End Times

Informationen zum Autor Peter Turchin is a project leader at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, a research associate at the University of Oxford, and an emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut. Trained as a theoretical biologist, he is now working in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call cliodynamics. Currently his main research effort is directed at coordinating CrisisDB , a massive historical database of societies sliding into crisisand then emerging from it. His books include Ultrasociety and Ages of Discord . Klappentext "Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States. Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why"-- Leseprobe Chapter 1 Elites, Elite Overproduction, and the Road to Crisis Who Are the Elites? Sources of Social Power Who are the elites? You, reader, are you "elite"? If I were a betting man, I'd predict that 99 percent of my readers would answer "no!" So let's define what I mean by "elites." In sociology, elites are not those who are somehow better than the rest. They are not necessarily those who are more hardworking, or more intelligent, or more talented. They are simply those who have more social power-the ability to influence other people. A more descriptive term for elites is "power holders." Because power is such an important part of the story to come, we will return to it in later chapters, where I discuss how sociologists define power and power holders in different societies, past and present. But for now, let's take a shortcut. In America, power is closely correlated with wealth. As a result, it is relatively straightforward to figure out who belongs to different ranks of power holders. (A more sophisticated answer to the question of who rules will have to wait until chapter 5.) If you are an American and your net worth is in the $1-$2 million range, for example, then you are roughly in the top 10 percent, which puts you in the lower ranks of American elites. Most people in this category are not particularly powerful in the sense of having a lot of other people to order around. But a few million dollars in wealth (and higher incomes that are typically associated with it) gives ten-percenters a lot of control-power-over their own lives. They can turn down jobs that are unpleasant, or don't pay enough, or are located in regions they don't care to move to. Or they can choose to retire from the rat race. They typically own houses and send their children to good colleges, and sudden medical emergencies will not wipe them out. They have certainly escaped "precarity." The correlation between wealth and real power starts to become tighter for those whose net worth is counted in tens or, better, hundreds of millions. People in this class include owners of businesses and CEOs of large corporations, who wield their power over hundreds or thousands of employees. Many powerful politicians are also in this range. (There are about fifty members of Congress whose net worth is greater than $10 million.) The correlation between wealth and political power is not perfect. Nine American presidents didn't even make it into the $1 million or above territory (in today's dollars), including Harry Truman, Woodrow Wilson, and Abr...

Klappentext

"From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the ground-breaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a brilliant big-picture explanation for America's civil strife and its possible endgames Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age by any measure, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for over a quarter century. The Wealth Pump is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States. Back in 2010, Nature magazine asked Turchin, along with other leading scientists, to provide a ten-year forecast. Based on his models, Turchin predicted that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order ca 2020. As the years passed, and his prediction proved accurate in more and more respects, attention around his work grew. The Wealth Pump distills his framework, its empirical justification, and its highly relevant findings, into an accessible, thought-provoking book that puts the American story into broad historical context. The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: when the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. Before the industrial era, the imbalance between labor and capital, signaled by rising economic inequality, was usually caused by excessive population growth. For the past 250 or so years, it has been laissez-faire government, technological innovation, globalization, and immigration that have tended to disrupt the balance. Whatever the cause, when income inequality surges, the common people suffer, and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites. This vicious cycle is the "wealth pump" -the mechanism that causes both the relative impoverishment of most people and the increasingly desperate competition among elites. And since the number of positions of real social power remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. History shows that when the elite is riven by too many claimants, when counter-elites are powerful enough to lead effective populist uprisings, then the death knell of the established order is nigh. In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. In historical terms, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. Time will tell whether Peter Turchin's warning is heeded"--

Zusammenfassung
**“Peter Turchin brings science to history. Some like it and some prefer their history plain. But everyone needs to pay attention to the well-informed, convincing and terrifying analysis in this book.” —Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America's civil strife and its possible endgames**

Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States. 

Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.

The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far …