Peter Turchin's work is imperative reading for Western leaders, based on hard science and real data, that gives them and each and every one of us better choices. As individuals, we can walk the talk by accumulating enough to sustain ourselves in modest comfort and then get completely out of debt and stop accumulating and putting our resources toward political change. The only criticism I'd have is that his research could include environmental limits more - for example, he predicts Iran could become a greater power due to outside pressures goading it toward greater cohesion and defence. But Iran is collapsing due to a lack of water supply, overpopulation and no planning.
Peter Turchin plays games (you should see his pseudo scientific charts!) to try make democratic breakdown be seen as a inevitable occurrence driven by some sort of irresistible forces, omitting the structural destruction of lower case “d” democratic governance structures.
When he says the “elites compete for a limited number of power positions,” he’s hiding the fact that those limits were artificially created through decades of centralization and exclusion. He speaks in euphemisms like “social discord” or “instability” while sidestepping the mass de-democratization of economic and policy governance. His description erases the role of policy choice and design, to lie and present current events as just natural cycle of history that originally occur and our inevitable, he does this to try and make people believe that its not possible for any one to have any agency at all, don’t fall for it.
Peter Turchin's work is imperative reading for Western leaders, based on hard science and real data, that gives them and each and every one of us better choices. As individuals, we can walk the talk by accumulating enough to sustain ourselves in modest comfort and then get completely out of debt and stop accumulating and putting our resources toward political change. The only criticism I'd have is that his research could include environmental limits more - for example, he predicts Iran could become a greater power due to outside pressures goading it toward greater cohesion and defence. But Iran is collapsing due to a lack of water supply, overpopulation and no planning.
Peter Turchin plays games (you should see his pseudo scientific charts!) to try make democratic breakdown be seen as a inevitable occurrence driven by some sort of irresistible forces, omitting the structural destruction of lower case “d” democratic governance structures.
When he says the “elites compete for a limited number of power positions,” he’s hiding the fact that those limits were artificially created through decades of centralization and exclusion. He speaks in euphemisms like “social discord” or “instability” while sidestepping the mass de-democratization of economic and policy governance. His description erases the role of policy choice and design, to lie and present current events as just natural cycle of history that originally occur and our inevitable, he does this to try and make people believe that its not possible for any one to have any agency at all, don’t fall for it.