because breeding intelligent creatures generally requires keeping them happy. When treated like a farm aniaml, many high cognition anaimals will refuse to reproduce, just look at how bad life has become for average humans, and predictably, humans are starting to refuse to reproduce.
My point was that "captivity reproduction" should not be a key point in the viability of a specie. Octopus can live in captivity (albeit stressed!), but for some reason their larva don't survive. Do they deserve to go extinct for that? They were able to survive for 500 million years, through some massive extinctions, looks good enough to me.
That's more true in some locations than in others. There are places where the reported quality of life is quite a bit higher than others. I see comments like yours a lot on HN, and I'm starting to suspect that the average HN commenter is more likely to be living in some of the poorly-run big cities than in the better-run small-to-medium-sized towns. (Specifics can, and will vary. But on average I've found I'm much happier living in a medium-sized town than in a megacity, and I've also found the city governments of medium-sized towns to be more likely to be competent. Perhaps I've just been lucky in the medium towns I've lived in, though; I'd need far more data before I was certain of the thesis).
Point is, if you're miserable in the place where you are, consider whether moving to a different town is feasible for you. It's not always an option for many people, for many varied reasons. But it's definitely something to consider. If it turns out you can do it, sometimes taking that risk can pay off in the long run.
