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.
“Competitive the way people are competitive in the modern world — economically.”
You have to internalize a lot of info about r/K to get this. One of the things about intelligence is that there are different types. If you look at it compared to r/K there is a growing perception that Specialist Intelligence (vs General Intelligence) is an r means of exploiting a niche top avoid competition, during periods when resources are not so scarce as to support the necessity of using violence to survive.
“Prestige also counts. “
Again, status is more important in r-environments, when you have a wide variety of fitness levels existing due to a lack of culling. It is why a lot r-species have unusually flashy males. They use the flash to signal status, or superior fitness in some regard, to mates. In K, just being alive, and able to provision a mate is a sign of fitness, so there is less flash.
“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?”
Again, specialist intelligence. If resources actually became scarce enough that those who didn’t have food would die, and food was very scarce, all those guys would be dead, with a bunch of US Marines and Navy SEALs splitting up their stuff. There is competitive in an r-environment, and competitive in a K-environment. They produce different psychologies, because the environments are fundamentally different. We have not seen true K in a while. It doesn’t mean we didn’t and it isn’t when we were imbued with Conservatism.
“Look at the states where divorce rates are highest and those where they’re lowest.”
This was a leftist blogger’s contribution, and as was shown in several places, the mixed variables hid that it was Democrats who divorced more in the Conservative states, and never married in the blue states. The best examination of mating, pairing, and rearing investment drive I have seen is below, though Gallup, and GSS data show the same thing, albeit in different ways. Libs have more partners, shorter relationships, and want to rear kids less. Bear in mind, these are the intelligent Liberals, not the welfarites.
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultdec07.asp
“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.”
Remove birth control and abortion, and I will bet you would have a ton of young single moms in that cohort, based on the data above. That is how it evolved to operate. The fact that contraception and abortion have allowed it to operate differently doesn’t change where it came from.
“The country is much more one than two, with the same tendencies at work in both the red and blue halves.”
Again, if you want to hold that perception, you can, but the researchers who have taken everything apart in detail, from John Jost, to Neuropolitics, to Altmeyer and Adorno, to the GSS say we have two strategies in our population. I point out, if you look at the established traits of ideologies in the literature, you will see a correlation to r/K. History says leftists will crash the country, and we will probably have some sort of post-crash conflict between left and right. That is hardly one. Already, we see guys on here talking about “CWII,” and resources are still really plentiful. Have no illusions, if resources grow scarce enough, it will get nasty in a way we haven’t seen recently, but which is probably more normal to our species than we would imagine, looking at the entirety of our history.
I’m just pointing to the research of others, and saying look at this correlation. If you don’t see it, it is a shame. It is interesting, it cleanly fills in holes people have been wondering about for decades now, and it does it with a well worn body of research. As you can see by this thread, those it hits, feel the ground shake beneath their established paradigm.