Is a health care system where some die due to lack of care "Darwinism"?

[Cagey Drifter]

Is it fair to call it "Darwinism" if some will die due to being economically disadvantaged?

[fuzzypickles]

Social Darwinism, perhaps.

But the problem with our health care system isn't with the poor & disabled. The lower classes already have government health care available, via Medicare, Medicaid, etc. It's the uninsured middle class who are feeling the pinch more than anyone else.

[Francis Vaughan]

Maybe. But the assertion needs to be pretty specific about what is being suggested.

Darwinism, aka natural selection, requires that the force is selecting for something that can be carried in the genes, and that the selection occurs in a manner that affects the ability to pass on these genes. We could, maybe, expand the notion of the gene, to include the wider idea of learnt behaviours, or the rather overused term of the mneme. So you might ask the question: Are, in the long term, political views for or against universal health care inheritable, and are they selected for by the existence of universal health care?

So, for lack of heath care to be acting as a Darwinian mechanism you would need to suggest an inheritable trait that it selects against. At the end of the day this typically means you have to suggest that being poor is inheritable. Which, in general, it is. Not for genetic reasons mostly, but children of poor people tend to be poor. However, as is often observed, poor people seem to have more children. And that brings one to the second part of Darwinian selection. It only works up to the point where reproductive ability ceases. Which can be extended to mean the age at which an adult no longer needs to care for their offspring. Aged care, indeed health care for anyone over about 50 is not subject to genetic Darwinian selection. Whether the over 50's continue to influence the political views of their offspring, and re-enforce political support for or against universal health care is another matter (and most likely slightly silly.) The place where health care influences reproduction rates is in infant mortality. Children of poor people are more likely to die.

From an economic point of view there is a flaw in some of the reasoning selecting for or against poor people. So far we have never managed to create a society of only rich people. Not a closed economic system. There is a natural movement to concentrate power and money in a small part of the society, and there are always poor people to do the dirty, nasty, boring, unskilled work. Mostly because there is always the need for someone to do these jobs, and only a limited number of high paid jobs available. So a selection mechanism that selects against the poor will not reduce the number of the poor. It will simply mean that not as many offspring of the rich will be rich, and some of them will become poor in the next generations. This mechanism suggests that being poor isn't something that can be bread out of a society. Being poor might mean your children are poor, but a higher mortality rate in the poor people hasn't stopped the next generations being full of poor people.

[dropzone]

So, we are supposed to follow the same actions as our ever-so-great grandparents because it's some kind of "natural?" To what extent might you describe yourself as "sociopathic," as that describes a human who pushes his own agenda at the expense of those around him?

The Social Darwinists, thanks to the Nazis, cut themselves out of the mainstream 60 years ago.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Cagey Drifter

Is it fair to call it "Darwinism" if some will die due to being economically disadvantaged?

As said; to the extent that their survival is based on genetics and affects their ability to breed, yes. But so what? What people often seem to forget is that Darwinian evolution isn't some sort of moral imperative; it's simply a description of how biological evolution works. It's neither good nor bad any more than meteorology is good or bad. So if the intent is to argue "Therefore we should let them die because it's Darwinian", that's rather like insisting that people should stand out in the rain because a storm is meteorological.

[guyblond]

Perhaps it's Darwinism but what is being tested is the ability of our society to develop civilization skills that are more important than the fitness of the individual. And our society will not survive to pass on our traits because we still can not get past blaming the lessor and the weaker among us for our ills.

[Lumpy]

"Darwinism" is the mistaken notion that survival is based on a value judgement- i.e., that it's "good" to be strong, fast, smart, etc.- and that those who don't survive in some sense didn't "deserve" to. In actuality natural selection only means that whatever can best survive does, and what doesn't dies out, and what traits are useful to survival and propagation are completely context based. A turtle makes an ugly deformed crippled deer, but it still survives.

[adhay]

Originally Posted by Francis Vaughan

Maybe. But the assertion needs to be pretty specific about what is being suggested.

Darwinism, aka natural selection, requires that the force is selecting for something that can be carried in the genes, and that the selection occurs in a manner that affects the ability to pass on these genes. We could, maybe, expand the notion of the gene, to include the wider idea of learnt behaviours, ...


From an economic point of view there is a flaw in some of the reasoning selecting for or against poor people. So far we have never managed to create a society of only rich people. Not a closed economic system. There is a natural movement to concentrate power and money in a small part of the society, and there are always poor people to do the dirty, nasty, boring, unskilled work. Mostly because there is always the need for someone to do these jobs, and only a limited number of high paid jobs available. So a selection mechanism that selects against the poor will not reduce the number of the poor. It will simply mean that not as many offspring of the rich will be rich, and some of them will become poor in the next generations. This mechanism suggests that being poor isn't something that can be bread out of a society. Being poor might mean your children are poor, but a higher mortality rate in the poor people hasn't stopped the next generations being full of poor people.

[emphasis mine]
Appeals to "Darwinism" to explain social and economic inequalities are pure bullshit. Evolution by natural selection assumes that, aside from genetic differences, all organisms start on the same playing field. In a society such as ours, this is obviously not so. Indeed, our model is quite Lamarckian.

Where acquired wealth is passed on to the next generation, there is little question why wealth and political power accumulate in the hands of a few. This is a good reason for Estate Taxes AND for not recognizing corporations as people.

Death has an indispensable function in evolution. Imagine an immortal species of predatory fish subject only to their own predation. If they're not eaten, they just get bigger and smarter each year, less likely to succumb and more likely to reproduce than the younger "generations". The evolutionary result for the species is stagnation. Which is exactly why the wealthy are quite content with the status quo.

[C K Dexter Haven]

Actually, I think the opposite phenomenon is going on. The number of those who die, prior to child-bearing age, due to lack of medical care is fairly small. But look at the number of children that poor and poorly educated families have, compared to the number that rich families have! If there is any "genetic" factor (for instance, if there is some genetic aspect to intelligence, education, business-sense, etc), then we are clearly breeding against it.

[Cagey Drifter]

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

So if the intent is to argue "Therefore we should let them die because it's Darwinian", that's rather like insisting that people should stand out in the rain because a storm is meteorological.

Huh? I didn't say anything about my point of view. I was just wondering was whether it could be considered a Darwinian process, which would be a bit ironic since religious conservatives seem to be so against Obama's health care initiatives.

[Wesley Clark]

Young and old people are generally offered better public health programs than the middle class. So the most vulnerable get more help than everyone else, which negates darwinism.

[Icarus]

Darwin specifically chose the words "Natural Selection" to act in opposition to the concept of "Unnatural Selection", which is what animal breeders have used to create different domesticated breeds of dogs, cats, cattle, etc. Natural Selection occurs over a great length of time altering a species. It is a fallacy to apply the term "Darwinism" to the affect on an individual in one lifetime.

[Revenant Threshold]

No more or less than if they don't.

[Francis Vaughan]

Appeals to "Darwinism" to explain social and economic inequalities are pure bullshit.

Agreed. If you thought that was I was trying to say, I guess I didn't write it well enough. I was trying to note that economic forces prevent Darwinian explanations from working in this case.

Where I mentioned learnt behaviours, that is simply the oft quoted idea that a mneme can also be subject to inheritance. Since the mechanism is much fuzzier than genetics it is not exactly mainstream. But I thought it was worth mentioning in context. Such things as religion may count as such. Extreme religious views may well be both inherited, being taught by the family, and affect your ability to procreate. But having conservative parents probably does not much influence you chance of raising a batch of little conservatives.