Freedom [184]
“So we’ll start with the problem,” Walter said. “The problem is that nobody dares make overpopulation part of the national conversation. And why not? Because the subject is a downer. Because it seems like old news. Because, like with global warming, we haven’t quite reached the point where the consequences become undeniable. And because we sound like elitists if we try to tell poor people and uneducated people not to have so many babies. Having large families tracks inversely with economic status, and so does the age at which girls start having babies, which is just as damaging from a numbers perspective. You can cut the growth rate in half just by doubling the average age of first-time mothers from eighteen to thirty-five. That’s one reason rats reproduce so much more than leopards do—because they reach sexual maturity so much sooner.”
“Already a problem in that analogy, of course,” Katz said.
“Exactly,” Walter said. “It’s the elitism thing again. Leopards are a ‘higher’ species than rats or bunnies. So that’s another part of the problem: we turn poor people into rodents when we call attention to their high birth rates and their low age of first reproduction.”
“I think the cigarette analogy is a good one,” Jessica said from the far end of the table. It was clear that she’d gone to an expensive college and had learned to speak her mind in seminars. “People with money can get Zoloft and Xanax. So when you tax cigarettes, and alcohol too, you’re hitting poor people the hardest. You’re making the cheap drugs more expensive.”
“Right,” Walter said. “That’s a very good point. And it applies to religion, too, which is another big drug for people who don’t have economic opportunity. If we try to pick on religion, which is our real villain, we’re picking on the economically oppressed.”
“And guns also,” Jessica said. “Hunting’s also very low-end.”
“Ha, tell that to Mr. Haven,” Lalitha said in her clipped accent. “Tell that to Dick Cheney.”
“No, actually, Jessica’s right,” Walter said.
Lalitha turned on him. “Really? I don’t see it. What does hunting have to do with population?”
Jessica rolled her eyes impatiently.
This could be a long day, Katz thought.
“It’s all circling around the same problem of personal liberties,” Walter said. “People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to. That’s what Bill Clinton figured out—that we can’t win elections by running against personal liberties. Especially not against guns, actually.”
That Lalitha nodded in submissive agreement to this, rather than sulking, made the situation clearer. She was still begging and Walter still withholding. And he was in his natural element, his personal fortress, when he was allowed to speak abstractly. He hadn’t changed at all since his years at Macalester.
“The real problem, though,” Katz said, “is free-market capitalism. Right? Unless you’re talking about outlawing reproduction, your problem isn’t civil liberties. The real reason you can’t get any cultural traction with overpopulation is that talking about fewer babies means talking about limits to growth. Right? And growth isn’t some side issue in free-market ideology. It’s the entire essence. Right? In free-market economic theory, you have to leave stuff like the environment out of the equation. What was that word you used to love? ‘Externalities’?”
“That’s the word, all right,” Walter said.
“I don’t imagine the theory’s changed much since we were in school. The theory is that there isn’t any theory. Right? Capitalism can’t handle talking about limits, because the whole point of capitalism is the restless growth of capital. If you want to be heard in