[ExI] John B. Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia Experiment and Reflections on the Welfare State

[William Flynn Wallace]

Well, that does sound something like what happens in a human welfare
situation.  Both Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, conservative
economists, agree with the following as principal problems among the
welfare blacks:

1 - education problems
2 - one parent, or no parent raising (grandparents in some cases), often
caused by not wanting to lose welfare checks (real sticky problem, that)
3 - racism in hiring etc.

Black males leaving children behind, focusing on themselves and not their
family, failing to provide their children with good role models in how to
get jobs, how to manage the education systems, are endemic.

If blacks and whites with equal education are differentially treated by
hiring businesses, then there is a racism problem.  But if the blacks have
a relatively worse school record, then it only makes sense to hire whites
or some other 'race' with better education backgrounds.

bill w

On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 10:55 AM Dave Sill via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 11:32 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> The data is rather clear: if they do not have to fend and forage for
>> every basic need, organisms can live much longer and healthier on average.
>>
>
> That's not the point of the article or the experiment it describes.
>
> Here's the interesting part:
>
> *At first, the mice did well. Their numbers doubled every 55 days. But
> after 600 days, with enough space to accommodate as many as another 1,600
> rodents, the population peaked at 2,200 and began to decline
> precipitously—straight down to the extinction of the entire colony—in spite
> of their material needs being met with no effort required on the part of
> any mouse.*
>
> *The turning point in this mouse utopia, Calhoun observed, occurred on Day
> 315 when the first signs appeared of a breakdown in social norms and
> structure. Aberrations included the following: females abandoning their
> young; males no longer defending their territory; and both sexes becoming
> more violent and aggressive. Deviant behavior, sexual and social, mounted
> with each passing day. The last thousand mice to be born tended to avoid
> stressful activity and focused their attention increasingly on themselves.*
> -Dave
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