by Mike Gray

On the MisesDaily blog, Jeff Riggenbach discusses an anti-utopian novel by Ira Levin: “It’s evident from even the most cursory glance at [Ira] Levin’s third novel [This Perfect Day] that he was exposed in one way or another to [Objectivist Ayn] Rand’s ideas about politics. It’s evident also that he had a rare insight into the kinds of obstacles any libertarian movement based on such ideas would have to overcome if it were to enjoy any substantial success.”

Riggenbach cites a 1998 article by Ralph Raico: “The action begins in the year 141 of the Unification, the establishment of global government, which finally led to consolidating all the world’s super-computers into one colossal apparatus lodged deep below the Swiss Alps. Uni-Comp classifies and tracks all the “Members” (of the human Family), decides on their work, residence, and consumption goods, whether they will marry and if so whether they will reproduce, and everything else.”

But This Perfect Day is about more than just the triumph of the machines; in many ways it anticipates the all-too-human push for universal “health care,” which of necessity entails the curtailment of individual freedoms:

There is no warfare in the world of the Family; there is also no poverty. Nor is there any originality or creativity. Nor is there any passion. As Raico notes,

Uni subjects every Member to monthly “treatments.” The injections include vaccines, contraceptives, tranquilizers as prescribed, and a medication that reduces aggressiveness and limits the sex drive to a lackadaisical once-a-week encounter. All of this is mediated by super-caring Psychotherapists (“advisers”), who constantly monitor the Members’ mental health.

As for their physical health, that is seen to through their mandatory monthly “treatments” and their food, which consists of nothing but tasteless rice cakes prepared in such a way as to make them maximally nutritious. Members die at 62, however; everyone accepts this as simply the way human life naturally is on this planet. The truth is that a poison is introduced into the monthly “treatments” Members receive, to make sure that they never reach their 63rd birthday. They are, to put it plainly, murdered for “the greater good” — because Uni has decided that, on average, Members begin to cost the Family more than they benefit it shortly after they reach their 62nd birthday.

Into this nightmare, sometime in the year 2135, a young boy is born.

Riggenbach’s discussion does contain a lot of SPOILERS, so be warned. The same goes for the Wikipedia article about the book.