It would appear that Bill Whittle picked up a copy of Michael Trust’s Anonymous Conservative’s best book, The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics, and came to much the same set of conclusions that I did when I read it. And, in his usual lucid style, he goes through and explains the book’s key points in fairly cogent fashion:
Stefan Molyneux did much the same thing, over the course of a three-part, nearly-four-hour (!!!!!) series of videos, though he goes into considerably more detail about the theory itself, and (as far as I can see) examines both the validity and the flaws of the theory itself. I haven’t watched the whole thing, but given that it is Stefan Molyneux doing the talking, it’s worth grabbing yourself a few beers and propping your feet up to watch the whole thing:
Here’s part 2:
Still here? If you are, here, for the long-suffering and very patient (and presumably very very drunk), is part 3:
2 Comments
The r/k analysis makes sense; yet, it cannot explain all that is occurring: the rulers, the elites are k selective; they put time and effort into their offspring. Creating an r selective sub-population enables the elites to maintain their position and control of the population.
That's a valid point. From what I remember of AC's book, he did point this out tangentially, but I don't think he explored it much.
As with any binary heuristic approach to explaining politics and social outcomes, r/K theory has significant flaws and shortcomings. Its explanatory power is still quite impressive, though, given its origins in biology rather than praxeology.