One argument people make for having children is that without them, they would not leave a “legacy” behind. I think this is a fundamentally misguided idea. Children extend your genetic lineage but you will be forgotten within one or two generations. This is not necessarily a defeatist position, however. Instead of thinking in terms of your legacy, think of raising children who are, ideally, in a better position than you, however you measure success or happiness.

If we look at some of the wealthiest families, we see even there that their legacy amounts to very little or at least to a lot less than what some patriarch may have imagined. Think of Henry Ford, the all-powerful industrialist who fundamentally changed manufacturing with the invention of the moving assembly line in the early 20th century. He subsequently built an enormously large and successful corporation. In addition, he was a raging anti-semite who published the multi-volume book The International Jew. I can’t quite see any modern industrialist support any political stance in a similar way. With the exception of Elon Musk, they want to appear as neutral as possible.

Of course, the Ford family is still very wealthy but I do not think that Henry Ford would be particularly happy with the legacy he left behind. Ford builds ugly cars which are not held in high regards. Just compare the mass-produced Model T with your typical Ford slop. Presumably, the rot at Ford started setting in with his son already. Today, Ford is a brand that is perhaps about as well-regarded as McDonald’s. While these businesses may be profitable, they stand for producing utterly unremarkable commodities. Society is arguably worse off with them. In addition, the Ford Foundation is a prime supporter of leftist causes. In fact, their slogan is “Funding to Fight Inequality”. There is no radical leftist project they do not like. Henry Ford would not have liked that, and he quite certainly would not like seeing what the current crop of Ford family members is up to as they are more concerned by maintaining their wealth and playing it overly safe than starting their own companies.

Of course, looking at the ultra-rich can lead to a somewhat one-sided view, but regression to the mean certainly happens everywhere. I recall a classmate I had in high school, a dull, obnoxious, and also remarkably unattractive woman. Her surname was uncommon. In fact, she had the same surname as a somewhat well-known author who also happens to be part of the school curriculum. It is the kind of author some people might name-drop to boast about how well-educated they are, which happens quite frequently with some of the lesser-know characters who nonetheless made it into the pantheon of literature. This woman was an absolute mediocrity. In fact, calling her mediocre would be a compliment. She repeatedly pointed out to the entire class that she is a descendant of that particular author. The effect was not quite as she intended as it did little to elevate her status. It may even have negatively affected our reading of her great-great-grandfather’s work.

Extending the previous example further, even intellectual achievements may not lead to much of a legacy. Surely, the Founding Fathers did not foresee that a radical leftist mob would run the United States at some point, peaking with “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” in the summer of St. George Floyd. Of course, we can go even beyond that and talk about the universe eventually dying a supposed heat death, so if BLM does not tear down your country, the supposed laws of physics will eventually take care of that. Well, this point is completely irrelevant due to the effectively infinite time horizon. It is nothing but a crazed hypothesis, arguably little more than Jewish nihilism elevated to dogma that is shoved down the throats of school children who get told that this is a fact. I do not think it is true, just as I find the “big bang” implausible. It may be “widely accepted” among scientists, i.e. the kind of people who tell you that races do not exist, that there are no biological differences between men and women, and that there is man-made climate change.

So, what does all of this leave us with? I think planning significantly ahead and dreaming of the legacy you are going to leave with your children, or perhaps what your children may leave behind, i.e. building the empire you never did, is foolish. Very few families maintain their wealth and success through generations. Some, of course, hit escape velocity and are so wealthy that it takes superhuman efforts to squander the money, but even that can be done. Normally, one generation will do a bit better, another a bit worse, and there may even be setbacks thanks to meddling politics. However, what you can do is prepare your children to be able to make better decision. Tell your son to not stick his dick into the superhot bipolar blonde but instead look for a woman of good character, good looks, and above average intelligence. This will likely lead to your grandchildren being a bit smarter, which will allow them to do a bit better. Make sure that your daughters have well-rounded personalities. Ideally, they should have cultivated one or two hobbies, and be able to behave, both in public and in private. If you raise them well, they may be able to marry into a better gene pool, leading to this strand of your family also doing better.

There are some interesting optimization algorithms, e.g. in route planning. Global optimization is often too time-consuming and thus infeasible. However, there are cases where you can find the optimal solution by making the best possible next move, which may require a limited amount of computations. Dijkstra’s shortest-path algorithm is a good example. There are also so-called greedy solutions that are simpler and may lead to worse global outcomes, but this still generally beats making choices at random. If this is a bit too technical, think of playing chess against a computer that only thinks one move ahead versus one that runs calculations that extend several moves ahead, perhaps even going much deeper when there are particularly promising moves, assuming you can force certain moves by the opponent.

Not planning ahead, which is arguably the strategy of the masses, will lead to suboptimal outcomes, except in degenerative societies where, for instance, a welfare recipient gets more money than a significant number of workers. Yet, the welfare leech is trapped in a local optimum and will not be able to prepare his children for a different future in which skills will be in demand again. You normally cannot foresee which actions will lead to a global optimum, speaking in the language of calculus. However, you can certainly take into account that there is a significant element of randomness in life, assess the risks, and make decent choices for yourself and your children.

Due to your own lifespan, you will most likely only be able to see how well your children and grand-children do, and perhaps not even the latter. Still, if you raised your children properly, and picked a good wife, they will hopefully do a bit better than you are doing, or be a bit better prepared because you can most certainly teach them more about life than your boomer parents taught you, with their harebrained nonsense. Even if life gets more difficult, as is currently the case, they will still be better prepared. You got the ball rolling, and hopefully, this chain continues with your grandchildren and beyond. This is not naive or wishful thinking. Due to incremental improvements from one generation to the next, we went from living in caves to building skyscrapers, from making slingshots to inventing the atom bomb, and from counting with our fingers to creating supercomputers. If you live your life well, you make society a little bit better, and if you raise your children well, a compounding effect will kick in.