Carrot Eugenics

Not a suggestion, just an observation

IDK much about sports stuff. But it seems like all the sports nepo babies are demonstrating a kind of what I'm calling "carrot eugenics." If you think of sterilizations and the ahem... "other event" as a stick. Professional sports is the carrot.

And, obviously, physical fitness has always been a selector for finding a mate. And no one would call that eugenics. That’s selection. But not since the development of agriculture has there been such a constant reward system with such high stakes. Like, yes, warfare greatly rewards physical prowess. But war is actually not very frequent. For most of history warfare was fought by formations and was actually much more about morale than just physical prowess. And it was mostly stick eugenics. Being the greatest combatant commoner in the army didn’t make you fabulously wealthy. And even if you were a commoner and killed the right person in a battle and got made a noble. The next generation’s greatest pressure for marriage was political, not prowess in battle.

The reason I mentioned the Paleolithic hunters before is because like sports the need to rely on physical prowess was required constantly. And the size of your harem and children you could support depended on how much meat you could catch on a regular basis. And it’s worth noting that the average height of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers was slightly taller than modern people.

Modern professional sports is similar. And to point this out it’s worth noting that before radio and especially television revolutionized the business model professional sports wasn’t a highly paid profession. Professional baseball and football players weren’t rich men. The stories about the athletes in the first Olympics, while obviously amateurs, they were in many cases just regular people. Radio changed this. Then television took it to a new level. Now the athletes have all the money in the world. And advancements in the science of training means they can hone their children’s natural abilities from a young age.