Compare and contrast:
TIME reports on the research of a Harvard economist that strongly suggests financial reward structures are a highly effective way of motivating academic performance and/or good behaviour in school-aged children. (We mentioned this last year, as it happens.)
Meanwhile, did you know there’s a “charitable” organisation in the US that offers drug addicts a cash incentive to apply for sterilisation – not of their needles, but of themselves? [via Lauren Beukes] And they’re coming to the UK, too, which is a relief – I was thinking only the other day that we just don’t have enough heavy-handed moralising in this country.
Return of the eugenics movement? That’s worrying.
I have to say, I’m in favor of this. Not just for drug addicts either, cash incentives for everyone to be sterilized would be great. I just wish I could get it retroactively, since I’ve already had a vasectomy. Not sure how they would expect someone to prove they’re a drug addict though.
Encouraging sterilization in desperate people does smack of eugenics, not to mention heavy-handed moralizing. But Babylon has a point: providing incentives that encourage people not to have kids would be a good thing in our overpopulated world. Here in the States, you should probably make it a tax break so that it would appeal to the rich.