This is what I did in... Ages of Discord, I looked at more than 200 years of American history... an aggregated measure of well being... the blue curv… - Peter Turchin

I claim that ... gives us a very good theoretical framework within which we can look at many different seemingly disparate trends in the United States... they suddenly start making sense... [D]eaths of despair ...I would argue that the opioid crisis is one of the manifestations of the immiseration, and in fact... go to Case and Deaton original book (project) on deaths of despair. They make this argument very eloquently. They give a lot of data, much better than I can do, so [the] opioid crisis is part of the bundle of reasons why immiserated population (people)... results in large swaths of [the] population who are falling... and many of them take the way out by either drugs and overdosing, or... suicide, or... alcoholism... or simply become careless and die in accidents... So this is clearly, and thanks to Anne Case and Angus Deaton for their excellent work, because here we can really see... The book is excellent. They talk about social immiseration, broken families and many other things. It really is a very coherent understanding of these problems.

The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability... which could undermine... scientific progress...

SDT gives us understanding of the deep structural causes of socio-political instability and... tools for adopting... reforms and policy interventions that can reverse these drivers... It remains to be seen whether our society will be able to use these tools.