Shouldn't happen except in a dead economy where entrepreneurial behavior has been smothered. Even in poor countries, people generate their own employment. The idea that a job is something someone gives you is part of the problem. It comes from a top-down mentality.
But another part of the top-down mentality is the necessity of permission before you can engage in some kind of entrepreneurial activity. Its a self-reinforcing vicious circle.
You have a job because someone gives it to you. He gives you a job because someone gives him a contract. Entrepreneurs despair of getting permission to do what they do and eventually wander off to where the air is freer.
Of course, the more restrictive the economy is, the more certain that the living breathing part of the economy is off the books.
“Turchin’s approach — which he calls cliodynamics after Clio, the ancient Greek muse of history — is part of a groundswell of efforts to apply scientific methods to history by identifying and modelling the broad social forces that Turchin and his colleagues say shape all human societies”
Um. There’s already a name for this, jerk.
It’s “Psychohistory”.
Get with the program.
1870? Wasn’t there a wee peak around 1861-1865?
As the Left breaks down the self-discipline of Judeo-Christian religions, more and more laws are needed simply to keep people from devouring each other.
- Dennis Prager, Sept. 20, 2005 -
What the man has done is to develop a method for integrating biorhythm cycles into two new cycles with long periods.
I doubt it.
Would really like to see how they decide where to set the "start" of a society.
In time, the population grows, labour supply outstrips demand, elites form and the living standards of the poorest fall. At a certain point, the society becomes top-heavy with elites, who start fighting for power. Political instability ensues and leads to collapse, and the cycle begins again.
Somewhat of a restating of Malthus. It works in some societies, most notably I would suggest in the Mandate of Heaven cycle of Chinese dynasties of the last 3000 years. But that is in a society with little major technological change.
It seems pretty clear to me that the Industrial Revolution and succeeding technological change have drastically changed the story from what it was in previous millenia.
This approach in general reminds me of Toynbee, who saw similar cycles, though not calendar-based, in the life of civilizations, which he saw as essentially organisms. Tremendously impressed me at first, and I still see value in some aspects of his thought. But then I began to see how belief in his theories required a great deal of "scrunching" to get things to fit. I'm sure this theory is the same.
I attended a water quality board meeting concerning proposed regulation and engaged in a conversation with their attorney. The basic premise of regulation is to stop actions that result in substantial harm to public health and safety. The landowner should have the presumed right to do what he wants with his property until he harms someone else. However, an action that will substantially harm the general public can be “permitted” conditionally upon avoidance, minimization and mitigation of the harm to a less than harmful impact. This is the premise of regulation.
In the case of the current practice of mposing “conditional waivers” on activities that could harm impaired water quality, everyone is presumed to fall under the waiver. This allows the board to request verification, monitoring, plans with benchmarks and reporting to prove that you are still not harming water quality. (Presumed guilty until shown otherwise.) The attorney told me that their responsibility is to protect water quality and they have to show the environmentalists that they are doing their job.
This is also like suction dredging for gold mining. The law is written that the miner must show his activities are NOT deleterious to fish. Your liberty and freedom is gone. Gone is the presumption that you can do what you want with your property unless it harms others. Now the presumption is that it harms others and you have to show it doesn’t. Individual interest is only tolerated by the common good That is the communal, the collective destroying our individual liberty. It is the basis for European style socialism. That is oppression and one source of why some sort of pendulum swing will occur.
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