In the series, corporations get a bailout when things get bad, collude to make it worse with profits over people and then basically buy off world governments in a reverse bail out to take control of the system. With a “Corporate Congress” and all people having a “life debt”.
Oh, and the time travel aspect of it is pretty cool too.
Choice to not have baby = choice to let dumb people out-procreate smart people = more dumb people
And, returning to the original question - How exactly is that treating individual intelligence as a choice and not a genetic trait?