Jonah:

What are the policy implications, if science comes up with hard proof of innate group differences? Well, the main one would be, that we, Americans, collectively, would have to decide whether we prefer

(a) a pure meritocracy, even if it means that some groups are scarce in high-status, high-income occupations, and way over-represented in low-status, low-income occupations; or

(b) massive race-based social engineering to ensure that all groups are equally represented at all socio-economic levels.

My guess is that Americans would prefer (b). That would not be a contemptible decision (though it is hard to see it as a conservative

one) since a society organized according to (a) might be seriously unstable, and none of us — myself certainly included — wishes to live in a society like that. You could argue, in fact, that we already took this collective decision 20 or so years ago, but have just been shy of talking about the reasons for it.

Charles Murray is a libertarian — he has written a very good book on the subject — so naturally he votes for (a). I am not sure that he has really addressed the social-stability issue, though. Certainly he does not put as much weight on it as a Tory non-libertarian like myself.

The word “meritocracy” was given to us by Michael Young in his book “The Rise of the Meritocracy“

Young’s mindset was that of a 1950s British person. Group differences

– race — didn’t figure at all in his little fable, unless my memory is faulty. Yet still the end result of a pure-meritocratic system was disastrous. (The narrator, if I remember right, gets killed by a low-merit mob.)

Geneticists, some of them at any rate, will tell you that my (a) and (b) represent a false dichotomy, that GE (genetic engineering) will solve all these problems before they become acute. Groups differences will be swamped and erased by “smart pills” and so on. Possibly so — I don’t know enough about the state of GE to judge. I wouldn’t bet money on it, though; and of course, from a policy point of view, it is wisest to base policy on what we currently know, not on what we might possibly be able to do in 20 years’ time.