2 B R 0 2 B

Kurt Vonnegut often examines the relationship between free will and institutions such as the government, religion, academia, the healthcare system, and the military throughout his works. In “2 B R 0 2 B,” Vonnegut uses satire and dark humor to critique Malthusianism and institutional responses to population growth. Malthusianism is the theory that population growth is exponential, while the growth of resources is linear. This means that population growth will always outpace the production of resources, which leads to wars over resources, famine, and other catastrophes that then return the population to levels that allow for sociopolitical stability and resource sustainability.

The concept of Malthusianism was introduced in 1978 by Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus in An Essay on the Principle of Population. This essay argued that technological advances would allow for the production of more resources and improve people’s quality of life. However, this would then lead to population growth and an eventual return to the original quality of life prior to the impact of the technological advances. The natural relationship between a population and resources, according to Malthus, is a cycle of abundance and scarcity.

Neo-Malthusianism includes a wide variety of theories, philosophies, and policies that encourage population control by advocating for birth control or abstinence, or, in more extreme cases, directly legislate birthrates (such as China’s one-child policy between 1980 and 2016). Neo-Malthusian theory is perhaps most widely accepted within economics, ecology, and other fields concerned with resource management and the tragedy of the commons. The tragedy of the commons is a metaphor dating to Aristotle that states that when the public has unrestricted access to a resource, it will tend to overuse and potentially destroy that resource. For instance, the unregulated use of a river by agriculture, heavy industry, and tourists often leads to contamination, ecological destruction, and drought.

The ecologist Garret Hardin published his 1968 essay “The Tragedy of the Commons” in Nature, in which he argued that overpopulation would lead to ecological destruction. As a result, he argued for abortion, anti-immigration, and eugenics (the unscientific study of controlling human reproduction and population for “desirable” traits). In order to make his arguments, he drew heavily on the works of Malthus. As many critics have pointed out, Malthusianism can often lead to or support racist, nationalist, and inhumane positions and arguments.

Vonnegut alludes to the brutality of Malthusian thinking and solutions in “2 B R 0 2 B,” most notably in the method of suicide in the story: the gas chamber, which was used widely by German Nazis to exterminate Jewish people, Black people, Romani people, people with disabilities, queer people, and others who were deemed by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime as pollutants to the human population. The arguments that Dr. Hitz makes in support of the population cap policy in the story resemble arguments made by Nazi propagandists as well as by ecologists like Hardin. In his short story, Vonnegut ultimately reveals the tragedy and dangers of Malthusian thinking, the type of world it can create, and the ease with which it can be popularized and made to be revered uncritically through fear (Dr. Hitz’s history lesson) and art (the hospital mural and the popular tune sung by the orderly).