A Modest Proposal To Cull The Human Herd

Feeding the elderly and the young i.e., the economically unproductive, is a terribly wasteful, irrational enterprise–programs like Meals on Wheels and after-school lunches are but the most glaring instances of this catastrophically misdirected act of charity; acts like these will never produce any tangible, meaningful results like an increase in the Gross Domestic Product or the Gross National Product, indeed, the Gross Product of anything whatsoever. The elderly and the young merely consume resources, among which is the most valuable of all, the time and attention of those who could be otherwise engaged in more useful and productive endeavors–all of which may be located in those zones of virtue and redemption, the workspace and the office of the corporation (not the public sector enterprise.) Parents all too often have to turn their eyes away from useful work to attend to the plaintive cries of their useless children, while on the other end of the age spectrum, those same workers have to minister to their useless parents, who continue to occupy space, drink drinking water, eat edible food, and contribute to this planet’s terrible climate change situation by increasing our atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content. Children can at least be mildly amusing, while the elderly are anything but. Enough is enough; our civilization is at a genuine point of crisis.

Any strategy to ameliorate this state of affairs must begin with a recognition of our fundamental human nature: we are individuals, first and foremost. We are born free, radically independent of family and home and state; we die free, hopefully alone, all by ourselves. We take care of ourselves from the moment of our birth, tending to our needs with rugged solitary enterprise; we disdain the helping hand at every step. We feed ourselves, we clean ourselves, we clothe ourselves; we are pioneers of the spirit, heart, and mind. The company of other human beings is always an irritation, one only tolerated in our recognition of them as potential future consumers for the goods we will try to sell them at some point in the future.  The care of others is a burden; we need little care as we grow up, and indeed receive none, so why should we extend our care outwards? We were left by the wayside at birth; so must we do to others.

Faced with these incontrovertible facts about ourselves, a simple plan of action suggests itself for dealing with the problem of the too-young and the too-old: a gentle but firm shove over the edge. No more bleating for attention from the children; no more calls for assistance from the elderly. A population made up entirely of working-age adults is an economist’s delight; it should be our aspirational ideal, guiding our social and economic policies at every step; it should inform the moral instruction we provide to our child..er, each other. The qualms we might feel as we prepare to enact this policy are merely the vestiges of an archaic sensibility, one that must bow its head before the relentless logic of the economic enterprise, and the moral demands it places upon us.