Dating websites are themselves not representative of human interactions.
I’ll happily concede that if you restrict yourself to the intersection of men looking for casual encounters with similar aged women looking for casual encounters, you’ll find winner-takes-all effects.
But there are lots of women not looking for casual encounters, and I don’t accept the proposition that polyamorous women are removing themselves from the dating pool for less than perfect men. It appears to be very much the opposite.
It’s just that casual encounters are really, really different from polyamory. “Willing to have casual sex with multiple partners” != “Interested in a polyamorous relationship”.
How many of your partners are shared with other men? Alternately, if you're female, how many male partners do you have?
There is one unique alternative here and that's the landscape of emotional needs is somehow much more diverse than the landscape of physical needs. Then it would make sense to maximize among many partners as it's unlikely that a single individual can have all the skills necessary to satisfy a long list of independent needs.
Although even then I'm skeptical, the polyamorous couples I've seen don't seem to last long (~5 years) and eventually the male chooses or vice versa.
I’ll happily concede that if you restrict yourself to the intersection of men looking for casual encounters with similar aged women looking for casual encounters, you’ll find winner-takes-all effects.
But there are lots of women not looking for casual encounters, and I don’t accept the proposition that polyamorous women are removing themselves from the dating pool for less than perfect men. It appears to be very much the opposite.
It’s just that casual encounters are really, really different from polyamory. “Willing to have casual sex with multiple partners” != “Interested in a polyamorous relationship”.