. People who are too pretty, smart, etc., are required to wear handicaps designed to bring them down a notch or three. I may have … Continue reading “Harrison Bergeron was prophetic”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1770,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1769\/revisions\/1770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}