Bill Nye, Dimestore Eugenicist

An engineer in a lab coat posing as a philosopher does a pop sci show where he asks, “Should we have policies that penalize people for having extra kids in the developed world?”

The term for “extra kids” a few decades back was “nutzlose Fresser” or “useless eaters”. Curiously, those who go about deciding who the “extras” are never number themselves in the ranks of excess humanity, perhaps because they never give any indication of having an excess of humanity.

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.”

Nye has, increasingly, moved from being a good science popularizer to an extraordinarily bad scientism popularizer posing as a philosopher posing as an ethicist posing as a sometime theologian. He is, like almost all who do this, remarkably ignorant and toxic when he gets away from talking about how fun it is to mix baking soda and vinegar and moves into offering his opinions on which undesirables need killing.