> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else).

In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income. That's before even considering environmental factors. I don't think there's a decision an average person can make that's more ecologically destructive than having a child.

Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it.

Add in college and support through early-twenties (pretty baseline scenario for upper-middle class parents in the US) and the financial calculation is even tougher.

That said, if the most thoughtful potential parents don't have and raise civic-minded children, the percentage of new humans raised by less "enlightened" parents will increase, leading to a downward spiral.

For my part, I'm confident that the world is a better place because my two daughters are in it, and I'm definitely a better person for having been their father.

> This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income.

There's no better investment.

HN bio checks out.

Kids are an investment, not a sunk cost.

Anti-natalism is such a weird concept to me. Taken to the logical extreme aren’t you just arguing we should all kill ourselves?

Having kids is pretty far down my priority list but like, there's more to life than earning money.

Kids that the population doesn't have will simply get imported from other countries. It has no impact.

> Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it.

Objectively if no-one has kids then there will be no more humans. I guess you could consider that an ecological win. If you don't, then someone has to have kids.

Then I can be a millionaire just by having five, six kids! Because that is 48 median gross incomes, which is $4m. Better growth curve than most YC startups!

> Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it.

Absolutely insane take imo. You do you man.

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Having kids and raising them is your primary purpose as a man. Anything else you spend your time on is secondary to that.

This (rational) attitude is why state pensions need to have a strong correlation with the number of children you parent until they complete secondary schooling -- there needs to be a financial payoff for the time, effort and money invested; those children are the ones financing the state pensions.