"Definitely millions. Probably not hundreds of millions."

"Why are Amentans so obsessed with imposing population controls on people who have lots of space and no shortages yet?"

"Unchecked population growth means endless wars over territory and mass slaughters of civilian populations following the wars. Our history suggests that this stage can just go on forever unless someone manages to impose universal population controls. It is my sincere estimation that acting in the best interests of the human species involves imposing population controls, though were that my only concern the controls would be really, really loose - twenty-ni credits - at this point in history, and the aim just establishing the institution so when it needs to do more work it can."

"Why not explain that to people -"

"We will, at great length, once we announce the population controls. Doing it now will just panic everybody, maybe cause a rush to have kids before there are restrictions."

"What if humans with access to birth control actually only average around two children?"

"Then I guess the credits will be very inexpensive and Amentans will desperately try to figure out if there's a way to have hybrid kids."

"But you'll have added this big unwieldy extremely powerful political institution and associated ideology for absolutely nothing -"

"For protection against centuries of organized mass murder in the case where you turn out to want kids more than that on average! The current average human family size is eight and that's largely because it's really common to die in childbirth! It is plausible that childbirth not being a horrifying nightmare will itself double how often women want to go through it, and we plan to make it not a horrifying nightmare!"

"If I knew of a population with access to birth control for which childbirth is not a horrifying nightmare and in which birth rates have hovered around two children per woman for centuries could you do something with that."

" - yes, if they had very good records I could present it as justification for trying to drive human birthrates down acceptably without population controls - though, again, a population that is true of isn't one where population controls will be onerous -"

"The government having the authority to rip your baby out of your hands and sterilize you is onerous even if they don't do this often enough to statistically affect the population size!"

He does not answer.

"Tell me about the Mars base."

"We season properly on Mars but it has no atmosphere and we don't yet know how to add that and without it agriculture is prohibitively expensive. We have arcologies there, some manufacturing, and Earth-related operations for which latency isn't a concern. We planned the invasion from there. We plan to eventually have the tropical regions of Earth exporting food to there, and both planets fully inhabited."

"What do you think a fully inhabited planet looks like?"

"Like this city everywhere that isn't farms."

"God."

"Cities are nice. It's good to be able to change jobs without moving, it's good to be near family, it makes good public transit and infrastructure cost-effective."

"If I had something that would obviate that consideration, would that change anything?"

"Not really. I could try to hand off more land to people who want to keep it wild but their descendants would probably eventually sell it."

"Is your brother who is third in birth order just incredibly miserable all the time?"

" - yes."

"Are you personally handing off all the land on the planet?"

"No, there's a committee, but I have lots of leverage. Kan and I own Canada."