The value of children; selfishness

[David]

Amy Z wrote:
 
> And, after all, if I produce a child, that may help ease society's 
> burden when I'm old and gray, but what happens forty years later 
when 
> the *child* is old and gray?  Another senior mouth to feed.  In 
other 
> words, do any of us pull our weight?  Do we produce enough revenue 
in 
> the form of taxes and GDP to make the government think it's 
worthwhile 
> to take care of us in our old age, or don't we?  And if we don't, 
then 
> what good is it to have children?  The children will take on some 
of 
> the burden of supporting us (or maybe they won't; there's no law 
> requiring them to, at least in the US), but who will take care of 
> those children?

Ooh, *economics*!  I just love economics.  A fantasy world full of 
wacky ideas, perverse logic, and strange acronyms.  In which people 
who act altruistically are made out to be Ever So Evil, while those 
who are selfish are publicly praised.  A world, in short, utterly 
alien to the HPFGU member.

If *some* of us weren't pulling our weight, wouldn't we all starve 
to death, or something?  Or do you mean we'd all be richer (in the 
narrow GDP sense) if we had compulsory euthanasia at 60?

Seriously, I'd say it's impossible to evaluate economically the 
effects of having more or fewer human beings.  Sure, people do sums 
on the total production and consumption of a typical individual.  
But if these sums have any foundation at all (and, yes, people *try* 
to give them a rigorous logical and mathematical foundation), it is 
that you can compare a person's preferences for one thing with their 
preferences for another, and compare one person's preferences with 
another's.  That then all maybe works fine for trading in Mars bars, 
and even possibly for building roads or rationing (some) healthcare, 
but when it comes to the economic decision to bring another human 
being into the world?  That person is a brand-new scale of 
preferences, and so changes the very model that is trying to measure 
its value.  Heisenberg, eat your heart out.

How could one tell if the world would be a better place if it had a 
population of ten million?  Can one assign a number that would 
enable such a comparison?

> One more thought on the selfishness issue.  I think perhaps what's 
> meant by "it's selfish" is not so much "it's selfish to do what 
you 
> want," but "it's selfish not to want to devote one's life to 
taking 
> care of someone else."  Yes, I think that's it, because the point 
the 
> argument flares up is often when a woman (always, always a woman--
I 
> never hear anyone say this to men) says, "I have other things I 
want 
> to do.  I want to be an artist / I want to travel around the 
world / I 
> want to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry / I want to make partner 
in a 
> law firm.  Having children would make that very difficult."  
People 
> bristle when someone makes this true and obvious statement, as if 
> preferring painting in oils over changing diapers is selfish 
instead 
> of just a preference.  

Interesting.  I *would* have characterised the above statements as 
selfish, in the pejorative sense, whether uttered by a man or a 
woman.  As also the statement 'I want to have children.'  In fact, 
thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that as a child I was led to 
believe that the use of the phrase 'I want' in any connection at all 
is wrong.

David