But there is something to be done to prevent the bad, and without paying any price, and that is exactly what anti-natalism offers. It is possible to avoid reproduction and thereby prevent the bad and the need for good to compensate for the bad, as it were, without paying any price, since those who do not exist will not lack anything, and will not be harmed in any way by not being created.
Since not creating someone does not deprive anyone from anything good because there is no one who experiences the deprivation of any good, or wants any good, or feels any lack of any good (or anything else) because literally there is no one, no one is ever harmed by not being created. It’s not like there’s someone somewhere waiting to be born. Before someone is created there is no one waiting for anything. Creating a person is literally creating a person. And by the way, creating a person is not bringing him into the world, as is the common and mistaken concept. When you create someone you don’t ‘bring someone into the world’ because before this decision there is no one to bring somewhere and there is no place but the world. There is no one to bring and nowhere to bring someone from.
Even if you think that the good in your own life is worth all the bad you experience, this will not necessarily be the case with the one you create. This will not necessarily be your situation in the end of your life either. This can only be true of your life so far. Things can always go wrong. Life is a constant risk. Yes, things can also get better. And we hope for you that this is what will happen in your private life, but there is no guarantee for that, and certainly there is no guarantee that this is what will happen in the lives of your children, so this argument is not satisfactory.
In this excuse there’s a recognition that bad things will happen to those who will be created, and it is morally wrong to force someone to pay a price (which may be very heavy) for good things that no one asked for, wanted or needed before their existence was forced upon them.
You have the right to decide when it comes to your own life that the good in your life is worth all the bad in your life, but you have no right to make such a decision about the lives of others.
It is true that there is no way to experience good without bad, but there is definitely a way to avoid experiencing any bad without experiencing the deprivation of good. There is a way to prevent all the bad things that will happen to someone without taking away anything good that will happen to them and that is not to reproduce. That way there will be no one who will be harmed by the harms, and there will be no one who will be harmed by the missed pleasures.