Academics From The United States

"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."

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

"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."

"How resilient are our societies to internal and external shocks?"

"[S]uch measures of socio-political instability as anti-government demonstrations and riots increased dramatically during the 2010–2020 decade in all of these countries."

"Can we model and forecast the dynamics of social resilience and its opposite, social breakdown?"

"Ortmans et al. Turchin P. 2010 conducted a similar structural-demographic study for the United Kingdom."

"Using these trends as inputs, the model calculated and projected... the Political Stress Indicator, which in the past was strongly correlated with socio-political instability."

"Here we use the Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive for the US, UK, and several major Western European countries to assess these structural-demographic predictions."

"[G]rowing socio-political instability results from multiple interacting factors: economic, political, and cultural."

"A group consisting entirely of self-regarding agents will never be able to cooperate. So cooperation is possible only if some agents are motivated by ‘extra-rational’ prosocial norms, including the norm of moralistic punishment."

"[W]e should not expand our system of higher education... An excess of young people with advanced degrees has been one of the chief causes of instability..."

"Let's look at ... wages adjusted for inflation. ...In the late 1970s there was a definite phase transition. Up to that point, for the previous two generations, the wages for both unskilled and manufacturing workers had been growing quite rapidly and almost linearly... [W]ages for manufacturing workers increased... fourfold... a quite remarkable achievement... [I]t was unprecedented in human history to see such a long-term sustained increase in general well-being. Then... the wages stagnated, or even declined. So what was the reason?"

"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."

"...[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."

"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."

"This article revisits the prediction, made in 2010, that the 2010–2020 decade would likely be a period of growing instability in the United States and Western Europe..."

"This prediction was based on a computational model that quantified in the USA such structural-demographic forces for instability as popular immiseration, intraelite competition, and state weakness prior to 2010."

"[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."

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

"(SDT) offers a... wholistic framework for investigating such... forces that... lead to revolutions, civil wars, and other major outbreaks of socio-political instability."

"SDT gives us understanding of the deep structural causes of socio-political instability and... tools for adopting... reforms and policy interventions that can reverse these drivers... It remains to be seen whether our society will be able to use these tools."

"[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."

"Historical data indicate that periods of enhanced instability and internal warfare usually extend for many years, with the median length... 10–15 years range."

"[T]here are other dimensions. The state fragility and international environment, especially for smaller countries, international environment plays quite a role, but I will focus on the first two."

"... was proposed by and further developed and tested by... investigators, including [S.] Nefedov, Turchin, [and] Korotayev et al."

"I'll use the example of the United States, which I have studied from inside out... over the past 20 years, and I will illustrate how these few forces... have laid out in real life... a particular example..."

"[N]one of the fundamental structural-demographic drivers have been reversed, so far. Thus, the American social system continues to be very vulnerable to additional "quakes"."

"SDT can be... an explicit computational model capable of forecasting future... social unrest and political violence in specific social systems."

"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."

"During the 1870s, Black political participation was the primary motivation for White supremacist violence. Black political participation accounted for 83 percent of the recorded mob violence of the period. The federal government allowed its southern adversaries back into the union through the violence, terror, and disenfranchisement of people of African descent. The U.S. government and national Republican Party proved unreliable allies as valiant men like Caldwell were assassinated, Black political officials were deposed, and the Black masses were forced into agrarian peonage. With the Hayes-Tilden , any pretense of federal intervention in Mississippi and the former Confederacy was dropped for decades. A war was waged in the South to place emancipated Blacks, in the words of Du Bois, "back towards slavery." Terrorist violence was unleashed to secure the White planter elite in power and to perpetuate a system based on White supremacy. The specter of violence remained as a means of intimidation and social control. In the decades following Reconstruction, lynching became common in the state. Between 1882 and 1940, 534 Black people were lynched in Mississippi—the highest total in the United States during that period. The federal government ignored terrorism waged against Black people: "Congress and the president took no action to prevent lynching, and the federal government did not prosecute the perpetrators, even when the event was publicized at least a day in advance." With White supremacist violence as a major vehicle used to intimidate and suppress, within decades Blacks were excluded from representation and participation in electoral politics and apartheid was institutionalized in civil society."

"Another Belzoni activist would be attacked by White supremacists months later. Belzoni leader, entrepreneur, and grocer Gus Courts was warned after the murder of Lee that he would be "next on the list to go." Courts was distinguished from his peers by organizing a contingent. of Humphreys County Blacks to pay their poll taxes and register to vote in 1953. After being harassed by the Humphreys County Citizens' Council, Courts appealed to the state government for protection. Instead of receiving protection, Courts was confronted in his store by a local Citizens' Council member who possessed a copy of his letter appealing for protection. After the November 1955 elections, Courts was shot in his store. Friends took the wounded Courts two counties away to the hospital in Mound Bayou, due to concerns about the care Lee received in the Belzoni hospital after his assault. Courts recovered from the attack in Mound Bayou. Following advice from Medgar Evers, Courts decided to leave the state. Escorted by an armed Evers, Courts fled the Delta to Jackson. After stints in Texas and California, Courts and his family would eventually move to Chicago. An FBI investigation of the Courts shooting ended with no arrests. In Chicago, Courts was clearly a political exile of Mississippi apartheid. During a 1968 interview, Courts reflected, I had to leave my $15,000 a year grocery business, my trucking business and my home and everything—my wife and I—thousands of us Mississippians had to run away. We had to flee in the night. We are American refugees from the terror in the South all because we wanted to vote."

"The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability... which could undermine... scientific progress..."

"Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent—and predictable—waves of political instability..."

"In the United States, we have stagnating or declining real wages, a growing gap between rich and poor, overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees, and exploding public debt. These... social indicators are... related... dynamically. They... experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of looming political instability. ...50-year instability spikes occurred around 1870, 1920 and 1970, so another could be due around 2020."

"The assassination of Caldwell is symbolic of the reign of terror that defeated Reconstruction, democracy, Black political participation, as well as human rights in Mississippi and the South in the mid-. Violence was central to the establishment of White domination, not only to seize power for White supremacists but also to instill fear and intimidation in the Black population and their allies. In a state with a Black majority, to secure White supremacy and to maintain Black labor, particularly rural workers, as a servile labor force, it was necessary to institutionalize fear and intimidation. Men like Caldwell represented hope for Black progress and resistance to White domination."

"We are also entering a dip in the so-called ... This could mean that future recessions will be severe."

"All these cycles look set to peak in the years around 2020."

"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."

"I began my career... as an ecologist... studying the population dynamics of beetles, butterflies, mice, and deer. ...I embraced the turn of the field to complexity science, which mixes computer modeling with Big Data analytics to answer such questions as... why many animal populations go through boom-and-bust cycles. By the late 1990s... I began to consider how the same... approach could be brought to the study of human societies. A quarter of a century later, my colleagues... and I have built out a flourishing field... (from Clio... the... Greek mythological muse of history, and dynamics, the science of change)..."

"[T]he second condition... is absolutely much more predictive of immediate troubles to come, and that's intraelite competition which results... when elite numbers increase relative to the general population. As a result... we have too many elite aspirants vying for a limited number of positions... causes... intraelite competition, eventually conflict, and that... in our analysis of about 100... cases of past societies sliding into crisis and then out... That turns out to be the most universal and most important force."

"The focus [is] on only these four structural components... [E]ach component has a number of attributes that change dynamically in response to... [the] other... variables."

"The theory represents complex human societies as systems with three main compartments (the general population, the elites, and the state) interacting with each other and with socio-political instability via a web of nonlinear feedbacks."

"SDT is a general theory that guides our understanding of political violence dynamics and social breakdown in all large-scale state-level societies."

"[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."

"was proposed 30 years ago. Although it was successively refined by other theorists... the theoretical core, and especially the emphasis on intra-elite competition and conflict as the most important driver of socio-political instability and state breakdown, remained constant. Over the past three decades, the theory was empirically tested by a growing number of researchers. Currently, there are detailed investigations of at least twenty crises... to test the predictions of the theory... [T]here are several dozen other less detailed examples. The... verdict is that.. predictions are well supported by data. ...[R]ival theories are not supported."

"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."