[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, s… - Peter Turchin

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...

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.

This prediction was based on a computational model that quantified in the USA such structural-demographic forces for instability as popular immiseration, intraelite competition, and state weakness prior to 2010.