Designing the Perfect Human
Designer Babies-R-Us
There has been a lot of debate in the news lately about the fears of creating designer babies and the implications it could have on our society, and on future generations of humanity if those new genes get passed down.
But that’s no fun to talk about, so let’s see just how we could design the ultimate child.
In this article, we will discuss how to engineer your child to have the highest possible chance of being wealthy. I mean super wealthy – like rose gold plated iPhone 6 wealthy.
The Wealth Genes
There are many sets of genes that contribute to wealth and success, but these are the big 3:
Intelligence
– You don’t have to be intelligent to have wealth, plenty of morons have inherited fortunes as well as dynasties, but it helps a lot to keep it.
If you’re building your fortune from scratch, you’ll definitely want a high level of intelligence.
IQ and general intelligence are thought to be influenced by 50 or more genes. Each gene has a small impact on intelligence, so you need to get them all in order to have maximum impact.
Beauty
– Studies show that beautiful people tend to live longer, healthier lives, and they are often more wealthy and have more opportunities. Attractive people typically earn 3-4% more than counterparts in the same job, get faster job promotions, and better treatment from institutions like banks.
The attractiveness of the opposite sex can change from culture to culture but there is one thing that is attractive to everyone everywhere: Symmetry.
All cultures tend to see beauty in a symmetrical face, as well as in highly masculine or highly feminine traits.
For men, an added gene for height will give your son a decided advantage in sports as well as in life, as taller men are perceived by others to be more attractive and to be natural leaders (especially by hiring managers).
For women, exaggerated female traits of various kinds are highly coveted in all cultures: eyes, lips, hair … and you can guess the rest.
Being attractive may not be necessary for success, but it certainly speeds up the process, though it will require temperament by other genetic traits on the lists below so your symmetrical child doesn’t end up dancing on a pole.
And don’t forget to be beautiful on the inside too. You’ll make more money in the long run. (It’s called Paying Me Forward)
Extraversion
– The most likely people to become ultra rich in the modern economy are entrepreneurs.
If you want your children to be entrepreneurial, then you should give them the genes that create an extraverted personality. Research has found a 62% correlation between the genes for extroversion and the desire to start a business.
Studies have found extraversion to be between 40% and 60% heritable (passed down from grandparents or parents to child). The DRD3 gene involved in dopamine regulation is a good gene to start with, which hints at the possibility that extraversion is at least partially caused by increased pleasure in taking risks.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that controls the reward and pleasure centers of the brain. It is also the chemical that cocaine floods your brain with to make you feel like you can rule the world with your new haircut.
It should be noted though, that if you just want your children to be moderately wealthy, entrepreneurship may not be the way to go. The risk of failure is higher, and though entrepreneurs on average do express a higher satisfaction with their life and career choices, they also on average experience poorer health, longer work hours, and lower average pay per hour.
Who wants to join my start-up?!
The Genetic Recipe for Getting Rich
First off, and this can’t be taken too lightly, the most powerful, sure fire way to make sure your children get rich, is to be rich yourself!
Studies with twins suggest that economic status is as heritable as many medical conditions and personality traits.
If you are rich, then you have rich genes, right? Which should mean your children get rich genes too.
That is true in some ways, the children of rich parents are MUCH more likely to be rich than others, but it’s not the genes that are the direct cause. Sorry it’s not that easy.
Some sociologists have tried to prove that the genetics of the wealthy predispose their children to being successful.
Unfortunately, this was disproved as it was shown not to be a direct result of the genes, and more a result of environmental factors like habits and access to resources that people from poor families did not have access to.
Sorry Steven Colbert.
This means that for those of us with enough money to design our babies, our rich genes alone won’t be enough. There will be some work involved. (Hopefully we can hire someone else to do the work part.)
Once you give your child the rich genes that they need to succeed, you have to actually turn on those genes.
The Role of Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the study of the mechanisms that turn genes on or off.
Just because you have a gene doesn’t mean it is going to work, or be expressed.
Genes can be expressed or not expressed. They can be up-regulated or down-regulated.
They can even be mutated, but that’s another story. (Sorry Ninja Turtles, not in this article.)
The key is to get all of your child’s wealth genes activated. Otherwise, all that money spent on your designer baby could go to waste.
Your genes are turned on or off with methyl tags.
These tags get added or removed from your DNA by a complex process that is influenced by your environment and your actions. (For some reason this process always ends up looking like a zipper in diagrams – yeah real complicated geneticists…)
If you eat a lot of a certain food, genes relating to the processing of that food may be up or down regulated. This can happen with nearly all of your genes, especially genes that influence habits that determine your social behavior.
The tags on your DNA are passed from one cell to the next, so the “habit” is passed on to newly produced cells and retained in all the cells throughout your body.
The tags on your genes can also be passed to future generations. Most of the tags are removed when the DNA is passed on to a child, but studies have shown that some tags will remain, causing genes in a newborn child to be turned on or off from the beginning.
The sins of the father really are passed down…
The Genetic Formula for Success
We know that the right genes will give our children a higher chance for success, but we also have to establish the right environment and behaviors to ensure that those genes get expressed.
To make your child as rich as possible, you should give them the genes of people who have developed healthy habits that lead to wealth, and then train them to maintain those habits.
Even those unfortunate children born with less than perfect genes can improve their situation with the right tools. They can turn off the genes promoting bad habits that prevent them from building wealth, and focus on developing habits that consistently build wealth.
Behavior and habits are essential to genetic expression.
The formula for success = the right genes + the right environment + the right habits.
What other genes and habits will give your child the best chance for success?
To Maximize Wealth Accumulation You Should Isolate the Genes for:
Reading, Learning & Openness to New Ideas
– 86% of wealthy people enjoy reading, and nearly 90% of wealthy people believe in continually improving themselves and educating themselves throughout their lives.
The desire and ability to learn new ideas and implement them has been shown to be a major factor in entrepreneurial success.
Eating Healthy & Exercising
– 57% of wealthy people count their calories, 76% of wealthy people exercise aerobically at least 4 days a week, and 92% feel good about their health.
If your body doesn’t feel good, you don’t feel good. Studies show that highly successful people are typically “high-energy” people. Entrepreneurs often have to work 70-100 hours per week, which requires constant energy.
The fastest way to destroy your energy levels and increase your stress levels is to stop exercising and start eating junk food.
A healthy diet and exercise routine aren’t just good for your body, they’re great for your bottom line.
Modesty
– Most wealthy people shop for good deals, they don’t radically change their lifestyle when they get rich, and they save money whenever they have the opportunity.
Studies showed that the biggest difference between the ultra rich 1% and the mostly-rich 5% was that the ultra rich spent 30% less money on “wasteful” things like dining out, and they put 30% more of their money into investments and retirement.
94% of wealthy people balance their bank accounts each month. If you want to be rich, you better get this one right – you can only make money if you’re spending LESS than you bring in.
Truly wealthy people never go into debt (though they sometimes go bankrupt) and they often don’t use their own money to fund projects – they use other people’s money.
Honesty
– Studies found that companies that request honest feedback from their employees and encourage open communication produced a 270 percent higher average return on the stock market than other companies over 10 years.
Confidence
– Confidence is a “must have” trait in many areas, including sports, leadership, and dating. It’s also essential to entrepreneurship.
If fact, studies show that overconfidence is a key factor in successful entrepreneurs, allowing them to never give up, even when they probably should.
Discipline
– 62% of wealthy people set goals and track their progress in achieving them.
You must know your goal, know the path to that goal, and perform the actions day in and day out that you know you must do to reach that goal. It’s an every day mentality.
Being Early to Rise
– The majority of wealthy people wake up between 4am and 6am. 44% of wealthy people get up at least 3 hours before their work begins.
Researchers have found close to 80 genes that may influence whether you are an early bird or a night owl. If you want your child to be more productive, choose early bird genes.
Also try turning off all electronic devices 2 hours before bed. Then they might actually get to sleep.
Fortitude & Persistence
– 90% of wealthy people did not become rich the way they expected. Studies have shown that innovation often comes as the result of looking at a problem from many different angles over a long period of time.
Grit is also a great predictor of future success. The ability to not give up and to keep trying until a problem is solved seems to be as close as you can get to a requirement for wealth building.
Positivity
– 98% of wealthy people believe that their opportunities and possibilities are endless. They thought this before they were rich too.
Curiosity
Research shows that businesses based on products or technology born out of curiosity often produce far more wealth than new products or technologies that are created purely to make money.
The most valuable businesses and products have typically developed out of the curiosity of researchers who spent years or even decades studying something they are passionate about and that interests them in great detail.
It is often not until years later that their discoveries become the basis for billion dollar businesses.
If you’re not curious, make friends with curious people.
Genes You should “Turn Off” To Be Rich
On a special note, there is one gene set that you should make sure to eradicate from your child’s genome right off that bat with no exceptions.
It is so detrimental to wealth accumulation, productivity, and overall happiness that no amount of effort should be spared to remove it from the human species, even going so far as to use germ-line gene therapy to remove it from all future generations.
That is, the genes that predispose a child to compulsively watch “Reality TV”.
Only 6% of wealthy people watch Reality TV shows. 76% of poor people in America watch Reality TV regularly. This is a dangerous and telling statistic.
As an added warning, nearly 67% of wealthy only watch TV for one hour or less daily.
If you want to be rich, turn off those genes, and turn off your TV.
Engineering for Social Bias
Historically speaking, your best chance at being wealthy was to be a white and male.
Sexual orientation can be straight or homosexual, however it should be noted that on average gay males actual have a lower average income than straight males, while lesbian women have a higher average income than straight women.
In Summary: The Perfect Mix
As I have shown, the ultimate formula for genetic success is great genes + great environment + great habits.
You want your children to have the right foundation, an environment that turns on and supports those attributes that contribute to wealth and success, and the habits above that will ensure they stay on the right path and continue to build wealth over time.
For those us you with a bit less money than might be required to genetically engineer your perfect baby, it should be good news to note that using the principles of epigentics, you can turn off the gene expression of genes that inhibit your child’s wealth building capabilities, and turn on those that will help.
The bad news is that this requires a plan, discipline to build healthy wealth building habits, and the perseverance to see it through for many years.
Basically, stuff that most kids hate.
Now if we could only genetically engineer children to enjoy their chores and homework…
Have rich kids? Then you probably need a Christian Financial Advisor.
What is Genetic ? 
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