Inborn intelligence, and implications.

Right now, there's a taboo in our society on mentioning inborn differences of intelligence and how well it means an individual might lead their lives.  Between individuals, it's less of an issue, as differences between individuals is accepted as a fact of life.  Differences between races are more of a taboo, and even so much as admitting it in passing could get you fired, or your career destroyed.

What would happen if our society ever admitted that intelligence was one of the most reliable indicators of future performance?  What would it mean?

Would they start channeling more educational rescources toward the smart kids in order to raise overall human acheivement?  Or would they start channeling more rescources toward the less intelligent kids to even the playing field? Would they prevent dumber people from having kids, by only giving reproduction liscences to the smartest of people? 

And what kind of changes would have to happen to cause a scenario to come about?

>>1

Hey buddy! Are you aware that this idea isn't new? Nope! Other people have thought of selectively breeding human beings in the manner which we do to lower order animals like sheep, to increase the occurence of traits the selecters desire. In sheep, human beings bred traits like a docile nature and the ability to do nothing but whimper in the face of imminent slaughter (but of course no one would ever do anything so deranged as try and use eugenics to commit genocide against humans, that's silly!). I think your plan to take the future of the human race out of the hands of Nature (I mean, look at how stupid and weak we are now! Nature is so ineffectual!), and put it in the hands of a few human individuals is a neat idea! Let's look at the history of this idea together, O.K.?! =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_policy_of_Nazi_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_darwinism

And then, when you're all done, go and read Stephen Jay Gould's the Mismeasure of Man. Oopsy! It looks like there's a long history of people *lying* and *cheating* to make their experimental results fit their race-preferencing stereotypes! But don't worry... nothing like that could *ever* happen again, because we've got the best intentions, and we don't have any stereotypes; all of our opinions about smelly brown people and lazy black people are based upon hard empirical data!

tl;dr? if humans are stupid, why would you want to put the future of humanity in the hands of humanity any more than you have to?