On Populations
Unaware, people are currently living the lives of what their ancestors chose, not accurately reseting for their real preferences. If my great grandmother chose where I had to eat the rest of my life, I’d be miserable, but somehow we accept this with the single most important choice in our life: where we live.
The economic and cultural dynamics of countries, states, counties, and cities are dramatically dictated by the much smaller group of people who founded them, their seed population:
Rebels, explorers, and zealots seeded the United States.
(How would you describe our current populace?)The 49’rs seeded California, risking their lives on the tiny chance of finding gold.
(Sound like a risky startup with huge potential returns?)Freed slaves seeded Haiti.
(Having to create a government from a people who’ve historically never had their own.)New Orleans migrants seeded the black population in Detroit through one of the first north-south connecting rail tracks.
(Second best place in the U.S. for high-end soul food.)
From national to local, the population that seeded a location will have a dramatic effect on the future of a location. Genetics and local cultures of seed populations get magnified or mutated over time to establish the current norms, standards, religious affiliations, trade specialities, and many more social dynamics. This seeding establishes the location’s identity and creates cultural clusters that evolve interestingly over time which the current population completely forgets.
This is even more interesting when you consider 70% of people in the U.S. live in or near where they grew up. Whether through family ties or economic reasons, most people stay put over generations, compounding the importance of the original seed population. This is why immigration dynamics can truly change the outcome of a location.
With the U.S. being home to the most international migrants, it’s not hard to realize the arena of performance and competitive commerce that’s been created by continually adding more industrious people and how those who’ve inherited their location see that as a threat to their way of life.
This also puts an interesting perspective on how travel routes often directly effect the population dynamics of a given location. Think about how this effects island populations - evolutionarily and today. Think about how this would effect a mass immigration to Mars.
Just something to think about. It’s a force most forget when asking why groups of people are certain ways.