Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Rob's link points to a book by David Benatar, who argues (both in that book and in several academic publications) that bringing humans into existence is morally bad. A summary of his argument, and a quick sketch at a refutation, is available from Jean Kazez (Phil. Prof. at SMU) at

http://faculty.smu.edu/jkaz...

(I am placing this comment long after this thread has died down.)

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

"Jeffrey, kids are investments, and any investment reduces consumption in the short run. Also resources for new kids may come at the expense of assets given to siblings. But why not let parents choose more kids over richer kids?"'scuse the long delay in my response.I have no argument against investing in kids - provided that the averagelifetime per-capita standard of living does not get reduced. As per"On The Internet No One Knows You're a Dog"'s example, there canbe scenarios where per-capita utility decreases while each individualgains be per-capital utility drops - but only if inequality isguaranteed to persist, which I'd rather not count on.

Ideally, I'd prefer to see parents subsidized or taxed based on theincremental impact, positive or negative, that child has onper-capita utility. You seem to be saying that this impact is positive.Can you point to an analysis supporting this? Frankly, I'mskeptical. With our current technology, we seem to be pushing upagainst a number of resource limits (as suggested by species lossrates, and to some degree CO2 effects). Cranking up thepopulation further seems at least imprudent to me.

Expand full comment
34 more comments...

No posts