Re: Things presented in-story as Good Ideas that seem like really Bad Ideas

In article <lk79hhFp0bkU1@mid.individual.net>,
Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan> wrote:

Lucky Starr's "Council Of Science", the Venus Belt, the Federation's
"Prime Directive".  Things like that.
>
Examples?
>
(How about we exempt Super-Powered Vigilantes)

The protagonists of Ben Bova's The Return solves women's insatiable
desire to have infinite children by secretly using alien super-
science to install fertility limiters on all women. Each woman can
have two kids and then they are sterile.

Some issues:

It's an egregious violation of personal autonomy.

Women do not in fact want infinite babies.

Some women won't have babies at all and some children will die
before reproducing. Therefore, the population will decline until
humans go extinct.
 
The last will be a real issue for the interstellar colonies that
head out at the end of the book, none of whom know their population
can only decline.

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