Slacktivism - Blog Posts
Controlled Opposition: A Theory
Rabbits manage their predators
We've all seen the graph of lynx and snowshoe hares where the rabbit populations increase and lynx increase with larger litters and increased survival to adulthood in response to the abundance of food. Eventually the lynx outpace the rabbits and eat all the available rabbits and starve themselves to death back down to numbers that can survive on the number of available rabbits at which point the hares, being R strategists can reproduce faster than K strategist lynx and the whole cycle starts over again.
It's used as a classic example in ecology courses of predators preventing prey populations from overwhelming a landscape. And we see it as a cautionary tale about the need for good stewardship of resources and need for population control to prevent the suffering of boom and bust cycles.
That story is not quite accurate. The people who came up with that interpretation where all children of privilege and identified with the predators. It wasn't until more scientists from indigenous and lower-class groups began to make up the ranks that we questioned that story.
The hares are actively starving out their predators through solidarity.
When stress levels build up in hares from constantly being hunted and close escapes, this changes their reproductive system to have much smaller litters. Even when stressed individuals mate with outside hares, they have small litters and males somehow induce their unstressed mate to produce smaller litters even if she would otherwise have produced a large litter.
The entire population of hares effectively withholds their bodies from the predators by not reproducing beyond just enough to keep the species alive while laying low for long enough to starve the majority of their predators to death and force them to have smaller litters in response.
It seems to me there is a lesson in there for us in the midst of Capitalism. Stop having kids and starve the system of labor.
Then let the invisible hand of supply and demand do its magic to raise wages and reduce housing prices.
You can't afford to strike. They might fire you if you slow down too much (I still think a national slowdown is a safe bet). But they can't do jack to you for not breeding (yet).
So focus on your career and having fun and living a life of service to make a better future.