Ron Baty wrote (Dec.02): > Given that there is little intrinsic value to being tall, but > rather it is to being taller than others, would not the wide > spread use of genetics to enhance height decrease the value of > being tall.
It reduces the positional value of a given height, obviously, but the social value of an extra inch should not change. I'm guessing you mean that the costs increase (I imagine that bigger people have more knee injuries, for example) so that the net benefit is smaller (and ultimately negative). Or did I miss something? > Perhaps we should encourage, through subsidization, a certain > percentage of the population to remain short. Of course, if > genetics lives up to its promise we will also have to subsidize > people not to look like Brad Pitt and Nicole Kidman. Are you proposing this as a public policy, or as a private alternative to spending the same resources on height for oneself (or children)? If public, why?? ... At the beginning of _Fire on the Border_ by Kevin O'Donnell Jr, or possibly some other novel entirely, the protagonist has cancer(s) as a side effect of the treatments that made him eight feet tall. He's about to be cloned and his mind copied over, and insists that the copy be exactly as tall. -- Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/
