Mandatory Gene Banks
The United States does not do a very good job collecting data, which makes academic research difficult. What we should do is require every person to have a record of their DNA on file with the government, along with linked records of their IQ, height, weight, medical records, income, applications to all government agencies for all purposes, employment history, and so on. This will doubtless excite much opposition. I would argue, however, that this opposition comes from badly misevaluating the consequences of the program. There is no credible way in which someone who has not committed a particular sort of serious crime would be harmed. Concerns that it could be used for totalitarianism are absurd, as the addition of genetic data does not give us any greater power than the government already possesses.
It would be extremely useful to know what genes do, and in particular what they do when they are combined with other genes. When there are millions of possible genes, and they can all interact with each other, even very large samples are underpowered to detect effects. With a sample in the hundreds of millions, we can get incredible precision on the effect of particular genes, and learn which genes to modify in order to improve the health and ability of our children. We can also be able to predict who is likely to develop different disorders, and begin treatment sooner than later, as well as better match our research and development expenditures to drugs which will be needed more.
We can also use genes as plausibly exogenous variables to determine the true impact of personal characteristics. Suppose we want to know the effect of weight on productivity. Whether people are obese or not is obviously endogenous to the outcomes of interest — someone might be in an unproductive job which then leads to obesity, or vice versa. If we know that someone is predisposed to obesity, though, we can use that as the first stage in a two stage least squares, and estimate the effect of weight. Then we can calculate the economic benefits of losing weight, and answer important questions, like “should we subsidize Ozempic?”
Another benefit would be the ease of solving cold cases where DNA has been left behind by the perpetrator. DNA is not magic, of course — but in cases where we are looking for an unknown person, being able to simply know that the person whose blood was found on the shoes of Decedent A is a Mr. Joseph Whittaker of Elmhurst, New York is quite valuable.
Us making data collection not mandatory leads to our samples being unrepresentative, and possibly misleading, which especially affects marginalized populations. If the gene bank is opt in only, then it will be disproportionately taken up by richer populations, as the UK Biobank has found. Without a comprehensive sample, we will have more information on the diseases and disorders faced primarily by the wealthy, compounding inequality and lowering welfare relative to counterfactual (if we assume a declining marginal utility of wealth).
Many people are concerned about privacy, but I think this is frankly ridiculous. The dataset would simply not be useful for a repressive government. The federal government is perfectly capable of repressing you as it is. It simply chooses not to. The government is already fully capable of arbitrary detention, debanking, adverse regulatory actions, and intimidation. What does it gain from knowing your genes? What is the world where it could not crack down on protestors, but for the fact that their hair was left behind at the scene of the protest?
And to throw every tool which could potentially be used in oppression is to give up entirely on the very notion of government. Why have a census? Peasants (rightly!) regarded the census as a tool of oppression by imperial governments. To be counted was to be taxed. If you are opposed to all record-keeping, then go all the way. Argue for the abolition of all government. But do not argue for half-measures. Besides being new, is a record of genes really the most injurious information the government possesses on you? Abolish the census, abolish the IRS. But if you do not wish to argue for that, then don’t embrace positions which require you to.