This world is turning out less like the movie Idiocracy and more like the series Continuum.

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The "smart" people keep waiting and waiting. It's not being forced on them...

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Yeah, the overall plot of the show is that people who are perceived as terrorists are often liberation fighters with a nasty edge, and it’s hard tell the difference between evil and righteousness sometimes. The narrative perspective shifts and changes and so do your sympathies with the characters. It is a harsh critique of runaway, capitalism, but not necessarily fully anti-capitalist or pro communist anything. It ends up with a pretty centrist message in some ways.

It’s great to see Vancouver acting as Vancouver, both future and present, pretty rare considering how much is being shot there.

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As Gramsci pointed out you need broad coalitions between key groups like educators and bureaucrats, but it has to also extend to radical action groups as allies with some social insulation between them to manage public morale and maintain an alliance.

It’s interesting what is going on in Syria right now.

Ech

Choice to have a baby ≠ choice to "be dumb"

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Good point, but I meant more the general civilization rather than the timeline.

Ech

I wonder if your sensitivity to this bit is because of your own perspective on where you sit intellectually or financially

Literally what you said. Feel free to clarify if that's not what you meant.

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Choice to not have baby = choice to let dumb people out-procreate smart people = more dumb people

Ech

And, returning to the original question - How exactly is that treating individual intelligence as a choice and not a genetic trait?

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Works have meanings beyond their surface-level detail and literal meaning. They also have themes and clear implications. And Idiocracy certainly has those. It has clear undertones of eugenics.

The first is the clear implication that population demographics require active management. In the movie, there was no mass government program to encourage births among those of low intelligence and discourage births among the intelligent. This situation developed entirely naturally through culture acting on its own. A viewer could only conclude that if this horrible future is to be avoided, that we need to start worrying a lot more about who is reproducing in what numbers. We either need government mandates or major cultural initiatives to encourage reproduction among the deserving. Idiocracy never outright endorses eugenics, but the implication is obvious. Writers aren't idiots. They know the clear implications of their work. You don't end up with a political movie that clearly implies the solution is genocide without realizing that's the obvious implication.

The second is the theme that intelligence is something that can be bred or selected for at all through the social stratification we have now. Are those with PhDs really more intelligent, by writ of birth, than those that never graduate high school? Or it mostly about circumstances of birth, opportunities, personal choices, or even neonatal environmental pollutant exposure? Do we have any real evidence that intelligence differences within the species are something that can truly be selected for? Hell, what kind of intelligence are we talking about? Scholastic ability, emotional intelligence, executive reasoning, etc? There are many types of intelligence. And the very idea that the poor and those of lower educational attainment are of genetically lower intelligence is a key eugenics theme.

Yes, Idiocracy never comes right out and explicitly endorses eugenics. But the implications and themes are undeniably pro-eugenics.

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Sounds like the plot of In Time.

Rolivers

Iirc this show actually got finished and is really good.

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This novel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest