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athingtoconsider comments on Review: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Less Wrong
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I believe Caplan's reply is basically that choosing to have kids affects the margin very little because any abdication on your part will be picked up by developing countries, and that having a kid is a net benefit because the more people there are, the more innovations and whatnot are created (positive externalities).
Having trouble parsing, could you explain what that means, perhaps by example?
The demand for offspring is sufficiently inelastic that a Westerner refusing to have offspring is replaced by a developing country kid (or multiple kids, inasmuch as a Westerner kid consumes so many resources).
I'm having difficulty mapping that line of reasoning for some reason.
How, in practice, might a Westerner couple not having a kid exert influence on a non-Western couple having a kid? By what mechanisms are non-Western births influenced by Western births?
Prices are the obvious mechanism that comes to mind - prices of things like food or top American universities.
Wouldn't lower prices for top American universities, e.g., lower the number of children born? I am under the impression that poverty is conducive to birthing more children.