End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
by Peter Turchin
View on GoodreadsPeter Turchin's argument from his "cliodynamics" project — a quantitative, predictive social science of historical cycles — that the United States is in a structurally predictable instability phase driven by elite overproduction and worker immiseration.
Core ideas
- Elite overproduction: when a society credentials more elite aspirants (lawyers, MBAs, PhDs) than its elite-job pipeline can absorb, the surplus becomes "counter-elites" with grievance, organizational skill, and time.
- Worker immiseration: a long-run divergence of productivity and median wages produces a population that's economically anxious and politically available — the matchstick the counter-elites can light.
- The model retroactively predicted American instability around 2020 from data Turchin published in 2010; he sees the early 2020s as midstream in a cycle that needs reform or violence to resolve.
Published2023
Pages368
ISBN9780593490501
ReadAug 2023
