The 4 month old will produce 80 years of utility if saved, for 18 years of investment: if this is a bad bargain, reproduction always is. The adult, if saved, will produce 50 years of utility for 0 further investment. This means a higher rate of return on the adult, but a higher total future “utility revenue” from the child. Depending on who’s making the investment and whether that matters to you, the answer could be either way. But now that I’ve written it out like this, I can see your point: the adult does have a higher rate of return.
Creating things, be they X Y or Z, usually has diminishing marginal returns. You can only make so many Xs before it becomes a worse idea than Ys, and only so many Ys and Xs before Zs become better ideas.
Unfortunately, if your factory workers have aesthetic fondness for Xs, or Ys are accidentally produced by the coffeemakers in the break room, or if Bob of the Church of the SubGenius commands Zs be made rather than As, you may wind up with a suboptimal productions. In such a situation, someone may come to you and suggest that you make Zs, but you say no. But if this is a bad bargain, Zs always are!
Of course, the right answer is, ‘conditions right now mean that Zs are not the greatest marginal return for investment, but Zs are still pretty nifty, and if Zs fell down to some level N such as 0, then maybe Zs would return to being the best investment’.
In this analogy, Zs are babies. Arguably they are not a very good investment in the First World or anywhere. Populations don’t need to grow. It’d be fine if populations gradually shrunk. But if birth rates were zero then that’s different, and would cause in not terribly long a catastrophic decline, and if it continued for more than a few decades, it would literally cause the extinction of the human race. It’s hard to argue that babies didn’t become the best possible investment at some point along the way to extinction. But that doesn’t mean they are the best investment now.
My wording in the grandparent was misleading.
This:
The 4 month old will produce 80 years of utility if saved, for 18 years of investment: if this is a bad bargain, reproduction always is.
Was meant to refer only to having a baby in current conditions regardless of whether or not it would be sacrificed to save an adult. I meant that if 80 years of production minus 18 years of investment was a net negative or a net positive, that wouldn’t change whether you saved the adult or the baby.
The 4 month old will produce 80 years of utility if saved, for 18 years of investment: if this is a bad bargain, reproduction always is. The adult, if saved, will produce 50 years of utility for 0 further investment. This means a higher rate of return on the adult, but a higher total future “utility revenue” from the child. Depending on who’s making the investment and whether that matters to you, the answer could be either way. But now that I’ve written it out like this, I can see your point: the adult does have a higher rate of return.
Creating things, be they X Y or Z, usually has diminishing marginal returns. You can only make so many Xs before it becomes a worse idea than Ys, and only so many Ys and Xs before Zs become better ideas.
Unfortunately, if your factory workers have aesthetic fondness for Xs, or Ys are accidentally produced by the coffeemakers in the break room, or if Bob of the Church of the SubGenius commands Zs be made rather than As, you may wind up with a suboptimal productions. In such a situation, someone may come to you and suggest that you make Zs, but you say no. But if this is a bad bargain, Zs always are!
Of course, the right answer is, ‘conditions right now mean that Zs are not the greatest marginal return for investment, but Zs are still pretty nifty, and if Zs fell down to some level N such as 0, then maybe Zs would return to being the best investment’.
In this analogy, Zs are babies. Arguably they are not a very good investment in the First World or anywhere. Populations don’t need to grow. It’d be fine if populations gradually shrunk. But if birth rates were zero then that’s different, and would cause in not terribly long a catastrophic decline, and if it continued for more than a few decades, it would literally cause the extinction of the human race. It’s hard to argue that babies didn’t become the best possible investment at some point along the way to extinction. But that doesn’t mean they are the best investment now.
My wording in the grandparent was misleading. This:
Was meant to refer only to having a baby in current conditions regardless of whether or not it would be sacrificed to save an adult. I meant that if 80 years of production minus 18 years of investment was a net negative or a net positive, that wouldn’t change whether you saved the adult or the baby.