Briefly caught Paul Collier with Stephanie Flanders on BBC R4 Start the Week this morning, and noticed instantly that his immigration agenda (Exodus) is another example of my Eco-Diversity Beats In-Breeding mantra, pointing out in particular that there are important subtleties behind the headline. For Darwinian evolution to work, this truth depends on understanding fidelity and fecundity. Too little and the “species” (*) stagnates, too much and no new stable species can emerge amid the chaos. Just enough and the new inputs to the status-quo are absorbed into emergent meaningful species
[(*) PS for the biologists, Yes, I’m talking species at a social and group selection level …. with all the debate that entails …. but that’s social species subject to social group selection, not bio-species.]