chat

Then it's as absurd of an analogy as is the extrapolation of the idea of nobody ever having kids.

You are ridiculous. Rich people absolutely can be good parents to their children. I know plenty of petite-bourgeois fucks who, despite generally being assholes to their employees, are extremely generous to their children, handing them an easy life that is much less stressful than their own, but still holding them accountable for basic social mores. Idk where you are getting this idea that every rich fuck in the world is Elon Musk.

I'm not claiming you are following malthusianism or classism. I am claiming that you are pursuing absurdist nihilism, or just straight up anti-natalism.

Having a kid is not the same as shoving someone in front of a train. You can say it as many times as you want, but there is no ethical system in the world outside of a strictly anti-natalist one that would agree with that. Unless you are arguing from a completely utilitarian perspective that humanity is and always will be more unhappy than happy. And in that case, there is no circumstance, even under communism, that one could ever ethically choose to have a kid because the situation will never be good enough because there will always be too many unknown unknowns. You cannot possibly claim that you have the same level of certainty as pushing someone in front of a train will harm them, in the fact that the world is definitely going to get worse, and that there is no way that we can fix it, while choosing to have children. Because if we actually believe we can fix it, and should attempt to do so, then why should we be afraid to have children?

By your logic of negligence, every car accident is also the responsibility and fault of every other driver on the road because without them that person wouldn't have been in that place at that time. Every electrician is responsible for every electrical fire in a house they installed, even if it occurs 50 years after they installed the system. After all, they are inadvertently putting someone into a dangerous situation they otherwise wouldn't have been in. Every time I burn myself it is the responsibility of the first hominid who harnessed fire. Every time a butterfly flaps it's wings it is responsible for the hurricane on the other side of the world.

Your idea of negligence basically reduces down to an absurdity that the only ethical thing to do is literally kill yourself, so that way you are never inadvertently harming someone through your actions. But then you are still screwed because there is a possiblity that you are inadvertently harming someone through your inaction, where they would be in a safe environment if you had acted. This is basically just secular Christianity, where the most ethically sinful position is that of ignorance of Christ, but that is still a sin. At least the Christians have some shot at ethical behavior and redemption.

Have you ever considered just becoming a Quaker?

There are levels of acceptable risk in the world, the challenge is understanding the cost-benefits of those risks, and understanding actually how personally responsible you are for mitigating that risk. The risks around having kids here and now in the U.S. are still far far lower than most other places and most other times. I'm not saying everyone has to have children, but I would hope that at least the people who do have children wanted to have them, and I will never say that wanting to have a child is a bad thing, because the alternative, having a child that you do not want, is far, far, worse and more risky for the child.