Childmachine

Childmachine

This one's for Jeff

I have a proposal. It's a modest one.

My proposal will save the state and taxpayers billions of dollars. My proposal will save parents years of grief and frustration.

Children should be made into machines from the hour of birth. Why invest in twelve or more years of schooling, and a lifetime of parenting? Genetic engineering and nanotechnology have made wonderful advances in altering feelings and behavior by inserting a tiny chip into the brain. The military has invested billions in developing a computer chip that, when inserted into the brain, will block pain and fear, thus allowing a soldier to fight bravely right up until the moment of death. See for more on this exciting invention.

The goal of genetic engineers now is to create a biological computer based on and embedded into DNA that would exceed a million-fold the number and kind of operations, providing users with an unimaginably, one could even say inhumanly, fast and efficient computer.

Scientists and engineers will save us from the current oil crisis. I have absolute faith in their ability to invent something that will turn air into fuel so that we can continue to drive our Sports Utility Humvees. Why can't they turn their attention to those pesky children to make them more useful and efficient, and, well, more standard?

Legislators and taxpayers will rejoice if genetic alterations can be made so as to make children not only into efficient pickle factory workers, or cardboard box folders, but into the very machines that workers operate in those factories--the bottle washers and sorters, and label gluers. All without investing a dollar in teachers or school buildings or books. Property tax will be reduced significantly so people can invest in a third or fourth vehicle, since fuel will now be as free as the air.

Companies themselves will be much relieved. Not only will they no longer need to provide health care for their workers, for there will be an endless, renewable supply of workers given the surplus population, or retirement benefits, because the Childmachine will expire before growing old. Corporations will no longer need to make capital investments to replace machinery.

Parents' lives will be much improved. Their days will proceed much more smoothly, for their children will be much easier to control, and will never display those bothersome traits of contrary points of view or independence of spirit.

One group may be uneasy upon learning of my proposal--the standardized testing companies. Tests will no longer be necessary, for children will be standardized immediately. Each testing company would stand to lose $2.2 billion each year without school children to standardize using the much slower and more inefficient method of yearly testing and drilling for the test.

But the test manufacturers will be relieved to know I have accounted for them in my proposal. They will manufacture the Childmachines, applying the technology that is created by our clever scientists who have no other interest than the good of society.

I can no longer be modest.

My proposal is brilliant. Don't you think so, Jonathan Swift?