Why We Will Have Single Payer
The genetic revolution is forcing us all to be sequenced... whether we like it or not.
The coronavirus has taxed all aspects of American life. Who knew the state has an interest in whether or not you wear a mask? Bet you didn’t see that one coming!
These changes prefigure a larger one taking place: our willingness to listen, even venerate, public health authorities and to enforce the new rules against others members of the public.
Whereas the FBI and the CIA failed in their efforts to “get Trump” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a sort of flu d’état and ended his presidency. Liberal activist groups were keen to push through their wishlist — ending voter ID and signature checks and pushing vote-by-mail.
That the coronavirus is rarely fatal and that there is a strong genetic likelihood that those who get it and die merely shows the CDC’s power. In a normal country we’d build a kind of algorithmic bubble (see generally covidforecaster.com) over the least of these and the rest of us would go about our lives.
But we do not live in a normal country. The deification of Fauci, who has been wrong on every public health issue of the 20th century, is a sort of example of this sort of thing. Fauci’s octogenarian leadership, if one can call it that, has been sclerotic when not dishonest or self-serving, as I wrote under a pseudonym at American Greatness.
But the one size fits all approach to public health runs up against the reality of our time: we are not the same and the science backs that up.
Scientists in the twenty years since the first draft of the Human Genome Project have gotten very, very far in using genomics to predict major health disorders.
It is likely, though, that other countries may well be further along, especially China and the United Kingdom which has a great U.K. Biobank being used to examine great questions in science.
Both countries are further along than America because they don’t have those pesky hang ups about individual rights.
To wit: China is a heavy authoritarian state whereas Britain is nannying one. In states with stronger public health authorities you don’t really have a choice. The state says give me your genetic data and you hand it over. Maybe they give you something for it. Or let you have a special privilege. It’ll be a choice but it’ll be a Hobson’s choice.
I believe that there will be a great trade that will take place: you will give up your DNA — genetics — for free health care. Some of you will make that trade consciously; some of you will do it for free. Still others of you will do it unwittingly but eventually everyone will do it.1 Why? Because the state wants to know about the health of its citizenry, especially if it’s paying the bill which it increasingly is.
To be sure this trade will necessarily result in a loss of privacy. It will require a complete understanding of public health. After all, don’t states have a compelling need to know what the health is of the commonwealth? And hasn’t privacy always been something that rich people purchased?
Maybe you don’t want to be genetically sequenced but you don’t live in a country where what you want is taken seriously. Sorry about that but it is what it is. No, you live in a developing country and the powers that be have decided that you will be sequenced.
So how are they going to do it?
You could imagine an entry and exit system at a country’s port or airport. How long before such a plan were implemented in a country like, say, Indonesia or India? I submit that this will happen. The only question is when and that when seems
Overtime the randomized sequencing could produce a sort of biobank of its own, which, in turn, can give the powers that be insights into the population beyond mere health considerations.
We’ve already talked a lot about the Behavior, Intelligence, and Personality (BIP) traits. Now imagine those traits in the hands of a powerful state with a will to exist. The cost to identify outlier traits is relatively cheap, especially if you use SNP chips. A simple swab and a photograph is all you need to massively track your population. Throw in their cell phone numbers, the capacity to track them, and you’re really cooking.
Now imagine the state starts to build a list of the very intelligent people as gleaned from this security checkpoint. What might a world look like where the state knows who the smartest people are and can dragoon them into its service, say in a war or national emergency? What might a peace look like?
I submit to you that this list is the most cherished, most treasured possession in the hand of a good sovereign. And what if the public at large could get access to that list and help along the smartest in its population through either investment or subsidy?
Some time ago my friend Sam Altman of OpenAI suggested that we do exactly that and he claimed to have discovered that the public at large isn’t at all opposed to it.
Going long human capital is the only interesting trade left.
But don’t take my word for it. Take a gander at Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s description.
Or perhaps they’ll be a representative enough sample of sequenced peoples that they won’t really have to sequence you to identify you. How many of us know our third or fourth cousins anyway?
"the deep terror of the inner recesses of a handbag?"