Newscientist: An Equation Predicting Cycles Of Unrest

[mindwalker_i]

This is an article in NewScientist about the forces on society as labor pools grow, how they affect income inequality and how that starts unrest and leads societies to collapse.

ON THE surface it seems inexplicable. The government of the most powerful country on earth has shut down and is dangerously close to defaulting on its debt. Its people and economy are feeling the consequences, and a new global financial crisis might not be far behind. And all this because a minority faction of one house of Congress will not approve a budget unless a healthcare measure that has already been passed into law is suspended.

But for Peter Turchin, a mathematical ecologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the stand-off was predictable. He is one of a small group of people applying the mathematics of complex systems to political instability. They have been anticipating events just like this – and they say that if we don't find some way to respond to the warning signs and change course, things are bound to get a lot worse before they get better.

Turchin has found what he believes to be historical cycles, two to three centuries long, of political instability and breakdown affecting states and empires from Rome to Russia. In a book he is finishing, he argues that similar cycles are evident in US history, and that they are playing out to this day. He admits that his theory, built on a model that combines social and economic data, must be tested against real events – but unlike most historical theories, it can be. Meanwhile, he says, it "predicts the long-term conditions that led to this shutdown".

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029382.400-the-maths-that-saw-the-us-shutdown-coming.html

Well worth the read.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Can you add the link?

[mindwalker_i]

3. thank you, that was really stupid of me not to include it

[FarCenter]

2. Long-Term Population Cycles in Human Societies

by Peter Turchin

Abstract

Human population dynamics are usually conceptualized as either boundless growth
or growth to an equilibrium. The implicit assumption underlying these paradigms is
that any feedback processes regulating population density, if they exist, operate on
a fast-time-scale, and therefore we do not expect to observe population oscillations in
human population numbers. This review asks, are population processes in historical and
prehistorical human populations characterized by second-order feedback loops, that is,
regulation involving lags? If yes, then the implications for forecasting future population
change are obvious—what may appear as inexplicable, exogenously driven reverses
in population trends may actually be a result of feedbacks operating with substantial
time lags. This survey of a variety of historical and archeological data indicates that
slow oscillations in population numbers, with periods of roughly two to three centuries,
are observed in a number of world regions and historical periods. Next, a potential
explanation for this pattern, the demographic-structural theory, is discussed. Finally,
the implications of these results for global population forecasts is discussed.

http://cliodynamics.info/PDF/RevSEC.pdf

[FarCenter]

5. Which have been going on for some time

Regional population collapse followed initial agriculture booms in mid-Holocene Europe

Following its initial arrival in SE Europe 8,500 years ago agriculture spread throughout the continent, changing food production and consumption patterns and increasing population densities. Here we show that, in contrast to the steady population growth usually assumed, the introduction of agriculture into Europe was followed by a boom-and-bust pattern in the density of regional populations. We demonstrate that summed calibrated radiocarbon date distributions and simulation can be used to test the significance of these demographic booms and busts in the context of uncertainty in the radiocarbon date calibration curve and archaeological sampling. We report these results for Central and Northwest Europe between 8,000 and 4,000 cal. BP and investigate the relationship between these patterns and climate. However, we find no evidence to support a relationship. Our results thus suggest that the demographic patterns may have arisen from endogenous causes, although this remains speculative.

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131001/ncomms3486/full/ncomms3486.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. While you did not provide the link

this is old thinking in history. The school of thought led by Toynbee in the British Isles, called the Cycles of History. Then there is the Longe Duree. These are about 500 year cycles.

So those of us who know this have been predicting this as well, from the side of the soft sciences. It is not new, if you know what you are looking for. That said, and this is true for the US. a country that is proud not to know history, this is shocking and surprising.

[FarCenter]

6. The maths that saw the US shutdown coming

A set of 1590 instances of political violence in the US reveals peaceful periods around 1820 and 1950, with instability rising in between. Social data reflecting labour supply, inequality and elite overproduction match that basic fluctuation. Turchin thinks these changes explain the American civil war in the 1860s. The statistics also show that we are now in another phase of rising instability that began in the 1970s, just when, as his theory predicts, labour supply started outstripping demand.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029382.400-the-maths-that-saw-the-us-shutdown-coming.html

Note that 1820 and 1950 are just after the end of global wars, namely the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars and the World War I&II. The period of peace reflects exhaustion and a "homogenization" of society the follows these traumas. You can extend the series backwards to the Thirty Years War, the Wars of the Reformation, and the Black Death. The Black Death seems to be the initial impulse that set the European cycle in motion.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. And historians of the cycles school have noted the same things

it is in the record for god sakes.

A very much popular version of this is "the Fourth Turning."

My personal theory is that some of this has to do with periods of want and famine. And as the hard sciences start to look back at the record they will find that we have those periods coincide with ecological stresses The French Revolution, for example, is tied directly to agricultural failures.

With climate change we will just see more of this, not less, since we will see more periods of famine, first locally, then regionally, and finally globally. Hell, we might see population collapse due to ecological failure. The last time that happened was the black death, leading to the renaissance and a rise in salaries unprecedented until that time.

[FarCenter]

7. Toynbee

“History is just one damned thing after another.”

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. That was at the end of his life, yes

and your point? He did set the idea of cycles, predictable cycles, in history. Later taken on seriously by French historians leading to the Longee Duree. In the US this has led to the very popular piece of work called "The Fourth Turning"

[mindwalker_i]

10. It is old thinking

But now the societies (ours) can be modeled and unrest can be predicted with soem accuracy - the model predics the same times of unrest that actually happened from 1970 to now.

There are a lot of telltale signs that perhaps we could pay attention to and fix, before everything blows up. Oddly, the article points out a lot of things that should be caught early, and Democrats seem to be trying to do that. However, Republicans are fighting those remedies, insuring collapse.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Yeah, that is very true

and we are to the point that indeed we should, what is the phase I am looking for? Oh yes, learn from history.

But part of the problem we have is that we indeed live in a society that lives "outside it," and is exceptional. None of these two things are real. We are part of the fabric of history as much as any other society, and we are far from exceptional. But those two are part of the myth, and until the myth utterly fails.

What I find fascinating is that finally the hard sciences and the soft sciences are looking at essentially the same data, in a different way, and reaching the same conclusions.

[libdem4life]

12. The denial is another outcome of American Exceptionalism.