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Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?
Has Our Luck Finally Run Out? We are woefully unprepared for a long run of bad luck. Long-term cycles escape our notice because they play out over many years or even decades; few noticed the decreasing rainfall in the Mediterranean region in 150 A.D. but this gradual decline in rainfall slowly but surely reduced the grain […]
Global Boom, Pandemic, Crash: Is History Just Repeating Itself?
Global Boom, Pandemic, Crash: Is History Just Repeating Itself? If Peter Turchin is right, we face the end of a 300-year cycle, as did previous far-flung empires. The coronavirus pandemic is, among other things, a tribute to human ingenuity and our relentless pursuit of globalization, an impulse thousands of years old. Previous civilizations, from the […]
Peter Turchin And The Coming Crisis Of The 2020s
Peter Turchin And The Coming Crisis Of The 2020s Increasingly, social science is dominated by Leftist ideologues who use the remaining respect that academia still has among the public to inculcate students and public alike with their equalitarian dogmas. But there are honorable exceptions. One of these: Peter Turchin, a Russian who is professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of […]
Unrealistically Great Expectations
Unrealistically Great Expectations Our expectations have continued ever higher even as the pie is shrinking.. Let’s see if we can tie together four social dynamics: the elite college admissions scandal, the decline in social mobility, the rising sense of entitlement and the unrealistically ‘great expectations’ of many Americans. As many have noted, the nation’s financial and […]
Here’s How We Ended Up with Predatory, Parasitic Elites
Here’s How We Ended Up with Predatory, Parasitic Elites Combine financialization, neoliberalism and moral bankruptcy, and you end up with predatory, parasitic elites. How did our financial and political elites become predatory parasites? Some will answer that elites have always been predatory parasites; as tempting as it may be to offer a blanket denunciation of […]
The Telltale Signs of Imperial Decline
The Telltale Signs of Imperial Decline Nothing is as permanent as we imagine–especially super-complex, super-costly, super-asymmetric and super-debt-dependent systems. Check which signs of Imperial decline you see around you: The hubris of an increasingly incestuous and out-of-touch leadership; dismaying extremes of wealth inequality; self-serving, avaricious Elites; rising dependency of the lower classes on free Bread […]
When Did Our Elites Become Self-Serving Parasites?
When Did Our Elites Become Self-Serving Parasites? Combine financialization, neoliberalism and moral bankruptcy, and you end up with self-serving parasitic elites. When did our financial and political elites become self-serving parasites? Some will answer that elites have always been self-serving parasites; as tempting as it may be to offer a blanket denunciation of elites, this overlooks […]
What’s Eroding the Middle Class?
What’s Eroding the Middle Class? This erosion of a self-employed, independent middle class was an important pre-condition for the collapse of Rome and the French Revolution. I have devoted many blog posts to the erosion of the middle class, for the specific reason that when the middle class–the layers of the economy between the Power Elites […]
The Real Trouble Begins When Rising Inequality Splinters the Elites
The Real Trouble Begins When Rising Inequality Splinters the Elites If others in our class are still rising while we’re stagnating, we sense a great disturbance in the financial and political Force. Rising economic inequality tends to generate political instability for all the obvious reasons: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the rich say let […]
When the Aristocracy Leaves the Commoners in the Dust, The Empire Is Doomed
When the Aristocracy Leaves the Commoners in the Dust, The Empire Is Doomed We all know the barriers between the commoners and the Elite rise higher every year, despite the claims of the corporate media and the Power Elite aristocracy. Historian Peter Turchin identified “the degree of solidarity felt between the commons and aristocracy” as […]
High Levels of Youth Unemployment – and Runaway Inequality – Cause Riots
High Levels of Youth Unemployment – and Runaway Inequality – Cause Riots Recipe For Disaster We’ve known for 1,900 years that runaway inequality destroys societies. The great American historian Will Grant wrote in 1969: In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the […]
