Well, I wouldn't think it's all that utopian for people who aren't, for whatever reason, able to do as much work. (But then, I think that a lot of things about Beta Colony sound like hell, so ymmv.) I guess my question would be what would happen when you've got a marginal/survival situation where you can't have a layer of people sitting on their ass and not doing any work. Is it plausible to ever have it end up where the looks of the people best able to survive and function are the ones seen as admirable?

What I'm fishing for is what's plausible in secondary-world settings (which that awful book isn't), is it always going to shake out the way it does in the real world?