Thread by @shrikanth_krish

I find this tweet v problematic

Firstly it equates "success" with doing well at the workplace

Secondly it condescendingly views babies as a handicap in a rat race

Disrespectful towards the v central familial role for which the fairer sex has been celebrated throughout history

https://twitter.com/anandmahindra/status/1092675489586569216

How can the perpetuation of the human race take a backseat, and become an annoyance and a distraction from that all-important "career" is something that I can never understand

Any economist would agree that the value that a couple adds to Planet Earth by conceiving and giving birth to a kid is likely many times the value they add at the workplace in the course of their lives

This is true even for highly productive people like CEOs and rockstar academics

Esp if you peer far enough into future and take NPV of value added by all your descendants (ofc you will take a smaller fraction for distant descendants as your genetic contribution to them is less)

Just a simple thought experiment -

Let's suppose the present value of all my future earnings is $5MM

Now even if I suppose that my kid will terribly under-perform and the PV of his lifetime earnings will be $2.5MM in real terms, and the same is true for say next 20 generations

Even with a high enough discount rate, the present value of the next 20 generations' lifetime earnings will be greater than the PV of your own lifetime earnings...

This is almost a truism

Even if you scrupulously take fractions of the PV of future generations to account for your genetic contribution

If people do internalize this, they will invest much more time in having kids, and also be kinder to the idea of one spouse specializing in bringing the kid up, as opposed to both doing an indifferent job by taking turns

Most couples in our times never get anywhere close to internalizing this, as they cannot think beyond their kids at the most...Their horizon is not deep enough to peer into the next 20-30 generations which will potentially bear their genetic imprint

If they did, then they will have more kids, and not just one. Having one means you are greatly increasing the chances that your "vansh" will end in a leaf node within a handful of generations

Having 3 means it is likely you won't hit a leaf node for at least a few hundred years

Ofcourse these are just likelihoods...it is possible that even with one kid your line of descent may still be going strong in 3000 AD...But it is far more likely eventuality if you have 3 kids