Peter Turchin Quotes

[T]here are important recurring patterns... throughout... human history over the past ten thousand years.

[N]one of the fundamental structural-demographic drivers have been reversed, so far. Thus, the American social system continues to be very vulnerable to additional "quakes".

Many triggering events... are ultimately caused by pent-up social pressures ...[i.e.,] the structural factors.

Using these trends as inputs, the model calculated and projected... the Political Stress Indicator, which in the past was strongly correlated with socio-political instability.

Making scientific predictions about the events that happened, but are not known to the authors of the theory, is a valid scientific approach in historical sciences, such as geology, astrophysics, evolutionary biology, and (history as science). It is sometimes referred to as "". ...[T]he primary way of testing theories in historical dynamics is retrodiction. But when mulitple successful tests using retrodiction (prediction about the past) are complemented with a few cases of prediction about the future, our degree of confidence in the theory is... enhanced.

[C]omplex human societies at base and at some abstract level, are organized according to the same general principles.

SDT can be... an explicit computational model capable of forecasting future... social unrest and political violence in specific social systems.

Both exogenous and endogenous. ...[H]uman societies have changed dramatically over the past couple of hundred years, and you have to take that into account. ...Many people talk about now, especially because of , the effect of technology, the automation, and of robotization, and that is certainly a force that reduces labor supply. But other things... played in the United States at the level of labor supply... first... the baby boom that created a large cohort of workers; and secondly the... massive entry of women into the labor force; and immigration. Immigration actually is much discussed but numerically it's... slightly less important than the... other demographic forces that we're talking about. ...What's exogenous, what's endogenous? It's really a matter of what our best model is, because you can endogenize things. But some things cannot be endogenized, so there are automation processes... this is a very long term process that has been happening over thousands of years... And so in my model that's clearly an exogenous mechanism. But what's the most important (to me) endogenous mechanism is the last thing that I included in the model, which is the attitudes... Think about it as institutions. ...Labor promoting institutions were installed in the United States as a result of the New Deal, and they worked very well until [the] late 70s, and then they... started to be dismantled... especially under the Reagan administration. And so I use the mininum wage as a proxy for the elite attitudes towards workers. It seems to work quite well, but we could use other proxies such as illegal anti-labor moves by firms. So that is an endogenous mechanism in theory because... essentially, ...when ...[a] crisis ...either destroys part of the elites, or frightens them so much that they install institutions that are more pro-labor, and that lasts until the collective memory of the crisis fades, and then you have... [a] recycling process... in my book I unpack these ideas.

Historical data indicate that periods of enhanced instability and internal warfare usually extend for many years, with the median length... 10–15 years range.

[D]isease outbreaks occur much more frequently during... crisis periods. Such epidemics historically have had a disproportionate effect on the less advantaged... and the Covid-19 pandemic was not an exception. ...[I]n terms of ... the pandemic... further worsened the well-being of large swaths of the American population... consequently, drove up the mass-mobilization potential. ...[G]overnmental dysfunction in dealing with the pandemic, coupled with intra-elite infighting, will likely further depress... trust in government institutions. Thus... the coronavirus has... further destabilize[d] the American .

... uses the methods of data science, treating the historical record... as Big Data. It employs mathematical models to trace the intricate web of interactions...

This article revisits the prediction, made in 2010, that the 2010–2020 decade would likely be a period of growing instability in the United States and Western Europe...

Many of the historical "Golden Ages" were... golden... only for the elites, whose high levels of consumption were based on low real wages and falling consumption levels of the great majority...

Many of the wealth holders... aim to translate their economic power into political power... [A]nother measure is the cost of winning ...has been growing also, showing a greater demand for these positions and greater willingness to spend money...

[S]ocieties have arrived at this crossroads before, and though... most of the time...the road has led to great loss of life and societal breakdown, sometimes it has led to a far happier resolution ...