Choice of pregnancy or a new sewing machine

Dear Joe:

I just finished your entertaining rant about global population ("Nine Billion Little Feet"). I realize nothing will shake you in your convictions that all is going to hell. (I nearly erased this email at this point, as it is futile to argue facts against feelings.)

Look up some world demographics on Google. Population growth is crashing everywhere that women have a choice between pregnancy and a new sewing machine. The population will continue to grow until mid century -- caused by all those little kids you see out in the street -- and then begin a sudden plummet back to current or 1960's levels. The demographic decline is happening first among the rich, of whom you do not approve. But "rich" comes to mean anyone with a choice between another kid and a sewing machine, or washer. People behave rationally. When another child gets in the way of a real improvement in status or amenity, they stop having more children. But this, as I am sure you see, means they must be offered a choice between another child and the opportunity to own and operate something, of which you would disapprove on some ecological ground or another.

I thought like you did for two years between the age of 24 and 27. Then I realized that this was just a choice, and I could look at life more hopefully.

Enjoy Belize!

With best wishes for your health

Timothy
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

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Timothy,

Hey, I like hearing that! And I believe it is true that in many places if people could be taught to see and believe such a choice, they may well choose the sewing machine. I've seen people make such a choice Mexico and some other developing Latin Countries.

On the other hand, the isolation of village life, or even slum life in, say, Caracas, is such that they will not be exposed to either the choice or the sewing machine. Not to mention that in  most cases refusing to have a child would not save them enough money to buy a sewing machine. And in some cases there is no money to save in a negative economy (one that theoretically should not exist because they have less than zero local economy in monetary terms. Yet they continue to exist and multiply in a zero money,  zero agricultural, non-indigenous (both urban and village) culture which requires, at the very least, money for food. Nevertheless, while there is almost no detectable money there, they survive and multiply. It's kinda like they survive on the vapor of money located somewhere else. 

Anyway, from what I've seen, you could walk into some of these villages and slums and say: "If you do not have another child in the next two years, I will give you one million dollars," Everyone would nod and agree. And still, every fertile one among them would have a child within a year or two. I've seen it with my own eyes (not the sewing machine, but other obvious material incentives). It's like life just happens to them, and your promise of a sewing machine or money was just something else among other things, such as catching a fish, that happened that particular day. Next day a couple of teenagers sneak off together. Or a married couple living in a tin shanty by a smoking waste dump with six kids and eating garbage discover the wife is pregnant again and, whoopee! They contact all their relatives to celebrate the good news of another approaching birth. I confess that I don't understand it at all.

Of course a lotta people smarter and with expertise are gonna contradict me. The more politically correct folks will say I am a white European devil chauvinist. But it happens millions of times a year in a million places, I am sure. I've asked aid and health workers about it and they've seen the same.

Overall, it strikes me as something so primal, so human, that it is immune to the speculation and western logic of far away and comfortable white people who feel smug in their educations and certain they understand the difficulty and joy that the fundamental act of human birth represents in those living so close to the matrix of nature and earth, even if that earth is covered with flies, knee deep in excrement and stalked by hunger every waking hour. The fact that I have met far more happy third world street beggars than happy middle class Americans will confound me until the day I die.

Yet, I am sure you are right in one of the ways that Malthus was wrong: he thought more affluence would lead to higher birth raters. But when a nation becomes more prosperous and developed the birth rate usually declines. Right? Maybe there is some critical mass of material development a culture has to reach before such an incentive works. I dunno. I'm no population biologist, anthro or sociologist. If there is anyone out there who has has a good understanding of all this (and I don't mean some character doing computer modeling in the sociology department of a big university who has never slept twelve to a room and eaten cows' feet or chicken heads with these people), please do enlighten me -- in terms that I and readers of this web site can understand.

In art and labor,

Joe

PS: It's not that I approve or disapprove of certain things. Time and the universe could not care less of my likes and dislikes. It's just that I am a very loud and blunt person, especially when I write.