21 ms·

Will the US experience a violent upheaval in 2020? (2012)

• inglor_cz 6y ago
  Turchin's two main ideas are intriguing. a) 50 years is enough for "institutional memory" to go out of the window. This may change with longevity breakthroughs, but 50 years is currently enough for a complete generation exchange, so the new leaders have no memory of the previous upheaval and will make the same mistakes again. Or at least the same kind of mistakes, details are always different. b) elite overproduction is a "dangerous" topic when even treading on this ground invites charges of anti-intellectualism, but I cannot help looking at the 25+ crowd with fresh degrees, tons of debt and not-precisely-excellent earning opportunities and see that universities have a great racket out of this, while their graduates not so much. If you apply the old "Cui prodest?" question (Romans used to ask "Who profits?"), the answer would be that tertiary education complex is at least as influential as the military industrial complex, and most of the value captured does not even accrue to professors.
  • 74d-fe6-2c6 6y ago
    > a) 50 years is enough for "institutional memory" to go out of the window. This may change with longevity breakthroughs, but 50 years is currently enough for a complete generation exchange, so the new leaders have no memory of the previous upheaval and will make the same mistakes again. Or at least the same kind of mistakes, details are always different. That's why education is the most important pillar of democracy. Education is everything.
    • inglor_cz 6y ago
      "That's why education is the most important pillar of democracy. Education is everything. " The kind of people who get into positions of power - well, my impression is that they think they know better. Even if they are aware of the fact that in 1930 someone fucked up, they will not entertain the fact that they themselves might do the same. Also, some events are really complex. You can educate people about the 1929 or 2008 economic crises from very different perspectives, from far-left to libertarian, and the lessons will be very different.
      • jsmcgd 6y ago
        I think that's why an education has to be broad. A selective education can be tantamount to brainwashing/propaganda. Give the students as many perspectives and hope that they will do something sensible as they process the information; knowing that not all will, but most. I believe that the more perspectives you are aware of, the less likely you are to be dogmatic and extreme in your beliefs and actions. You will be reminded how dissimilar real life is to simple ideas and rhetoric, that it is a shifting ocean of nuances and caveats. Or society can go the other route, assume you cannot trust the people and create a tyranny of disinformation and control.
        • gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
          > Give the students as many perspectives and hope that they will do something sensible as they process the information I don’t know if you’ve gone to college recently but that was not my impression. It’s a woke monoculture. Discourse is gone.
          • SantalBlush 6y ago
            Discourse is narrower than you'd like; that doesn't mean it's "gone". When someone makes extraordinary claims like "Discourse is gone," that is a red flag that they are not viewing the situation objectively.
            • gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
              Precisely demonstrating my point: a hyper-sensitivity and censorious attitude against any advocacy for unmitigated debate.
              • SantalBlush 6y ago
                You are calling my disagreement a "censorious attitude." Sorry, but I am allowed to disagree with you.
            • 6y ago
    • iguy 6y ago
      And the type of education surely matters. If the goal is to break through this 50-year horizon, then presumably an important part is to really get inside the heads of people at least that long ago. Not to just translate our quarrels & concerns backwards, but rather to stay immersed in the issues of (say) 1920 long enough to feel what was important to people of the time.
      • thewindowmovie5 6y ago
        ...
    • thewindowmovie5 6y ago
      Agree. I think the current crisis in US is because of lack of education and the whitewashing or omitting of important events in history. Just yesterday I saw a comment in here adding that deejays now have control of all three branches of the government(which was obviously false) and that was dangerous. But i guess the poster had no idea about what the three branches of the government.
    • roenxi 6y ago
      I dunno, there are a lot of countries famous for their education which are nevertheless not ideal places to go. Culture might be a more important aspect than education. Education is relatively easy to transplant (c.f. China & the rest of Asia, or the US stealing many of Germany's good scientists after WWII, or the Brits leaching French expertise after the revolution). Culture is really hard to transplant because nobody knows which are the good bits and which are the bad bits. I'll throw these two in because I they are an interesting and relevant example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Isambard_Brunel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Isambard_Brunel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel
      • iguy 6y ago
        These examples are of technical education. German rocket scientists, and British blast-furnace wizards (to France). These things are important of course but seem orthogonal to political institutional memory. Scholars deeply steeped in Bismark's thoughts & mistakes, or in English constitutional law, didn't make these jumps.
        • paganel 6y ago
          > or in English constitutional law Carl Schmitt did in fact made the jump, and he's one of the most read constitutional law writers in the last century. Not sure if Max Weber would have done the same, most probably not (he was really versed in English constitutional law, his "Economy and Society" has lots of quotes to Maitland's "History of English Law"), but he didn't strike me as a fervent supporter of democracy rights either. And there was also the definite jump made by Heidegger, not exactly a legal scholar but a very well-read person nonetheless (and a mentor to Hannah Arendt, among others).
          • Der_Einzige 6y ago
            Not just mentor, he was her boyfriend!!! And an ironic situation, given his nazi ties and her jewishness...
          • 6y ago
    • anewaccount2021 6y ago
      This is what I would expect a technocratic forum like HN to suggest. America's most poverty stricken regions have had public education for nearly a century with almost no meaningful improvement in prospects. Tell me how rural poverty in West Viriginia is reduced by giving people humanities degrees. Better educated voters? Who cares, the poor have no representation of merit anyway; their choices are to vote for one party who ignores them or the other that ignores them.
      • eloff 6y ago
        Public education in the US is awful and lags nearly the entire developed world. Humanities degrees are not terribly useful, but boiling all education down to humanities degrees is a blatant strawman that signals a lot about your willingness to have a nuanced discussion. I think it's fairly self evident that investment in the future is what improves the future and education is probably the most important and significant such investment.
        • inglor_cz 6y ago
          Good education system does not neatly translate to, say, economic success. Italy has top-class university system, much older than Columbus, and yet the country seems to be stuck in stagnation for last 20 years and the talented fresh graduates of those top schools move abroad.
          • eloff 6y ago
            I would say it's one very important factor among others. Ray Dalio outlines many of the factors involved in nations rising and falling, including education in a freely available online book. I've found it an interesting read, although he takes a while to get to the point.[1] [1] https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/ https://www.principles.com/the-changing-world-order/
          • j0ba 6y ago
            > Good education system does not neatly translate to, say, economic success. If you think anyone said that, you should probably talk less and read more. Because it doesn't appear you're competent in either. Education is necessary but not sufficient.
    • AniseAbyss 6y ago
      Education doesn't work when people only watch their propaganda media. And when your entire social and professional circle is in the cult good luck breaking out.
    • brightball 6y ago
      This is basically the Old Testament IMO. Same mistakes over and over, separated by a couple of generations once one generation gets comfortable.
    • krona 6y ago
      "The road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees."
    • graeme 6y ago
      Education is not experience. It can help deal with situations similar to the past but it is far from sufficient to make up for the 50 year problem.
    • kortilla 6y ago
      Yet education does not help. Being told about the events does not really capture the emotions that lead to them. Education is the reason the details are different but fundamentally nothing gets prevented.
    • cmurf 6y ago
      Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, and John Kennedy, are among the most educated in Congress. And yet are the most self-serving, craven, mendacious, and anti-democratic to have served in the modern era. What evidence is there that education applied any constraint on them? Where does good character come from?
  • redis_mlc 6y ago
    I'll add this brief comment as a reference in case anybody wants to research it more. There are 20-year cycles that I've heard of recently. For Cultural Marxism in the US, 1970, 1990, 2010. Those are roughly the generational periods of new counter-cultural US university professors. There's also a related cycle starting with Betty Friedan's Marxist-Feminist book, The Feminine Mystique, in 1963 and each generation after of about 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Friedan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Friedan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique When Marxism, Marxist Feminism and CRT and BLM overlap, you get the amplification and extremism you see in the left in 2020, like AOC being an elected yet open Marxist, and antifa fascists.
  • orange_tee 6y ago
    The way I understood it, elite overproduction is about successful wealthy people, not enjoying the political influence that they believed they would enjoy after attaining their wealth.
    • flybrand 6y ago
      Idle hands among those who have far reach will eventually do things that lead to conflict.
    • simonh 6y ago
      It’s not really about wealth or political power specifically. It’s about status and power generally. Some of the pseudo-elite may pursue wealth, others social status, others political influence, etc. These are largely fungible though, so the problem is when you overproduce the elite class generally, all of these go into deficit.
  • BLKNSLVR 6y ago
    Taking b) and running with it, education is, in my opinion, the silver bullet for a number of societies ills. It's very interesting to note how higher education in the US has such a high barrier to entry that it actively discourages outsiders. It feels as if the Australian Government wants to move in the same direction, and / or have already been doing so for a few years. Education has its own benefits to society as a whole, therefore we all suffer when a majority are locked out of pursuits that require and encourage depth of thought and logical thinking.
    • onethought 6y ago
      True, if you are on the right (political spectrum) you do not want to encourage higher education, it shifts people to the left, as analytical thinking starts undoing idealism. US is a good example of this, with most universities having more left communities around them. Perhaps it is an intentional long play by the Right in Australia to pursue this kind of minimisation of education
      • loopz 6y ago
        You could say that analytical thinking undo gullibility. Idealism and principles though, may better be understood, applied and defended, with well-rounded education.
        • onethought 6y ago
          Good point. I think that is a better way to describe what I mean
      • WatchDog 6y ago
        I don't think analytical thinking has anything to do with political leaning, I'd argue that the US higher education system particularly the humanities is a breeding ground of idealogues. I would say the tendency of education to lean left is largely due to left leaning people being more attracted to working in academia.
        • 6y ago
  • watwut 6y ago
    Elite in pollitical sense does not equal "someone with college degree".
    • yyyk 6y ago
      Turchin (not in the linked article, but elsewhere[0]) explicitly refers to rise in number of underemployed graduates as a trigger for the creation of a counter-Elite. [0] http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/the-storming-of-the-u-s-capitol/ http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/the-storming-of-the-u-s... "Elite overproduction, and especially overproduction of the youth with advanced degrees, continues unabated. Our institutions of higher education have been churning out law, MBA, and PhD degrees, many more than could be absorbed by the economy. In a Bloomberg View article published just a few days ago Noah Smith provides the numbers for the overproduction of PhDs (America Is Pumping Out Too Many Ph.D.s)."
  • satellite2 6y ago
    I think, it's an interesting model, and would probably work all else being equal. But in that case, I believe he misses one critical variable. We are much less violent than 50 years ago because kid beating largely went out of fashion.
    • inglor_cz 6y ago
      "We are much less violent than 50 years ago" I would say that the population is, on average, much older and has more to lose. Fortysomethings do not regularly engage in street chaos. This is even more visible in Europe, even in formerly violent places like the Balkans or Northern Ireland. Once the share of the young hotheads in the population drops, you have much smaller probability of really serious riots.
      • watwut 6y ago
        Young people are less violent then they used to be. It is not just about their share in population, they behave less violently then young people 50 years ago.
        • flybrand 6y ago
          People who are less violent can easily become violent because they don’t understand the cost and destruction of force escalation.
          • watwut 6y ago
            Afaik, generations that grew up in violent times are more violent then those who grew up in peaceful times. Being used to violence, seeing it and/or being traumatized by it offsets whatever lack seeing the cost does.
          • vladTheInhaler 6y ago
            Really the violent people are the actual pacifists, and the peaceful ones are secretly capable of great violence? [CITATION NEEDED]
  • neartheplain 6y ago
    Perhaps unfortunately, 50 years might not be long enough for generational turnover in US government. Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell are both 78 years old. Nancy Pelosi is 80. Senators Diane Feinstein and Chuck Grassley are 87.
    • TheCoelacanth 6y ago
      It's 48 years since Joe Biden became a senator, and he was one of the youngest senators ever. None of those people held a national-level office 50 years ago. There has been a complete turnover in leadership in the past 50 years.
      • jessaustin 6y ago
        Whew, thank goodness! I'd hate to see centenarians in Congress!
    • jkinudsjknds 6y ago
      The new Georgia senator is the youngest elected senator since Biden. That was... an odd factoid to take in for me.
  • paganel 6y ago
    >at the 25+ crowd with fresh degrees, tons of debt and not-precisely-excellent earning opportunities There are numerous studies and theories saying that late 19th-early 20th century revolutions wouldn't have happened if they hadn't been coordinated by educated people who hadn't found a stable job (mostly as government employees, not that many private white-collar jobs back then). The Russian revolution definitely wouldn't have happened without university-educated Lenin and Trotsky, and I'd say that even Stalin falls under "educated but with no stable job" umbrella (if I'm not mistaken he had gone to a priest seminary). In my country (Romania) most of the inter-war intellectuals had turned extremists for exactly that reason, i.e. too few white-collar jobs to chase for people who had finished university. The most well-known examples are guys like Eliade or Cioran, but a more relevant one is Corneliu Zelea-Codreanu [1], which is currently well liked by some people in the US [2] and in Northern Italy [3]. A very relevant book on the subject can be found here [4], unfortunately for the time being with no English translation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneliu_Zelea_Codreanu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneliu_Zelea_Codreanu [2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-charlottesville-college-campuses-20170818-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-charlottesvil... [3] https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/11/20/news/lealta_azione_documentario_sky-212139492/ https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/11/20/news/lealta_azi... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Limitele-Meritocratiei-Intro-Societate-Romanian/dp/973465148X https://www.amazon.com/Limitele-Meritocratiei-Intro-Societat...
    • inglor_cz 6y ago
      Hello fellow Central European :-) In interwar Czechoslovakia, we had quite a few intellectuals who were openly Stalinist.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • anewaccount2021 6y ago
      All of the Bolsheviks were well-read. Even their token thug, Stalin, was probably reading political theory at what we would describe as a doctoral level. While Lenin did not respect Stalin as an intellectual peer, we do know that he spent a great deal of time pouring over dense political tomes. No TV, radio, internet...people read books to entertain themselves. But, to put a fine point on it, the Russian Revolution happened without Lenin or Trotsky. The Bolsheviks overthrew the February Revolution in a coup.
  • throw0101a 6y ago
    Samuel Huntington observed 'convulsions' every 60 years in American history: > American history is driven by periodic moments of moral convulsion. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington noticed that these convulsions seem to hit the United States every 60 years or so: the Revolutionary period of the 1760s and ’70s; the Jacksonian uprising of the 1820s and ’30s; the Progressive Era, which began in the 1890s; and the social-protest movements of the 1960s and early ’70s. * https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/collapsing-levels-trust-are-devastating-america/616581/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/collapsing... The 2020s was about when the US was 'due' for something to happen, so the next decade or so will apparently be a bit of a ride.
    • wwweston 6y ago
      I feel like there's an important data point overlooked in the 1860s?
      • SantalBlush 6y ago
        Not to mention the labor upheavals of the early 20th century.
    • dehrmann 6y ago
      How was the the revolutionary period "moral convulsion?" Political, sure, but not moral.
      • marcusverus 6y ago
        The widespread adoption of the civil libertarian ethos (under the guise of unalienable rights, endowed by a creator) might be the greatest moral convulsion in human history.
        • vulcan01 6y ago
          > civil libertarian ethos People living in the colonies already had this. When Parliament started asserting more control over the colonies, they fought to restore their control over government.
  • mcshicks 6y ago
    I read Turchin's Secular Cycle where he goes over the data sets he uses to draw these conclusions on earlier societies. While the things he's trying to measure are not easy (for instance he uses the number and dates of found coin hoards as a relative measure of instability in England), the amount of data is pretty impressive. I actually gave up after he did all the data on England and skipped France, the Islamic Empires and I think there was one other society, and went to the conclusion. I haven't read "Age of Discord" yet, but it looks like he has a pretty detailed summary here. http://peterturchin.com/age-of-discord/ http://peterturchin.com/age-of-discord/
    • rossdavidh 6y ago
      I realize this is what you meant but just want to clarify that Turchin did not skip the data for France, the Islamic empires, etc. He covers each one in some depth.
      • mcshicks 6y ago
        Yes sorry that's exactly what I meant. He had me convinced at the first few sets of data.
  • andrew_ 6y ago
    Within the professions that make up "tech" 10 years is enough time for institutional memory to go out the window.
    • MichaelZuo 6y ago
      Well except certain groups within Apple, TSMC, the big japanese corps, IBM mainframes, and lesser known places.
    • BurningFrog 6y ago
      Are you saying most tech people only spend~10 years in the industry? That's much less than what I would think. But maybe I misunderstand. It happens regularly :)
  • AniseAbyss 6y ago
    Yeah we have fascists in Germany again. People forget. And who the fuck really reads history books anyways?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • bjourne 6y ago
    B) is a myth. Statistics show consistently and over and over that those who do the best in the US are the college-educated. Media is produced by the college-educated so it is their class' problems gets the most attention but it is clearly not their problems that are the worst. It's all those who were too dumb or too socially disadvantaged to get a higher education what will be SOL in the future. Those who voted for Trump and will vote either for him or his successor in 2024.
  • erichocean 6y ago
    > tertiary education complex is at least as influential as the military industrial complex If you gave me full control (on the sly, so they maintained the role they currently have) of Harvard, Yale, NYT, and WaPo—I wouldn't care who held the Presidency or sat in Congress, and the military is a distant afterthought. All would follow my dictates to the letter and I would be able to entirely transform every aspect of the country. So who, again, is in power? Votes (and by extension, voters) don't matter because they do not affect actual power. It's kayfabe on a grand scale.
  • vmception 6y ago
    yes but how many false positives are there from other clairvoyants and how many of those have just as succinct rational
• wombatmobile 6y ago
  What is a “violent upheaval”? Without a specific definition, such as “civil war resulting in 620,000 deaths”, they’re fairly easy to predict.
  • insert_coin 6y ago
    Something other than a natural phenomena or war with an outside entity that makes you declare martial law in a considerable part of the country.
  • leereeves 6y ago
    I think what happened in 2020 qualifies. While tame compared to the Civil War, it was comparable to the upheaval that happened about 50 years ago, and certainly not easy to predict. > between 15 million and 26 million people participated at some point in the demonstrations > arson, vandalism and looting caused about $1–2 billion in insured damage between May 26 and June 8, > By early June, at least 200 American cities had imposed curfews, while more than 30 states and Washington, D.C, had activated over 62,000 National Guard personnel in response to unrest. > By the end of June, at least 14,000 people had been arrested at protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_United_States_racial_unrest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_United_State...
    • flybrand 6y ago
      Technically he would have counted deaths, if I recall correctly. I agree w your idea though.
      • leereeves 6y ago
        I think 2020 might also qualify on that count. Massive 1-Year Rise In Homicide Rates...in 2020 > New Orleans-based data consultant Jeff Asher studied crime rates in more than 50 cities and says the crime spikes aren't just happening in big cities. With the numbers of homicides spiking in many places, Asher expects the final statistics for 2020 to tell a startlingly grim story. > "We're going to see, historically, the largest one-year rise in murder that we've ever seen," he says. https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise-in-homicide-rates-collided-with-the-pandemic-in-2020 https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise...
• Barrin92 6y ago
  it's an interesting idea, kind of foundation trilogy psychohistory like but it's also in some ways very obvious and hard to disprove at the same time. He gives two generations as the length for instability to dwell up, and if you move that like a sliding window over American history most of the time it'd probably be true depending on your definition of violent upheaval. However if you expand it to other countries I think it quickly breaks down. In Latin America or the ME you have these cycles on a per year basis if they actually ever stop, in some regions you have way more piece and stability for hundreds of years. The 'two generations' logic makes sense if you sneak into your assumption that you're in what I'd call moderately violent, fairly stable society like the US, but the reasoning is kind of circular. Also assuming cliodynamics actually did have predictive power far beyond common sense then you have fully entire Foundation territory because then you're in some sort of strange loop where the acceptance of cliodynamics likely diretly impacts cliodynamics.
  • rossdavidh 6y ago
    The full model posits two cycles, one of which involves these "fathers-and-sons" cycles, because there are deep underlying problems. One generation tries to solve them, violently, the next generation abhors revolution enough to not do that. However, eventually you get an actual success at fixing the underlying problems (often related to elites accumulating too big a percentage of the resources), then the "fathers-and-sons" cycles stop because there's not a big well of repressed anger for counter-elites (Robespierre, Cromwell, Lenin, etc.) to draw on. So, for each country, it will not always be a two-generation cycle because it depends on whether you have the intra-elite competition, fueled by an ever-increasing concentration of power at the very top, which causes the disaffected masses to have a counter-elite to follow down the path of upheaval.
  • notahacker 6y ago
    It's also not helped by the graph for the USA the article uses. Sure, you've got three spikes of race-related events at half century intervals, but all the other time series are uncorrelated (and even for race related incidents there's an obvious structural difference between centuries).
• insert_coin 6y ago
  As they say, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.
  • wilsonfiifi 6y ago
    That's brilliant! I wholeheartedly agree. In case anyone wonders where this saying comes from, my quick search attributes it to Margaret Atwood, from her book "The Testaments" [0]. [0] https://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/as-they-say-history-does-not-repeat-itself-but-it-rhymes/
    • jimktrains2 6y ago
      The quote is much older than the testements.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    • InitialLastName 6y ago
      That quote comes from far before that 2019 book. It showed up as early as the 70s in that form, frequently attributed (without verified evidence) to Mark Twain [0] [0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/
      • wilsonfiifi 6y ago
        Aha! Thanks for the correction.
• flybrand 6y ago
  Elite overproduction happens in several ways - with tech, new services, new hardware, we all have the capability of an elite from a few decades back. We’ve lowered the barrier to being an elite, to having that reach. Also, we’ve made it possible to see that everyone around you might also be an elite. Not only is elite over production occurring, we’ve lowered the cost to produce elites, and we’ve increased societal visibility of the elites that exist.
• mellosouls 6y ago
  Cycles in history are an ancient and intriguing idea; modern - disputed - forms include Strauss-Howe generation theory. This "cliodynamics" seems to be an effort to put these sorts of ideas on a more academically respectable footing. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generati...
• throw0101a 6y ago
  See also Samuel P. Huntington: > American history is driven by periodic moments of moral convulsion. The late Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington noticed that these convulsions seem to hit the United States every 60 years or so: the Revolutionary period of the 1760s and ’70s; the Jacksonian uprising of the 1820s and ’30s; the Progressive Era, which began in the 1890s; and the social-protest movements of the 1960s and early ’70s. > These moments share certain features. People feel disgusted by the state of society. Trust in institutions plummets. Moral indignation is widespread. Contempt for established power is intense. > A highly moralistic generation appears on the scene. It uses new modes of communication to seize control of the national conversation. Groups formerly outside of power rise up and take over the system. These are moments of agitation and excitement, frenzy and accusation, mobilization and passion. > In 1981, Huntington predicted that the next moral convulsion would hit America around the second or third decade of the 21st century—that is, right about now. And, of course, he was correct. * https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/collapsing-levels-trust-are-devastating-america/616581/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/collapsing... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington
  • WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
    There's a fundamental imbalance in our attempts at using marks, tokens, & bills to simulate resources & desires, and it is thus: the natural world doesn't work this way at all. In the natural world, living things die. Living things die because things never actually stay exactly the same, so nothing goes on forever, and to achieve something like forever, living things copy themselves before they die, bestowing their resources upon this copy. But, in the natural world these resources stop right there and don't compound. Capital, because it exhibits no entropy outside of inflation, does compound and will always send us right back here again to societal collapse in eternal return. Our desire, birthed in hunting & gathering, which was formed to stand in opposition to entropy, like entropy, has no limit. Thus our desires will always lead to excess capital accumulation, until such a time that our tokens and assets can become entropic or until we collapse. The lion will lay with the lamb, or we will be the hand of our own destruction, enabled by technology, or in the language of the Daodejing: "To understand others is to have knowledge; To understand oneself is to be illumined. To conquer others needs strength; To conquer oneself is harder still. To be content with what one has is to be rich. He that works through violence may get his way; But only what stays in its place Can endure. When one dies one is not lost; there is no other longevity."
• rho4 6y ago
  I feel like an important often missed variable is what part of the population is actually not having enough food & shelter or not able to support their family.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    Also work and leisure. Covid hit both of those. Bored, unemployed people are more likely to protest, and protesters are more likely to riot.
    • rwcarlsen 6y ago
      I think you meant - covid mitigations hit both of those.
  • zarkov99 6y ago
    I agree that is wrong, but it is not new. Standard of living are much higher than say the 50's. There is something else going on. A mix of nihilism, vast inequality and a societal sensory apparatus that is profiting immensely from churning hate.
• bencollier49 6y ago
  This Turchin fellow seems to have missed the boat by about 20 years. The book "Generations: The History of America's Future" by Strauss and Howe was published in 1991 and predicted exactly the same thing. It was a bestseller at the time. It's so well known that it's notable on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio... It predicted a "crisis of 2020" caused by a number of factors including the temperaments of baby boomers. There's an interesting interview with one of the authors here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/us/politics/coronavirus-republicans-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/us/politics/coronavirus-r...
  • rossdavidh 6y ago
    Turchin discusses this here: http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/prophecy-fourth-turning/ http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/prophecy-fourth-turning...
  • zebrafish 6y ago
    Also Peter Zeihan forecasted a lot of this based on demographics and finance in his first book.
  • ryndbfsrw 6y ago
    Fascinating! I hadn’t heard of this before. The closest I’ve found in the same vein is a 1994 article by Edward Luttwak who predicted another wave of fascism in the western world driven by economic decline of the middle class: “It is only mildly amusing that nowadays the standard Republican/Tory after-dinner speech is a two-part affair, in which part one celebrates the virtues of unimpeded competition and dynamic structural change, while part two mourns the decline of the family and community ‘values’ that were eroded precisely by the forces commended in part one. Thus at the present time the core of Republican/Tory beliefs is a perfect non-sequitur. And what does the moderate Left have to offer? Only more redistribution, more public assistance, and particularist concern for particular groups that can claim victim status, from the sublime peak of elderly, handicapped, black lesbians down to the merely poor.” Link to article here. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n07/edward-luttwak/why-fascism-is-the-wave-of-the-future https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v16/n07/edward-luttwak/why-f...
• justinzollars 6y ago
  I recommend reading William Strauss and Neil Howe's book The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny [1]. The book introduces the idea of generational cycles [2] According to the theory, historical events are associated with recurring generational personas (archetypes) and I couldn't put it down when I read it over the summer. Several people whom I deeply respect recommended this book, including the famous bond trader Jeffrey Gundlach. After reading the book, it was really no surprise to me when the capital was overrun with rioters. The book convinced me, we could very well have a bloody revolution or war considering the unaddressed underlying conditions: extreme wealth inequality, pandemic, desperation, hunger and feeling like one has no personal stake. The rise of China and decline of the United States contributes to another dangerous possible outcome. The tech industry's most recent moves to purge conservatives/libertarians may make our social condition even worse, by isolating rather than including the most desperate people in our society. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rendezvous/dp/0767900464 https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Turning-American-Prophecy-Rend... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theo...
  • tifadg1 6y ago
    > After reading the book, it was really no surprise to me when the capital was overrun with rioters. May it be possible you formed a bias? Take extreme examples of preppers or religious nuts - if something happened tomorrow, they'd be the first to say "I've been telling you for years". Does that mean they were right all along or rather that given a long enough time frame anything can happen? > unaddressed underlying conditions: extreme wealth inequality, pandemic, desperation, hunger and feeling like one has no personal stake. on the flip side, no revolution since and including arab uprising was successful, and unlike us, they're actually prepared to sacrifice themselves for their ideals.
  • indigochill 6y ago
    > we could very well have a bloody revolution or war considering the unaddressed underlying conditions A revolution/civil war in the US is impossible. The US military is the best-equipped in the world (with tons of equipment no private individual can ever hope to acquire) and backed by the world's leading intelligence community. Regardless of how angry or desperate American citizens are, they don't have the capacity to wage anything resembling a war on the government. Violent protests (and continued domestic terrorism) are an entirely different matter, though.
• anewaccount2021 6y ago
  What is "violent" in 2021? If everyone collectively stopped paying their bills and crashed the economy, is that violent? I would suggest that when (sorry, all things end) America collapses...not a shot will be fired. Likewise, if I were to advise a foreign adversay on the best way to "fight" the US, I would suggest currency manipulation or information manipulation. Why fire a gun? Someone might get killed!
• deleted 6y ago
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• Spooky23 6y ago
  One of my high school classmates wrote a paper about this that was pretty prescient. I remember it because I thought is was insane, and then we worked together at a summer gig and talked about it at length - he flipped me. Prediction that were key was a long war in the early 2000s and significant unrest in the 2020-2030 timeline. His rationale was that the fall of the Soviets would take about 10-15 years to have a real impact on US policy and the 2020-30 timeframe was when the ruined farmers (caused by the policies of the 80s and 90s) passed the torch to the next generation in full and the broader ex-urban economy would be dead beyond redemption. He was a brilliant kid, who unfortunately passed away too young in an accident.
• f430 6y ago
  I still think this article is on track to be correct. 2020 was a precipitation of the stormy clouds that will begin raining in 2021. Lot of people have this weird idea that 2020 was somehow the last of it. I think it was the beginning and 2021 and onwards will be a tough battle.
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  What I am most worried about the global decline of liberal democracy and the rise of rise of autocratic ethno-religious nationalism. For example: Turkey and Erdogan with Islam, Poland and Duda with Catholicism Russia and Putin with Russian Orthodox India and Modi with Hinduism US and Trump with White Evangelical Christianity It seems the old liberal democratic order is under severe strain.
• deleted 6y ago
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• dukeofdoom 6y ago
  I expect Marshall Law declared within 24 hours. Before impeachment vote. Pelosi asked the military to ignore commands from Trump. They turned her down, and warned this is an act of sedition. So that tells me they are on his side. I don't think Trump would accept being barred from running in 2024 if the impeachment vote is allowed to go through. This is his only move right now. The national guard is already in the capital. Booting him off of Twitter and social media, was a plan to disrupt his ability to address the nation, and possible liability around not carrying his address should he win. As I think some TV stations will probably block the emergency address. Trump is also convinced he would win the in person ballot, should a military declare a new election. Media speaks almost in one voice now, joined by big tech, the left will be controlling almost all the levers of power otherwise. So he has large support in the population to stop that
  • dukeofdoom 6y ago
    Now that I think about it. He won't do it. They would arrest him.
• DaniloDias 6y ago
  Anyone else feel like we’re revisiting the conformity phenomenon of the 50’s?
• amelius 6y ago
  If you use Google, you can find predictions of just about anything.
• BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Turchin has also correctly predicted that the elections would be very close : http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/america-in-november-2020-a-structural-demographic-view-from-alpha-centauri/ http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/america-in-november-202... However, so far he has been "wrong" about his "prediction" that after that the events would be completely unpredictable. In fact, so far events have been very predictable - this might change after the inauguration though?