
A 1920s millionaire set off a race to have the most babies - fisherjeff
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-a-dead-millionaire-convinced-dozens-of-women-to-have-as-many-babies-as-possible/
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downandout
Holding out the carrot of what sounds like a large payday to poor people in
order to encourage them to do something that will financially destroy all
participants except the winner(s) sounds a lot like what the gaming/lottery
industry does today. He didn't profit from it, but it's just as cruel and
damaging. He may have viewed it as a practical joke, but the impoverished
children that resulted from this probably didn't find it as funny.

~~~
alextgordon
I'm sure they were quite happy with it. How can anyone regret their own birth?

~~~
downandout
_> I'm sure they were quite happy with it._

A significant portion of the world's population lives in poverty and the
resulting misery. Misery is far from "quite happy," and I suspect most of them
wish their parents had some self-control.

~~~
alextgordon
People who live in poverty aren't miserable. Far from it. They experience
exactly the same gamut of emotion as you or me, including copious amounts of
happiness.

It is a very strong determination to make, that someone should wish they were
never born, simply because their standard of living doesn't match what you
think it should be.

~~~
downandout
_> People who live in poverty aren't miserable. Far from it_

You know this how exactly? I'm guessing you have never lived in poverty, but
even if you have, you're making a demonstrably false generalization. Poverty
permeates every aspect of the human experience. Studies have shown a clear
correlation between it and suicide, likelihood of arrest and imprisonment,
depression, and virtually every other negative thing a person can experience.
Impoverished parents are inflicting their poverty on defenseless children that
had no say in the matter.

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lordnacho
People couldn't have been completely crazy. Anyone taking part would
understand that not winning would be hugely burdensome, and winning would mean
you have money but a huge number of mouths to feed.

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kevin_b_er
If you won, it was $153 million dollars in today's money. That's more than
enough money to feed all those mouths.

~~~
patorjk
Actually, the article says his net worth was more than "$10 million (in
today’s Canadian dollars)". That's about 7.2 million in today's US dollars.
The most any winner got was 2 million CAD (or 1.46 million USD) and the
winners each had 9 kids. So that's like getting 162k to have a kid, which
isn't that great of a deal.

~~~
fasteddie
Which presumably would also get hit with more taxes, lowering it by another
30-40%

~~~
cperciva
Canada doesn't have any inheritance tax. As far as I know, this was the case
at the time in question, too.

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clock_tower
From the title and the time period, I was expecting this to be something about
encouraging the rich to have more children -- a common concern among interwar
eugenicists. As it is... well, this was certainly eccentric, among other
things.

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mayakacz
Hmmm. There was a TV movie I saw about this when I was growing up in Canada...
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby)

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biot
Interesting comment from the judge:

    
    
      "A child born dead is not in truth a child," Middleton
      wrote. "It was that which might have been a child."
    

Following this, abortion isn't the termination of a child; only that which
might have been a child.

~~~
orbitur
I don't see how that follows, since a stillbirth can happen without external
influence.

