Why Childfree Living May Become the Rational Choice in an Era of Economic Instability, Overpopulation, and AI‑Driven Job Insecurity

The conditions of the world seem to have gotten much worse, and I am talking about e.g. insecure jobs due to e.g. AI and other reasons, housing unaffordability and other cost of living issues, rising aggression and polarisation, etc. So even if we ignore morality, not having children directly addresses all those problems e.g. if you don't have children then you only have one mouth to feed (your own), which is much better if your boss fires you. If you have no kids, you don't need to worry as much about housing unaffordability because you do not need a huge house. You can live in a sharehouse, a small microapartment, live with your parents, live in a car, etc. By not having a child, you can work more, and by not having a baby, your expenses go down so you can save and invest more. 

Looking at it purely from a practical, monetary perspective, having no children wins. And this I think is a strong contributor to the current TFR decline trend we are seeing worldwide e.g. recent news highlights that birth rates are collapsing in India and Phillipines. There seems to be opt-out cultures emerging everywhere eg NGSB/NBSB in Phillipines, solo-maxxing in the West, Tang Ping and Bai Lan in China, Sampo in South Korea, and Herbivore/Satori in Japan. 

These trends should be accelerated. Purely from a biophysical or environmental perspective, we have severe overpopulation. The carrying capacity of the planet is 2.5 billion and the only reason why we have 8 billion now is due to fossil fuel. As fossil fuels quickly deplete and EROI rises due to shale oil depleting as well as peak phosphorus, this will create a huge increase in cost of living which I am sure will price people out of procreation and birth rate will collapse even faster. This is when antinatalism will be more and more important and movements that provide a ideological basis and identity for low-throughput and frugal living will be necessary because the old life script of buying a McMansion, SUV, and having multiple kids will simply be too expensive and risky. The material conditions for 2026 do not support a 1950s lifestyle, so we need to evolve. We need to become frugal and hyperautonomous, flexible, and mobile. We need to do these if we are to survival and thrive in the near future when cost of living rises and jobs become more and more precarious due to AI.