Historians From The United States

"We need to find ways to ameliorate the negative effects of globalization... Economic inequality, accompanied by burgeoning public debt, can be addressed by making tax rates more progressive."

"[W]e need to translate the general theory into a specific computational model tailored to the focal state. Over the past four decades this has been accomplished for... historical case-studies, ranging from Ancient empires to Early Modern states and nineteenth century’s revolutions and civil wars."

"Thank you, Peter, for... this important and timely book. ...I’ve been following your work for several years, and I discussed it in my own recent book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival. The data-driven, mathematical methods you and your colleagues have developed for understanding patterns in history seem highly illuminating. In the U.S., 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... these developments align with a historical pattern seen repeatedly in complex societies, and... never seems to end well. In End Times, you lay out... what your analysis means for the United States in the 2020s. It’s not a pretty picture. ...we’re seeing the evidence of increasing polarization and political ill will everywhere."

"Turchin... a mathematical ecologist before turning to history in the mid-2000s, brings a numbers approach to his adopted subject. He was able to predict the turbulent 2020s by looking at economic and social indicators from 100 historical crises, gathered together in a database called CrisisDB. They range from medieval France to 19th-century Britain, and show that periods of instability are pretty consistently preceded by a decline in wages, the emergence of a wealth pump, and most combustibly, elite overproduction."

"In my book, Ages of Discord I talk about the Progressive Period... [the] 1920s especially. Remember... the original Red Scare was in the 1920s. So when we look at the existence of the Soviet Union, established in 1920 and collapsed in 1989, this is the period when... I grew up, by the way, in the Soviet Union, and I remember how the newspapers like ' were talking about the horrors of capitalism... There are multiple lines of evidence that show that the influence from the Soviet Union... By the way, also from during the 1930s. Those were, in fact, important influences on the Roosevelt administration in... designing an equitable system. ...When the Soviet Union ... collapsed, it was misinterpreted as the triumph of neoliberal economics... and here we are essentially. ...This is an important factor. So the failure by the elites. It could be both due to internal challenges... and by the way, in the 1920s there were challenges... even earlier from [the] 1890s... from the Populist movement in the United States, and the Socialist movement in the United States. ...So those were internal. There were also external influences from competitors such as the Soviet Union."

"Both exogenous and endogenous. ...[H]uman societies have changed dramatically over the past couple of hundred years, and you have to take that into account. ...Many people talk about now, especially because of , the effect of technology, the automation, and of robotization, and that is certainly a force that reduces labor supply. But other things... played in the United States at the level of labor supply... first... the baby boom that created a large cohort of workers; and secondly the... massive entry of women into the labor force; and immigration. Immigration actually is much discussed but numerically it's... slightly less important than the... other demographic forces that we're talking about. ...What's exogenous, what's endogenous? It's really a matter of what our best model is, because you can endogenize things. But some things cannot be endogenized, so there are automation processes... this is a very long term process that has been happening over thousands of years... And so in my model that's clearly an exogenous mechanism. But what's the most important (to me) endogenous mechanism is the last thing that I included in the model, which is the attitudes... Think about it as institutions. ...Labor promoting institutions were installed in the United States as a result of the New Deal, and they worked very well until [the] late 70s, and then they... started to be dismantled... especially under the Reagan administration. And so I use the mininum wage as a proxy for the elite attitudes towards workers. It seems to work quite well, but we could use other proxies such as illegal anti-labor moves by firms. So that is an endogenous mechanism in theory because... essentially, ...when ...[a] crisis ...either destroys part of the elites, or frightens them so much that they install institutions that are more pro-labor, and that lasts until the collective memory of the crisis fades, and then you have... [a] recycling process... in my book I unpack these ideas."

"I claim that ... gives us a very good theoretical framework within which we can look at many different seemingly disparate trends in the United States... they suddenly start making sense... [[w:Disease of despair|[D]eaths of despair]] ...I would argue that the opioid crisis is one of the manifestations of the immiseration, and in fact... go to Case and Deaton original book (project) on deaths of despair. They make this argument very eloquently. They give a lot of data, much better than I can do, so [the] opioid crisis is part of the bundle of reasons why immiserated population (people)... results in large swaths of [the] population who are falling... and many of them take the way out by either drugs and overdosing, or... suicide, or... alcoholism... or simply become careless and die in accidents... So this is clearly, and thanks to Anne Case and Angus Deaton for their excellent work, because here we can really see... The book is excellent. They talk about social immiseration, broken families and many other things. It really is a very coherent understanding of these problems."

"Immiseration is important, but... societies can... be pretty stable with quite a lot of immiseration. As long as the elites are united and the state is strong, the state can suppress all those peasant rebellions... All "successful" revolutions and civil wars were the result of the intraelite conflicts. Even today, if you look at Donald Trump, who is sort of the main "revolutionary" so to speak, ...he is not particularly immiserated himself, but he's channeling... the tens of millions of immiserated Americans."

"We have analyzed CrisiDB because there's plenty of data on weather proxies. ...Weather, climate worsening seems to serve often as a trigger for crisis. But the key question is whether the societies have resilience... When populations are not immiserated and elites are not overproduced the social stability and resilience is very high, and societies adjust reasonably well to climate shocks. It's really when drivers for instability have been working for a while, that's when the climate can often serve as the trigger."

"The social scientist has made a career from predicting global instability. But in the new book End Times, his analysis produces nothing but banalities."

"[A]t a very deep and abstract level these forces, immiseration and elite overproduction... are playing out in very similar ways in very different societies. However, ...the theory has to be tailored to each society because ...the critical dimension is what's happening to the elites. Now different societies have ...a variety of ways in which the elites are defined and ...regenerated ...so even if you look at western democracies, you compare the United States, let's say to France, the United States is basically a plutocracy, the reigning elite is the economic elite in collaboration with the political elites. But France is a bureaucracy. In France the elites are created in different ways, and there are other examples, other societies. ...[I]n Egypt, for example, it's militocracy essentially. So those details are very important. ...[T]hat's why the general ideas, elite overproduction, they have to be filtered through the specific structures of different societies. ...[T]he Democratic societies have different ways that the power flows in them compared to autocratic societies... [I]f we take a step back from specific arrangements in which power flows, and... focus on more structural, more fundamental issues, then the theory works surprisingly well."

"To conclude, the structural causes of Ages of Discord... I have shown the example using the United States, but... they are quite generic. ...[T]hey show up... in more than 100... past crises. ...[W]e are now in the United States ...clearly in crisis. ...We are at the cusp. ...In fact, collective actions can result in positive... or negative outcomes. What will happen we will see."

"Look at a more traditional society in which the elites are... landed nobility. ...[T]he way the wealth pump operates there is that when elite overproduction occurs... Nobles basically oppress peasants and turn on the wealth pump. So instead of economic mechanisms that transfer wealth from commoners to the Elites, in this case you have more coercion methods. ...So this is a variation on the theme ..."

"My colleague has expressed a pessimistic view in his book The Great Leveler... where he says the death is the great leveler so... a major violent shock is needed to reverse the economic inequality. I... look at this a bit more optimistically. Essentially entering into the crisis is relatively stereotypical, that's what our CrisisDB investigations show... [I]t's really conflict that plays a key role, together with mass organization. But the exit is usually contingent, and in fact there could be both good and bad outcomes, as indicated in this graph. Sometimes the decline is mild and followed by rapid recovery, but you... can also have complete collapse."

"This is what I did in... Ages of Discord, I looked at more than 200 years of American history... an aggregated measure of well being... the blue curve has gone through two cycles, and the red curve is a measure of instability..."

"[W]e actually looked at outcomes of crises, measuring them by a collapse. I don't like the word "collapse" because who knows what collapse means. So... we broke it up into various dimensions, and then we can look at more than 100 cases in CrisisDB, and look at the distribution of the severity (where we basically sum of the possible bad things that can happen in societies). Most of the time the crises lead to pretty dire consequences, but there is about 10-15% of cases where the elites manage to pull together, adopt the right set of reforms, and sail the ship of the state through the turbulent waters without major bloodshed."

"[E]ssentially in any society, however the elites are defined, whether economic, administrative, military, or ideological, they need to support a certain level of income, and so when their numbers grow, inevitably they have to extract that income from the commoners."

"[T]he problem is that as we get greater numbers of these surplus elites... some of them turn into... counter-elites... the individuals who are willing to challenge... the reigning regime, and in history often... by violent means, and in fact this is happening in the United States... they're willing to break the rules of the game."

"So this is how drives intraelite competition, intraelite conflicts, rise of the counter-elites and then sociopolitical instability."

"[I]nequality... at least in this model, is not a direct driver. It's a proxie for the direct drivers, which is immiseration and elite overproduction."

"You have to think dynamically... I'm talking as a scientist about entering into a crisis, and then... societies have to somehow get out of it, so in Douglass North and his colleagues, for example, they look specifically at the Glorious Revolution... the exit from about 60 years of conflict, which started... in Scottish Wars 1639 and... ended in 1690s with the new arrangements. So... when societies exit from these crises... Sometimes, by the way, they don't exit, they essentially have political fragmentation. ...Think about the Roman Empire, which has fragmented, and there was no new Roman Empire. But frequently we do have reconstitution, ...England, for example, reconstituted itself. So think about it dynamically. You have to look at the path of the crisis, and then the path out of the crisis."

"Societies adjust to climatic shocks when they are internally coherent and social cooperation is high, and therefore they can find solutions, but when such climate shocks happen when the elites are divided, essentially different factions of elites start using the climate shocks as a weapon in internecine struggle. We see this in the United States where one party denies... there is quite a large fraction of climate deniers, and so it has become part of the political infighting, rather than trying to find a collective decision, collective action that would address this issue."

"GDP per capita shows no break in the 1970s. It slowed down... around the financial crisis of 2007–2008..."

"What about ? ...By elites I mean the small percentage of population that concentrates social power in their hands. ...[I]t's a neutral definition. It's neither good nor bad. They're simply power holders."

"What does the wealth pump do on the elite side..? Declining relative wages of workers set up this wealth pump that transfers wealth from workers to the economic elites... [A]s a result... a larger fraction of GDP goes to... the economic elites, which are both capital holders and top layers of administration of corporations (corporate officers). ...[T]his creates a favorable economic conjuncture for the economic elites and results in higher rates of upward social mobility. Elite numbers, as a result... grow and so does their consumption levels."

"So far so good. But the problem is, as in many dynamical systems, there are some delayed effects of such dynamics. ...Here are some numbers on the relative distribution of wealth in the American population. You have good data from 1983 to 2019... when we look at the percentage of households with [inflation adjusted in 1995 US dollars] net worth exceeding... Millionaires, roughly 10% of the population (7% now) increased from 3% to 7% but then growth in... classes such as decamillionaires was even more remarkable... more than fivefold, sixfold increase in the proportion of households that have 10 million dollars wealth, or more."

"Not all of these candidates are wealthy in their own right. Many of the newly wealthy... instead of running themselves... fund other individuals."

"[T]he problem is... if the wealth pump is allowed to run long enough, eventually... the growing elite numbers and their consumption levels will overshoot the productive base, which is what the workers are producing."

"Many of the wealth holders... aim to translate their economic power into political power... [A]nother measure is the cost of winning ...has been growing also, showing a greater demand for these positions and greater willingness to spend money..."

"...[A]s a result ...the new elites, let's call them the elite aspirants... their numbers... begin to be so large that there is not enough power positions in... politics or in economics [e.g., corporations]... That's fixed, and as the numbers of elite aspirants vying for these positions increase, then first... the result... is intraelite competition, and secondly... the numbers of frustrated elite aspirants who are denied access to these positions begins to explode."

"[E]ssentially the effect of increasing the number of wealth holders is translated into increased competition for political positions."

"So here you see... in the political domain... in just the decade from 2000-2010... the number of candidates who have spent half a million dollars or more of their own money... the millionaires... have doubled during this period."

"The second book of Manu is concerned with the correct dharma and conduct of the twice-born...The following verses then show what are the less authoritative, but still authoritative countries. In abstract this appears thus: (The district between the Sarasvati and Dhrsadvatl is the home of the Veda); the religious practices found in this country are those of the good. Next to this lies the country south of it (from Thanesar to Mathura),' which is the district of the seers of the Veda (brahmarsidepa), and from Brahmans of this district are to be learned the practices of men to-day. Taking a wider sweep, all the country from west to east between the place where the Sarasouti disappears in the desert and that where the Jumna disappears in the Ganges, and from north to south between the Himalayas and the Vindhya hills is the ' Middle Land.' The ' home of the Aryans' (Aryavarta), as it is called, is the country between these mountains and the two seas."

"The Punjab is thus omitted altogether from the list. The most western locality is the place where the Sarasouti disappears in the north-west, and the Arabian Sea, west of the southern line of the Vindhyas."

"Manu, however, has one verse that in connection with this subject is of interest, and deserves to be translated, though till now it never has been rendered into English. I refer to ii. 17, and translate in paraphrase: "The country divinely meted out by the rivers Sarasouti and Ghuggar, and lying between them, is where the (Rig, etc.) Veda arose, and hence is called brahmavarta or 'home of the Veda' in the tradition of the learned.""

"That, as Nandana observes at this point (sloka 22), each country is given in the order of its authority, the best being first, is clear not only from the last verse, but from the one that follows it. For here it is stated that the ' district fit for sacrifice ' is all the country forming the natural habitat of the black buck, and this differs from the 'country of barbarians' in that the latter is not a place fit for the twice-born to live in. 'Natural habitat ' is not to be taken with the Commentators as making a distinction between country and town, but between the plains and the hills. The Gangetic plain and the country about Kuruksetra, between Delhi and Umballa and south of the former locality, is still the 'natural habitat' of the black buck. This account in Manu concludes with the words: " thus have I briefly expounded to you the home (yoni) of dharma, and its origin (sanmbhavta).""

"viii joins the later Avesta to post-Rik literature and the other General Books."

"To point to the list of words common to the Avesta and viii [of the Rigveda] with its group, and say that here is proof positive that there is closer relationship with the Avesta, and that, therefore, viii after all is older than the books which have not preserved these words, some of which are of great significance, would be a first thought. But this explanation is barred out by the fact that most of these Avestan words preserved in viii, withal those of the most importance, are common words in the literature posterior to the Rik. Hence to make the above claim would be tantamount to saying that these words have held their own through the period to which viii (assuming it to be older than ii-vii) is assigned, have thereupon disappeared, and then come into vogue again after the interval to which the maker of this assumption would assign ii-vii. This, despite all deprecation of negative evidence, is not credible. Take, for instance, udara or uṣṭra or meṣa, the first is found only in viii., i., x.; the second in viii., i.; the last in viii., i., ix., x. Is it probable that words so common both early and late should have passed through an assumedly intermediate period (of ii.-vii.) without leaving a trace? Or, again: is a like assumption credible in the case of kṣīra, which appears in the Iranian khshīra; in RV. viii., i., ix., x.; disappears in the assumedly later group ii.-vii.; and reappears in the AV. and later literature as a common word? Evidently, the facts are not explained on the hypothesis that the Avesta and RV. viii. are older than RV. ii.-vii."

"viii with the General Books and post-Rik literature agrees with Avestan as against the early family books."

"We must, I think, suppose that the Avesta and RV. viii. are younger than RV. ii.-vii.; or else that the poets of viii. were geographically nearer to the Avestan people, and so took from them certain words, which may or may not have been old with their Iranian users, but were not received into the body of Vedic literature until a time posterior to the composition of ii.-vii."

"The vocabulary of the Kaṇva maṇḍala [8] often coincides with that of the Atri maṇḍala [5] when it shows no correspondence with that of other family books. This subject deserves special treatment."

"Priya compounds are a formation common in Smṛti [....] Epic [....] In AV, VS, and Brāhmaṇa [....] but known in RV only to books viii, i, ix, x."

"Neo-Platonism and Christian Gnosticism owe much to India. The Gnostic ideas in regard to a plurality of heavens and spiritual worlds go back directly to Hindu sources. Soul and light are one in the Sankhyan system, before they became so in Greece, and when they appear united in Greece it is by means of the thought which is borrowed from India. The famous three qualities of the Sankhyan reappear as the Gnostic 'three classes'.""

"the intermediate character of v, between viii and the other family books."

"Plato IS full of Sankhyan thought, worked out by him, but taken from Pythagoras. Before the sixth century B.C. all the religious- philosophical Idea of Pythagoras are current in India (L. Schroeder, Pythagoras). If there were but one or two of these cases, they might be set aside as accidental coincidences, but such coincidences are too numerous to be the result of change.""

"[there are a great many] evidences of special rapport between viii and v."

"if the first home of the Aryans can be determined at all by the conditions topographical and meteorological, described in their early hymns, then decidedly the Punjab was not that home. For here there are neither mountains nor monsoon storms to burst, yet storm and mountain belong to the very marrow of the Rigveda... If there is an area which fulfils these conditions, according to Hopkins, it is ―a district […] where monsoon storms and mountain scenery are found, that district, namely, which lies South of Umballa (or Ambālā). It is here, in my opinion, that the Rigveda, taken as a whole, was composed. In every particular, this locality fulfils the physical conditions under which the composition of the hymns was possible, and what is of paramount importance, is the first district east of the Indus that does so."

"[a homeland decidedly east of the Punjab] is supported even by native traditions. At a very early (Brahmanic) period the Northerners‘ are regarded as a suspicious sort of people, whose religious practices, far from being authoritative, are censured. No tradition associates the ancient literature with the Punjāb. In fact, save for one exception, even the legal manuals do not take cognizance of the Northwest. They have the stanza that defines Āryāvarta, and also the stanzas that extend the geographical boundary still further south; but they ignore the North."

"We are the product of Western civilization, so it’s necessary to understand yourself before you can understand anyone else."

"In my judgment, the best history is one that tells a story and combines it with analysis. The natural way for an historian to analyze things includes answering with a tale. The combination of telling an interesting story and answering questions along the way that an intelligent person is interested in hearing about--that's history at its peak, in my opinion."