Are These the End Times?

“Peter Turchin’s latest book, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration”

“Turchin began his career as an evolutionary biologist, analyzing large datasets to clarify patterns in population dynamics in insects and other organisms”

“he has applied these analytical methods to questions having to do with changes in human societies over time, a study to which he and his colleagues have given the name cliodynamics (after Clio, the Muse of history)”

“my own recent book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival”

“In the US, rising economic inequality (since the 1970s) has immiserated the working class, while the number of elites (e.g., billionaires) and elite aspirants (e.g., people with law degrees) has skyrocketed. As you show in detail, these developments align with a historical pattern seen repeatedly in complex societies, and it never seems to end well”

“As I discuss in detail in End Times, the most important thing we need to do, in order to find a solution to the crisis in which we find ourselves, is shut down the perverse wealth pump, which has been, since the late 1970s, taking from the poor and giving to the rich”

“accomplishing this will allow wages and incomes of the majority of Americans to again increase together with economic growth, as they did during the period following the New Deal (and until the 1970s)”

“solving global crises requires cooperation of humans at large scales—at the global level, in fact. Yet, political disintegration within countries undermines our ability to cooperate at needed scales”