This paper argues that critiques of eugenics premised on "the goal is wrong" or "eugenicswas corrupted by bad actors" fail against contemporary voluntary, market-mediatedeugenics. Using the historical arc from Francis Galton through Buck v. Bell (1927) to the2024 exposure of Heliospect Genomics, the paper identifies a recurring structure: eachiteration of "human improvement" packages a specific power position's preferences asneutral, universal science, and the sincerity of the actors involved is not exculpatory butconstitutive — it is precisely what allows the translation of class interest into technicalauthority to go unnoticed, including by the actor performing it. The paper further shows thatvoluntary, market-based selection does not dissolve this structure; it relocates definitionalauthority to menu designers (algorithm developers, regulatory arbitrageurs) who remainlargely invisible to end users. The paper proposes the Position Invariance Test as anoperational legitimacy check: whether those affected by a definition of "good" had genuineentry into forming that standard, and whether the party bearing the consequences retains afuture capacity to revise, reject, or exit it.
Towerz Hanoi (Sat,) studied this question.
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