If your primary purpose as a human being is to reproduce, then yes, your arguments have merit.
Otherwise, you are projecting your own values and desires on a lot of people who potentially don't share them.
Otherwise, you are projecting your own values and desires on a lot of people who potentially don't share them.
I see civilization as a race between our ability to create problems and our ability to solve problems.
You can make a case that a high reproductive rate is a social danger because it causes resource depletion and overall causes us to develop problems faster just because more people make more problems.
On the other hand, a low reproductive rate makes problems too. It's much easier to fund the kind of welfare state that the left wants when we have a high reproductive rate. The dreams of the right, in which many of us can save money in individual accounts and enjoy an easy retirement, are also dashed by a low reproductive rate.
Honestly I don't know what the optimal reproductive rate is. But I think there is something more to life than the quality and quantity of your orgasms, what pleasure you get, and the self-aggrandizement you experience making other people rich and famous.
Quite a few people have worked hard to create the civilization we have, and in particular, two parents invested a lot to raise me. I think it's fair to "pass this forward" and expect that we all produce (on average) a child each and that that's just a part of the mission we have on planet Earth.
If your primary purpose as a human being is to reproduce
Our purposes aren't objective. They are ours to choose, as individuals. Other animals may live only to propagate their genome, but as humans, our societies appear to function best when we convince ourselves that we're here to accomplish things other than reproduction alone.
That's what PaulHoule is talking about in the original comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4419805