“First, you should probably explain your terms right off. I still don’t know what r and K stand for and why those letters were chosen. “
That is a link in the text, to an article explaining it. They are variables from equations describing population dynamics in evolutionary biology.
“Secondly, I’m not at all sure that, say, the Republican states represent a truly more competitive environment than the Democrat states. Surely New York is more competitive, more K than Montana.”
There is more opportunity to avoid competition, supported by the populace, and more punishment of success, in the form of taxation. So I would expect a higher standard of living in New York, than I would in Montana, if I didn’t work. I would also expect more punishment, if I were successful. I saw an article here, a while back on a guy who left NY for Florida, having heard benefits were better down there. He discovered, not so, and moved back. The article was about how dissatisfied he was with the three free apartments he was shown in the City when he came back. He was holding out for a second bedroom, or something ridiculous, and it looked like he would get it. Look to the benefits system in Britain, for where Liberalism leads. A guy with no job or productivity has fifteen kids, and the state pays for everything.
Without the Donald Trumps of the city, making the money for the fairy land, NY would be crap.
“Third, you fudge things by associating female aggressiveness with r environments and fatherly abandonment, when others would simply give women the credit for pursuing the same competitive strategies that men do.”
Right, that is what r/K Theory says. It is called a reversal of sex specific behaviors. Females pursue aggressive endeavors which are male behaviors in K. I did a blog post on a chick in the UFC who fought her way through a fight with her jaw split down the middle. She had her mouth open at one point, and a photographer caught a pic of it. You could see the teeth on one side suddenly drop, where her jaw was hanging lower on that side. Guys online laugh at it. It is unnatural, from a K-perspective, where women don’t fight, and they should never get injured. We tolerate it now because we have gone r.
“Fourth, it’s pretty clear that larger smarter animals might have a greater potential for fellow feeling (at least with their own kind).”
This is solely related to group competition. All of Darwin is selfish. Empathetic animals love their compatriots because that love translates into survival advantage when they compete as a group, and the alternative – no love – is to fail and be killed. And Wolves love as much as a human, if not more.
“Fifth, it’s clear from everything I can see that more competitive environments (New Jersey, Connecticut) do put off breeding until the young are more able to compete and do invest more in education (at least for the chosen few). The problem with the theory is that those environments are politically liberal.”
Competitive how? They tell citizens don’t fight back, or have weapons. They are filled with Liberals who want safety. There is a researcher in intelligence who is a rising star named Michael Woodley. He has written a lot on summarizing the type s of intelligence. The theory today is specialist intelligence probably began as an r-strategy of competition avoidance. That is, if I don’t want to go toe to toe with someone in the economy, I specialize, to avoid having to. On mating, see below.
I should note, if the revolutionary war were tomorrow, both Jersey and Connecticut would fall in a minute to Texas, probably aided by the Conservatives in those states (I know which side I would be on). There is competitive in areas with little risk, and then there is competitive.
“The conservative states are the ones where more people marry and have children earlier even when it may get in the way of education.”
Yes, high rearing drives of K mean there will be an explicit love of children, and desire to invest in them. When that is all that determines offspring production (among the conscientious, at least), K’s will have more kids. Combine a low rearing drive with contraception, and abortion (the two lowest investment rearing strategies possible), and r’s will choose not to have kids. Things would be different without those two things, and indeed, in the inner cites, where conscientiousness is low enough there is low compliance with Birth control, you have a young, single mother epidemic. At the higher IQ levels, Low rearing investment urges at the extreme just manifest as a lot of old angry feminists with twenty cats each. But those feminists began their ride on the carousel in their mid to early teens, and rotated among partners throughout their lives aggressively. It was just a combination of IQ and technology which kept them without child.
“There isn’t one “liberal” evolutionary strategy. There are two (at least if we judge by how people actually vote).”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. What are the two Liberal strategies?
“Theories like yours might have fit politics better some years ago, when wealthier areas of the country were more conservative. Nowadays, though, some of the richest people are very liberal. Contraceptives also throw off your theory. Promiscuity isn’t necessarily associated with many offspring. I also have to wonder, comparing the two halves of the country where people really start having sex earlier or whether there is really that much difference between liberal and conservative areas (leaving aside a few areas that really are distinctive).”
Again, I am not saying these urges function as r or K today, or that they are adaptive. Civilization, and these urges have just met, so they will clash, until Darwin sorts out a model of each which maximizes effectiveness at reproduction and survival. I am saying here are the r-urges, here are the K-urges. Look, they match what is driving Liberals and Conservatives, and they crop up in response to resource availability, too. Obviously, give an r-organism access to a technology which allows unlimited sex, with no down-time for baby-rearing, and you won’t get high offspring number.
“I haven’t gone through all the ins and outs of your theory and didn’t want to be very confrontational, but now I have to wonder. This explains all of politics? The people you approve of resemble the larger, smarter mammals we ascribe positive qualities to and those you disapprove of resemble the smaller, stupider, swarming creatures? Isn’t there something reductive and creepy about your theory?”
Here’s something to blow your mind. Suppose I’m actually right scientifically, and your statement above is right, as well.
Does the fact this work is insulting to Liberalism mean, automatically, Ipso Facto, that it is wrong? Is that evidence I am off, scientifically? Or might I be right, and it is insulting to Liberalism?
Might Liberalism, as an r-strategy, embodying r-urges, in a K-species, be aberrant by our overall K-standards, and as a result be prone to be judged harshly by the majority of our populace?
What if the science supports my work, and even worse, I am right? Should I censor it?
“Or maybe it’s just a reworking of the ant and the grasshopper or the tortoise and the hare”
Fables play on very deeply imbued urges – it is why they persist.
Competitive the way people are competitive in the modern world -- economically. But it's not just a matter of economic incentives. Prestige also counts. And it has to do with aggressive what used to be called type-A behavior. Production costs are probably not competitive on the coasts, but if you were looking for the most fiercely and ferociously competitive people in the country, you wouldn't want to overlook talent agents, entertainment lawyers, or bond and options traders, and where do they cluster? Whatever the economic incentives and disincentives people who leave New York or Los Angeles recognize that they're entering a less stressful, less prestigious environment. Taxes may increase, but so far it hasn't made big city people less materialistic or less driven or less competitive (assuming that they have jobs in highly competitive fields).
What are the two Liberal strategies?
Look at the states where divorce rates are highest and those where they're lowest. That may have something to do with aging populations or late marriage or vestigial conservatism, but those rates tend to be lowest in blue states, highest in red ones. Or look at the rates for teen pregnancy or illegitimate births by state. It's the same pattern, which leads me to think that the blue states that are following a K strategy rather than an r-one.
Leaving out outliers like the very rich and very famous and leaving out periods like the 1970s when people of all backgrounds where divorcing and leaving their families, a lot of liberals are upper middle class people who pursue upper middle class breeding and rearing strategies: late marriage, few children, heavy emotional and financial investment in those children. You can say a lot against them, but they aren't breeding like rabbits or abandoning their families more than other people. They may encourage other people to do so, and that may be an evolutionary strategy to ensure that their own children come out ahead as others falter. It's like supporting public or progressive education when your own kids go to private or traditional schools or get extra tutoring, summer programs and other benefits.
What you're saying is basically what liberal blue staters say about conservative red staters only turned on its head. The reproaches that you make based on welfare populations in the blue states are similar to the attacks they make on red state populations (based largely on the welfare recipients there). Since I objected to their oversimplifications, it's only fair play to reject yours as well. The country is much more one than two, with the same tendencies at work in both the red and blue halves.