The main focus of SDT... is on the structural pressures undermining social resilience. - Peter Turchin

The theory represents complex human societies as systems with three main compartments (the general population, the elites, and the state) interacting with each other and with socio-political instability via a web of nonlinear feedbacks.

[T]he problem is... if the wealth pump is allowed to run long enough, eventually... the growing elite numbers and their consumption levels will overshoot the productive base, which is what the workers are producing.

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