In my post The War of Genes: Fighting Devolution, I wrote about balancing out the gene pool by encouraging the smart to produce more than 1.5 children in the hopes that a small surge in intelligence alleles may minimally counteract the enormous frequency of stupid alleles being contributed on a daily basis. I specifically discounted sterilization because that would certainly bring up issues of eugenics. Mine was a fantasy war to outbreed the enemy. Interestingly, a State Representative in Louisiana wants to fight poverty — not stupidity — by offering voluntary sterilization of men and women for $1000.

John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, offers a brainstorm of sorts to stimulate debate on an issue unimproved by existing, conventional social programs.

He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.

It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said…

LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.

First, a hearty bravo to LaBruzzo for stepping over the barriers of political correctness to offer a novel solution to a continuing problem, whether he is right or wrong. Let us remember that this is merely an idea thrown out into the public forum before throwing stones labeled with terms like racist or eugenics. (I’d like to throw some stones at all the devout Catholics who love unprotected premarital fornication too.) Voluntary is the key word in the article for all you low-SAT-verbal-score readers out there.

Second, an ah-ha moment. Why didn’t I think to offer a voluntary sterilization program in my fanciful war against stupidity? How brilliant. The dumb would certainly succumb for a few thousand dollars. In fact, for the cost of less than a Wall Street bailout, we could take a momentous step in ebbing the ineluctable process of human devolution.

Third, I particularly enjoyed reading the comments on Digg. Perhaps there is hope for this world after all.