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.
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Examples?
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(How about we exempt Super-Powered Vigilantes)

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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.
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Some issues:
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It's an egregious violation of personal autonomy.
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Women do not in fact want infinite babies.
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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.