Across the west, popular misery and ‘elite overproduction’ are fuelling crisis, argues data-driven historian Peter Turchin. So what can we do to turn things around?
to the distinguished journal Nature. He was responding to their “2020 visions” issue – an upbeat dawn-of-the-decade exercise that collected predictions of progress from across science and politics. Turchin assumed the role of Cassandra. “The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe,” he wrote, “which could undermine the sort of scientific progress you describe.” He pointed to waves of disruption that tend to recur every 50 years.
Now Turchin is having another go at explaining those cycles of disruption and what it might take to emerge unscathed His book’s title,, doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but it does provide a clear theory about how we got into this mess, and how to get out of it. There are some familiar concepts here – falling living standards leading to mass discontent – but others, “elite overproduction” in particular, are much less widely recognised, and genuinely eye-opening.
I point out that this will seem like hyperbole to lots of people. “I don’t say that it’s 100% certain,” he counters – and notably refuses to be drawn on whetherwill be re-elected in 2024. “The road out of crisis opens up a whole set of possibilities, from pretty mild instability all the way to collapse. At this point, pretty much anything is possible.”
One thing we know about historical exits from crisis is that at some point the different factions have to be reconciled
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