Human cycles: History as science (new wave of violence predicted for US)

Researcher Peter Turchin sees two cycles driving political instability. The secular cycle, lasting two to three centuries, starts with a relatively egalitarian society (supply and demand for labour roughly balance). But over time, population grows, labour supply outstrips demand, elites form and the living standards of the poorest fall. Then the society becomes top-heavy with elites, who start fighting for power. Political instability ensues, leading to collapse, and the cycle begins again. The shorter fathers-and-sons cycle, spanning 50 years or two generations, interacts with the longer cycle. Turchin sees this cycle peaking around 1870 (ethnic strife, class resentment), 1920 (race riots, workers' strikes, and anti-Communist feeling), and 1970 (violent student demonstrations, political assassinations, riots and terrorism). Then....

Exactly correct.

Check out this line from the article:

Just as an epidemic can be averted by an effective vaccine, violence can be prevented if society is prepared to learn from history — if the US government creates more jobs for graduates, say, or acts decisively to reduce inequality.

Bwahahaha! The GOVERNMENT cannot mandate more jobs. If so, then Obama would be a hero with no unemployment by now. Reduces inequality? Defined as and by who? Oh, how noble, comrade! Raise your fist in a power salute!

he researchers found that two trends dominate the data on political instability. The first, which they call the secular cycle, extends over two to three centuries. It starts with a relatively egalitarian society, in which supply and demand for labour roughly balance out.

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 asked my 95 year old mother how they had survived the depression. They raised their own food. No food crops allowed in my subdivision; likewise no farm animals. They didn’t have property taxes so they could stay in the home they owned without any income. My property taxes have gone up several hundred percent since 1994. My grandfather took big jobs from constructing buildings to moving safes to second floors, to installing windows. Each of those jobs today requires permits, insurance, safety inspections; money, money, money before you can even attempt to bid a job. My grandfather hired employees as needed to help him. Today he’d have to pay unemployment insurance.

You could always go underground, stay off the radar so to speak. Even in the old Soviet Union, the black market was thriving with everything from blue jeans to rock and roll records.

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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