End Times Why Societies Rise and Falls Peter Turchin Interview

Description

I talked to scientist historian Peter Turchin about his latest Book: End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration. Peter developed a new scientific discipline called cliodynamics which rely on historical data to analyze and predict the rise and falls of large complex societies. Other than climatic change and geopolitical pressures, he identified two most important factors that lead to rupture of violence and upheaval: elite overproduction and popular immiseration. Perverse wealth pump that takes from poor and give to rich create huge economic inequalities that leads to elite infighting over over limited seats of power where power aspirants may rally popular discontent due to increasing impoverishment. We talked about how his model apply to the US society during Civil War, Gilded Age and New Deal and how it predicts turbulent political culture in 2020s