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Notes -
"Better" doesn't really mean anything here, though. The whole point of the discussion is explicating the what and how of what "better" even means in terms of genetically engineering people for the sake of society.
E.g. we could genetically engineer men to enjoy being celibate to make them "better." This would obviously reduce a lot of the suffering that men are going through, but most women probably wouldn't find it appealing if almost every man they met had basically no sexual desire. Then again, perhaps it would make it easier for women to find the few high status males with mutations that countered the genetic engineering, which would benefit them greatly. But if the few high status males are so rare that each woman has to share a man with a million others, then that would be unsatisfactory. So perhaps we could also genetically engineer the birth sex ratio to be heavily weighted towards males, so that we have roughly the same amount of females and of high status male mutants, along with a 99% population of male volcels.
However, I'm not sure what a world where 99% of the population are volcel males would look like, what kind of political influence they would hold, and what they would do with it. They'd likely be far less productive than a similar population of standard issue males, but if we're in this fantasy scifi world, that productivity might not matter a whole lot.
We already know what a world where a significant chunk of volcel males looks like. They have little political influence; too busy with the video games and porn to acquire money or power. (Also, they were told wanting women was bad, and unfortunately for women by and large listened.)
Again, this is already true. Actually, by that token, since Western society considers the definition of "better men" to be "women", you're going to get a heavy female-weighted genetic engineering demand in areas where that's more locally true, and a more even distribution where that isn't.
Sure, it'll probably even out eventually because increased competition for men means women lose relative power over men- but I don't think the ideal gender distribution in a hyperfeminine world is anywhere near the 50/50 it is when the power of men-as-class and women-as-class are more balanced (by the chance circumstances of the local economy).
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