Could we use this to justify factory farming humans, in that the agony and terror they experience is eclipsed by the good of them being bred into being rather than not existing at all?

We would certainly have more humans being born in that case than now, is it a negative thing that we are not doing this?

I was going to say - I know where the parent comes down on abortion laws. Given that they obviously think an unwanted child being born into an impoverished family unable to support them is still a net positive.

Actually the opposite. Personally I think abortions are a valid tool and not all lives are worth living. I'm very much on the fence regarding mine and I'm leaning towards the opinion that it wasn't and it isn't.

I think bringing children into this world is a sin and parents atone for it to some degree by providing for children the best way they can.

What a strange way to judge the value of a human life.

We kind of do already when we romanticize life. Every human dies eventually, at equilibrium, humans die at about the rate they're born. How long the average human lives does not change that, it only changes the delay in population changes. The same is true of chickens or cows, they live shorter lives but they're born at the same rate they die. When they die has no effect on this, but whether they live is entirely dictated by their utility to human beings. So you wouldn't actually get more humans from this, just more turnover. On the same note, you wouldn't get less cows not doing it, just longer turnover, all else being the same. In actuality though, without the meat they'd be useless to us, so you would wind up with a culling and then less of them, this is not the case for humans.

I was certainly going to bring it up. The fabricants from Cloud Atlas haunted me.

I think people would be perfectly capable of justifying farming humans if it made economic sense. Slavery is not far from it and we were perfectly comfortable with it for millennia.

We have religions that contain or contained at some point rules on how to be moral and have slaves. Some of those religions are not only still active today but are still huge.

The answer is going to be completely different based on how much agony and terror you are proposing.

That is, in fact, the modern city.

Well humans aren't generally born into farrowing crates in factory farms and jammed together a few inches apart until killed. We did a whole Matrix thing about how that kind of life might be sub-optimal. I'm pro meat btw, just opposed to factory farming and waste.

Well, they almost used to. And we sort of agreed it's a bad idea only after it lost economic sense.

And we still have it in the pockets of the world where it still makes economic sense.