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Originally posted by RingThing
In the monkey example, sure cutting off the tails of the evil monkey's descendants would be unjust and senseless. But that's not the end of the question. What if, several generations after the Great Tail-Cutting, monkey society was still heavily stratified, with all the major simian economic and government institutions dominated by monkeys with tails who inherited, directly or indirectly, the power concentrated by their tailed ancestors?
Even if having a tail was no longer directly necessary for success, a tail-less monkey would likely have a lot of obstacles to overcome. No older relatives with good connections to guide them into a good career or help them get that first door-opening job. No parents from good universities to help get them in as legacies. No family money accumulated through generations of economic success. And all the while being confronted by a police force with a disproportionately high number of tailed monkeys who had trouble understanding of their perspective.
Maybe some form of economic-based discrimination would work in real life, like university admissions. Something that would acknowledge that a kid of any race from the ghetto who had good grades probably did a lot more to get there than a middle class kid with the same qualifications.
In the monkey example, sure cutting off the tails of the evil monkey's descendants would be unjust and senseless. But that's not the end of the question. What if, several generations after the Great Tail-Cutting, monkey society was still heavily stratified, with all the major simian economic and government institutions dominated by monkeys with tails who inherited, directly or indirectly, the power concentrated by their tailed ancestors?
Even if having a tail was no longer directly necessary for success, a tail-less monkey would likely have a lot of obstacles to overcome. No older relatives with good connections to guide them into a good career or help them get that first door-opening job. No parents from good universities to help get them in as legacies. No family money accumulated through generations of economic success. And all the while being confronted by a police force with a disproportionately high number of tailed monkeys who had trouble understanding of their perspective.
Maybe some form of economic-based discrimination would work in real life, like university admissions. Something that would acknowledge that a kid of any race from the ghetto who had good grades probably did a lot more to get there than a middle class kid with the same qualifications.
Force interbreeding between the tail-less monkeys and the tailed ones.
You might end up with monkeys with half-tails who had the ability to produce tailed offspring or tail-less offsrping,
or you might have all monkeys with tails that had the ability to produce tail-less offspring,
or you might end up with tail-less monkeys with the ability to produce offspring with tails.
This would put a sudden stop to tail based discrimination since for a generation all monkeys would be in the same situation. All monkey children would be born with the same tails (or lack thereof).
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