Quote:Cliodynamics is a new “transdisciplinary discipline” that treats history as just another science. Ten years ago I started applying its tools to the society I live in: the United States. What I discovered alarmed me.

My research showed that about 40 seemingly disparate (but, according to cliodynamics, related) social indicators experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of political turmoil. My model indicated that social instability and political violence would peak in the 2020s (see Political Instability May be a Contributor in the Coming Decade...



http://linkis.com/evonomics.com/yEWV1

(11-19-2016, 02:00 PM)Dan Wrote: http://linkis.com/evonomics.com/yEWV1

Quote:Cliodynamics is a new “transdisciplinary discipline” that treats history as just another science. Ten years ago I started applying its tools to the society I live in: the United States. What I discovered alarmed me.

My research showed that about 40 seemingly disparate (but, according to cliodynamics, related) social indicators experienced turning points during the 1970s. Historically, such developments have served as leading indicators of political turmoil. My model indicated that social instability and political violence would peak in the 2020s (see Political Instability May be a Contributor in the Coming Decade...



http://linkis.com/evonomics.com/yEWV1

(11-19-2016, 05:43 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-18-2016, 08:33 PM)disasterzone Wrote:

(11-18-2016, 12:42 PM)Mikebert Wrote: I don't understand this thread title. Most assume the 4T started in 2008, so we are 8 years in. The nominal length for turnings is 22 years and the last one lasted 24, so lets use 22. This forecasts the start of the 1T around 2030. Isn't a little early to be talking about the 1T?

The last 4T lasted 16 years and so could this one. This one might end early because Trump is a loose cannon willing to use nukes

According to the timeclock I use, the last 4T started a bit late, and ended early because Hitler shortened the war with his lousy strategy. However, given that contingency that you point out, it could end more quickly; in which case the "1T" will be one in which the living may very well envy the dead.

(11-20-2016, 06:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Bad times promote bad solutions like fascism, Marxism-Leninism, revivalist fundamentalism, and systemic racism. It should hardly surprise us that the parts of America in which economic distress is most severe have been the homes of sundry KKK movements.

Nobody wants to be a loser, but severe inequality makes far more people losers -- people struggling just to survive despite competence within a productive economy.

When I was a child I was told "Don't fear technology, for it will create more jobs than it takes." Anyone with the capacity to do trade school or college would have opportunities at jobs paying better than manually entering transactions onto a pegboard ledger or making repetitive calculations. The technology came, but the jobs disappeared.

To be sure we were all told, "to get a good job get a good education", which was basically "don't drop out of school". Unskilled workers, typically high-school dropouts, would be out in the cold. Technology would bring more opportunity and make life better for all but the dullest of dullards, just as in the Gilded Age. Tough luck dullards -- just get your lazy derrieres on welfare, and try to find some meaning in life.

But something got in the way -- the income from augmented production did not trickle down as pay for even the knowledge-based workers who were to prevail in the new, glorious age. Knowledge workers eventually competed for fewer jobs, and even at times the 'dumbest' of jobs, the ones that used to be relegated largely to dullards. Economic elites took all the net gain.

Instead of knowledge-based and manual (or low-skilled) workers joining in solidarity against the economic elites that have exploited everyone, the elites have turned the middle class and the working class against each other in economic competition in a drive to the bottom for wages and treatment. Donald trump is not the cause; he is the symptom.

(11-20-2016, 06:08 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: But something got in the way -- the income from augmented production did not trickle down as pay for even the knowledge-based workers who were to prevail in the new, glorious age. Knowledge workers eventually competed for fewer jobs, and even at times the 'dumbest' of jobs, the ones that used to be relegated largely to dullards. Economic elites took all the net gain.

Instead of knowledge-based and manual (or low-skilled) workers joining in solidarity against the economic elites that have exploited everyone, the elites have turned the middle class and the working class against each other in economic competition in a drive to the bottom for wages and treatment. Donald trump is not the cause; he is the symptom.

Warren Dew Wrote:As a knowledge worker, I'd say we did well until about the turn of the millenium, at which point the business became highly cyclical, with the booms spaced farther and farther apart and the busts lasting longer.

(09-10-2020, 04:14 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: Their approach is distinctly quantitative

(09-11-2020, 04:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-10-2020, 04:14 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: Their approach is distinctly quantitative

Any chance you could provide something referencing actual numbers, then?  I'm having a hard time seeing how upheaval in 1870 could be said to be quantitatively more than in 1860, and 1920 seems like a relatively quiet time in US history to me.

(11-12-2020, 01:30 PM)User3451 Wrote: It's interesting that these threads on Turchin have gone silent, given that he's been extremely accurate in his predictions.

I've seen some thought here and elsewhere that Trump is done, and it's mostly up from here. I think Turchin would disagree and say we are about to enter into the crisis

Given that the election was neck and neck, I tend to agree.

(11-12-2020, 02:32 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 01:30 PM)User3451 Wrote: It's interesting that these threads on Turchin have gone silent, given that he's been extremely accurate in his predictions.

I've seen some thought here and elsewhere that Trump is done, and it's mostly up from here. I think Turchin would disagree and say we are about to enter into the crisis

Given that the election was neck and neck, I tend to agree.

Turchin’ s assessment of the long-term effects of the pandemic is especially relevant right now, as the coronavirus ravages the United States:

The Long-Term Consequences of Coronavirus

http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/long-term-consequences-of-coronavirus/

I found his concluding paragraphs particularly insightful, if also discomfiting:

The shock of Coronavirus has the potential both to create social solidarity within a country, and to break the country apart. In my estimation, two Nordic countries, Norway and Denmark, have the best chance to follow the first route. Twenty years ago, I would have no doubts predicting such a response. But in the last decade there have been signs that the Nordic model may be fraying at the edges.

For the United States my forecast is rather gloomy. Our governing elites are selfish, fragmented, and mired in the internecine conflicts. So my expectation is that large swaths of American population would be allowed to lose ground. Government debt will still explode, with most of the money going to keep large companies and banks afloat. Inequality will rise, trust in government decline even more, social unrest and intra-elite conflict will increase. Basically, all negative structural-demographic trends will be accelerated.

(11-12-2020, 03:29 PM)sbarrera Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 02:32 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 01:30 PM)User3451 Wrote: It's interesting that these threads on Turchin have gone silent, given that he's been extremely accurate in his predictions.

I've seen some thought here and elsewhere that Trump is done, and it's mostly up from here. I think Turchin would disagree and say we are about to enter into the crisis

Given that the election was neck and neck, I tend to agree.

Turchin’ s assessment of the long-term effects of the pandemic is especially relevant right now, as the coronavirus ravages the United States:

The Long-Term Consequences of Coronavirus

http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/long-term-consequences-of-coronavirus/

I found his concluding paragraphs particularly insightful, if also discomfiting:

The shock of Coronavirus has the potential both to create social solidarity within a country, and to break the country apart. In my estimation, two Nordic countries, Norway and Denmark, have the best chance to follow the first route. Twenty years ago, I would have no doubts predicting such a response. But in the last decade there have been signs that the Nordic model may be fraying at the edges.

For the United States my forecast is rather gloomy. Our governing elites are selfish, fragmented, and mired in the internecine conflicts. So my expectation is that large swaths of American population would be allowed to lose ground. Government debt will still explode, with most of the money going to keep large companies and banks afloat. Inequality will rise, trust in government decline even more, social unrest and intra-elite conflict will increase. Basically, all negative structural-demographic trends will be accelerated.

I think he got it right in that last bit, unfortunately. Biden is trying to make a concerted national repsonse to Covid the primary agenda of his Presidency, but first he has to survive Trump's coup attempt. Fourth Turning, indeed.

(11-12-2020, 06:45 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 03:29 PM)sbarrera Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 02:32 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote:

(11-12-2020, 01:30 PM)User3451 Wrote: It's interesting that these threads on Turchin have gone silent, given that he's been extremely accurate in his predictions.

I've seen some thought here and elsewhere that Trump is done, and it's mostly up from here. I think Turchin would disagree and say we are about to enter into the crisis

Given that the election was neck and neck, I tend to agree.

Turchin’ s assessment of the long-term effects of the pandemic is especially relevant right now, as the coronavirus ravages the United States:

The Long-Term Consequences of Coronavirus

http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/long-term-consequences-of-coronavirus/

I found his concluding paragraphs particularly insightful, if also discomfiting:

The shock of Coronavirus has the potential both to create social solidarity within a country, and to break the country apart. In my estimation, two Nordic countries, Norway and Denmark, have the best chance to follow the first route. Twenty years ago, I would have no doubts predicting such a response. But in the last decade there have been signs that the Nordic model may be fraying at the edges.

For the United States my forecast is rather gloomy. Our governing elites are selfish, fragmented, and mired in the internecine conflicts. So my expectation is that large swaths of American population would be allowed to lose ground. Government debt will still explode, with most of the money going to keep large companies and banks afloat. Inequality will rise, trust in government decline even more, social unrest and intra-elite conflict will increase. Basically, all negative structural-demographic trends will be accelerated.

I think he got it right in that last bit, unfortunately. Biden is trying to make a concerted national response to Covid the primary agenda of his Presidency, but first he has to survive Trump's coup attempt. Fourth Turning, indeed.

Quote:And this article about Turchin just posted in The Atlantic December 2020 issue:

The Next Decade Could Be Even Worse

A historian believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies. He has bad news.

Here are some excerpted passages from the introduction in the article that may pique your interest.  Turchin’ s “star” is definitely rising in the universe of “mega historians.”

The year 2020 has been kind to Turchin, for many of the same reasons it has been hell for the rest of us. Cities on fire, elected leaders endorsing violence, homicides surging—­­to a normal American, these are apocalyptic signs. To Turchin, they indicate that his models, which incorporate thousands of years of data about human history, are working. (“Not all of human history,” he corrected me once. “Just the last 10,000 years.”) He has been warning for a decade that a few key social and political trends portend an “age of discord,” civil unrest and carnage worse than most Americans have experienced. In 2010, he predicted that the unrest would get serious around 2020, and that it wouldn’t let up until those social and political trends reversed. Havoc at the level of the late 1960s and early ’70s is the best-case scenario; all-out civil war is the worst.

Quote:The fundamental problems, he says, are a dark triad of social maladies: a bloated elite class, with too few elite jobs to go around; declining living standards among the general population; and a government that can’t cover its financial positions. His models, which track these factors in other societies across history, are too complicated to explain in a nontechnical publication. But they’ve succeeded in impressing writers for nontechnical publications, and have won him comparisons to other authors of “megahistories,” such as Jared Diamond and Yuval Noah Harari. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat had once found Turchin’s historical model­ing unpersuasive, but 2020 made him a believer: “At this point,” Douthat recently admitted on a podcast, “I feel like you have to pay a little more attention to him.”