Fascinating, but what’s the upper limit on resources? I mean as we go toward demographic winter wouldn’t that free up additional resources or does it do the opposite limit human innovation and ingenuity (see: Julian Simon)?
I don’t know the upper limit on our resources, as it is determined by our populace. However under this theory, a K-selected Human (Competitive Conservative) will be more productive than an r-selected human (think Liberal welfare sloth).
When a society begins, as at our founding, the chaos at the beginning is a K-selected enironment and produces a K-selected populace. This is a very productive, competitive populace, and their excess will eliminate any need for competitive selection among the less productive.
This will produce a gradual increase in r-selecteds, and a slide towards Liberalism within the society. This slide will increase, until there are not enough resources produced by the K-selecteds to support the r-selecteds. At that point, there will be a collapse of the r-selected social order, as competiton returns. Think Rome.
I suspect this is why every nation begins free, and becomes more liberal, until there is a collapse. The collapse is a forceful, and painful reassertion of the competitive environment, and it will K-select the population (through mortality, absence of breeding, or emmigration of r-selecteds) all over again.
Once the balance of K selecteds to r-selecteds is restored, things will go on as before, and the cycle will repeat.
It is for this reason I think a Demographic Winter is not that important to the big picture in our species, long term (though it may cause considerable pain in the short term).
Evolution will always favor a productive, competitive specimen that reproduces at a healthy rate. Those who violate this standard (devote too much to production/not enough to reproduction, or not enough to production/too much to reproduction) are not contributing to the future of our species, over the long term, regardless of contribution to the next generation.
Those who produce, but don’t reproduce are ultiamtely culling themsleves, and those who reproduce but don’t produce will be taken care of by periodic periods of resource scaricty and K-selection pressures.
In the short term, you can skirt Darwin, but nature will catch up with you eventually, when competition is reinforced.
I am not that familiar with Julian Simon, but as I understand it, he never differentiated between different types of humans (ie. highly productive/slowly or moderately reproducing humans vs Low to no productivity/high reproduction humans). Had he done so, I suspect he would have modified his stances somewhat, or at least introduced a more cyclical influence into his views.
See the PDF in my tagline for a lot of research on r/K selection, reproduction, and political ideology.