Alternatively, you could adapt to a more stable environment. If you could do that, you would find that it would be worthwhile to make fewer, more expensive offspring. These offspring would have all the bells and whistles necessary to ensure a comfortable, maximally productive life. Since the environment is relatively stable, your risk of losing offspring to random environmental factors is small. Large animals, such as ourselves, follow this strategy.
Plants are also subject to the same sorts of forces as animals.
Some live in unstable environments such as a floodplain near a river or a gap in the forest caused by falling trees. Others live in a quite stable environment, such as a climax forest. Natural selection is the force for change, not the individual's conscious decision. If you are in an unstable environment, you are unlikely to ever have population growth to the point where density dependent factors come into play. An extreme K-strategist lives in a stable environment which is not seriously affected by sudden, unpredictable effects.