I have posted two articles contents of The Bell Curve and strangely no one willing to respond appears to have grasped the significance of the book. The book is no more than a summary of relevant studies of IQ and a response to time worn objections to IQ. The social implications are enormous. Perhaps the problem is that the book's detractors refuse to read it.
What is clearly shown is now that we have an egalitarian and essentially biased society it is different from what it was 30 years ago. What has happened is that society has stratified on the basis of IQ alone, not race, not ethnic origin, not religion. Of course the detractors claim such prejudice is still there without proof or that it is so subtle it can not be detected -- save they know it is there somehow.
This means that the top of society, those who make the details of society, are making this society the way they want it to be. It is not malevolent. It is not a conspiracy. It is simply a viewpoint that if they can understand it, anyone can.
If you think you are intelligent, read the DOS manual some time. Even worse, read the "simplifications" that appear on your screen. System programmers are far from the dumbest around. The Department of Defense requires a team of tech writers to put what the engineers write into plain English for the troops. Consider those who can not pass an IQ test to become troops and what they do with manuals.
Not being able to program a VCR is a national joke. Consider the problem with teaching something worth doing, like earning a living. Using a backhoe, regardless of how many people it replaces or how much more economical, is much more complicated than using a pick a shovel. Not only has the technology made it impractical to hire pick and shovel people they can not be trained to use the equipment that replaces them.
Can not be trained is an exaggeration. Rather the low IQ types will never be able to use the equipment as efficiently as their smart brethren no matter how well trained nor how long on the job. Those are the facts.
Our society is now one in which the lower IQ people can do nothing productive, nothing worth the basic cost of their existence in this society. So what do we do about them? That is the final question in the book.
In our future social policy we are going to be walking a fine line between destroying human incentive for self improvement and warehousing them. Those both sound negative as they are. There is no positive alternative as was promised by the Great Society.
Head Start does not work, school lunches do not work, job training does not work, nothing can work in our society. Our society it too complex for the lower IQ folks to lead productive lives and earn their own way. And if you think that is not happening now wait another ten years just do not tell me this date is an important point in time for purposes of this subject.
Some form of social consideration will become mandatory for these people else we let them die off in the new slums. That is always a viable alternative as a couple generations later they will regress toward the norm, produce a reasonable distribution of IQ and then we can cull them into the mainstream and return the ghetto to another breeding farm.
If we continue the "welfare forever" approach we have now then we will be continuing the murder, rape, violence, and drug crime scenario forever. Not only is that unconsciencable but unless we wall them in an unacceptable level of their murder, rape, violence and drug crimes will be upon those who do not share their lack of intelligence.
The authors make other suggestions which you can read but I would suggest a "license free" zone for business might help. So people in this neighborhood might get food poisoning from the local uninspected fast food place; it is not as though they would have any less risk of it in their own apartment with their own cooking. That such places have to be licensed only means that the morass of regulation to become licensed prohibits the locals from becoming licensed. This retards primitive forms of private enterprise.
Similarly the legal system does need be reformed for them especially. Simple crimes and simple punishments. Not for them but for those who would follow. The problem is with complex crimes in that our meritocracy has implemented a complex set of mitigating criteria that the low IQ people are unable to understand. Of course, as with most people, the only hear the good news, they can get off, out early, not even incarcerated if it is overcrowded.
It is not that these low IQ people need to be sent a message, they need to be sent an engraved invitation that is simple and without equivocation. Otherwise they will not understand it and will kill twenty times more of their own than anyone else.
And the critical point is never to draw a line based upon an IQ test. It is simply to recognize those people exist and to have some sort of safety net for them that is not based upon IQ. Certainly IQ can be the basis of some "work or else" criteria but that is too simple to fail if they want social welfare but failure to pass is not a reason to hold anyone down. There is always some employer somewhere who can find a job for the minimally competent but we can not expect them to be paid any more than their economic worth and thus there needs be some provision for them.
There was a very "libertarian" age in scientific literature after WW II when engineers were predicting a meritocracy for themselves but as authors they wrote of the dangers of imposing that system on others. They also wrote of the forced equality of results we have endured for the last thirty years. This ground has been explored before. Let me give you the answer.
All effort expended towards scientific and engineering solutions to low cost housing, food, clothing and the minimum accoutrements of life to make them as cheap as possible. Give them away as entitlements but no more. Admit there is no way to stop crime under such circumstances. These will become "bring out your dead" districts.
That is the society we have now. The only difference is that we do not admit it.