Understanding Societal Collapse with Complexity Scientist Peter Turchin
What this covers
Why do societies enter periods of political turbulence, social conflict and institutional breakdown — and can we prevent history from repeating itself?
Peter Turchin, author of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, has analysed thousands of years of human history to identify the forces that drive societies towards crisis.
In this live conversation at The Conduit, Turchin explains cliodynamics: a scientific approach to history that studies recurring patterns across civilisations. He explores how declining living standards, growing inequality, elite overproduction and weakening state legitimacy can combine to create periods of political disintegration.
The discussion examines the “wealth pump” that transfers resources from working people towards elites, the destructive competition created when too many elite aspirants pursue too few positions of power, and the role of counter-elites in mobilising public grievance.
But political breakdown is not inevitable. Drawing on examples including Britain’s Chartist era, the US Progressive Era and New Deal, nineteenth-century Russia and the early Roman Republic, Turchin considers how societies have previously escaped crisis without catastrophic violence.
The conversation also explores AI and automation, universal basic income, democratic reform, ideological power, geopolitical conflict and what it would take to build a more equal and resilient society.
What would it take to turn off the wealth pump — and can today’s political institutions act before the crisis deepens?
#PeterTurchin #PoliticalInstability #EliteOverproduction #SocialBreakdown #Cliodynamics
0:00 Peter Turchin and the Science of History 01:23 What Is Cliodynamics? 04:03 Why Societies Enter Disintegrative Phases 06:58 Four Warning Signs of Political Crisis 07:43 The Wealth Pump and Declining Living Standards 18:20 How Elite Overproduction Creates Instability 26:51 Why States Lose Legitimacy and Fiscal Strength 28:23 What History Can — and Cannot — Predict 30:23 What Political Disintegration Looks Like 34:05 Can Modern Democracies Correct Themselves? 41:10 How Societies Have Escaped Crisis 46:47 AI, Automation and the Future of Work 51:28 Universal Basic Income and Unintended Consequences 53:11 How Britain Avoided Revolution 56:21 Ideological Power in the Social Media Age 58:44 Demographics, Geopolitics and a Path Forward
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Turchin argues that the United States has entered a disintegrative phase of societal collapse due to elite overproduction, wealth pumping away from workers, and state weakness, requiring urgent structural reforms (higher taxes on wealthy, worker power restoration) to avoid violent upheaval.
- Four warning signs—imiseration, elite overproduction, state weakness—are measurably present in the US and UK as of 2024
- Historical analysis of ~200 crisis cases shows 85–90% end in violence; only 10–15% resolve without bloodshed, requiring elites to voluntarily reform
- Current policy (Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, Starmer's green jobs) are insufficient; wealth pump remains active and elite competition continues to destabilize institutions
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Elite definition: a small proportion of the population who concentrate social power through four sources—coercive power (military/police), economic power, political/administrative power, and ideological power (soft but powerful).
“I use neutral sociological definition simply small proportion of the population who concentrate social power in their hands... the proverbial 1% in the United States. All right. So uh these uh elites concentrate four sources of power which is uh coercive, economic, political or administrative and ideological.”
Societies undergo roughly 100-year cycles alternating between integrative phases (characterized by internal peace, order, and rising general population well-being) and disintegrative phases (characterized by political fragmentation, civil conflict, and often violent upheaval).
“there is an alternation of integrative and disintegrative phases in societies lasting for roughly a century”
Britain has avoided internal revolutions for ~500 years by 'muddling through,' partly because it could export surplus labor and elite aspirants to its empire, and partly because elite leaders recognized danger and reformed institutions (repealing Corn Laws, allowing worker organization, raising wages faster than inflation for ~100 years post-1850).
“British Empire was somewhat lucky they could have they flattened the curve so to speak because they could export some of the surplus labor all right which um enabled them to uh to uh uh to amilarate the uh disbalance between labor supply and demand and they also uh exported a lot of um surplus elites who took positions in the empire or you know started businesses in the empire or whatever.”
The Progressive era and New Deal in the United States successfully turned off the wealth pump through sustained policy: raising taxes on the wealthy to 90% by 1960 (for million-dollar incomes), introducing and continuously raising minimum wage faster than inflation, and empowering workers to organize and bargain collectively.
“many of the initiatives were proposed and even tried during the progressive era and then set in stone more or less uh during the new deal. And why current uh efforts are inadequate is because it's nothing compared to what the new deal accomplished. The New Deal increased taxes on the wealthy in by 1960 the million people with million uh dollars in income paid 90% of that income in taxes. Can you imagine that? Right? They introduced the minimum wage and kept rising it faster than inflation and they gave workers power.”
Large-scale complex societies emerged as evolutionary solutions roughly 5,000 years ago (very recently in human evolutionary history), enabling delivery of high quality of life but representing a novel form of organization not optimized for the current environment of nuclear weapons and climate change.
“this wonderful uh large scale complex societies that are in principle capable of delivering high quality of life for all, how did they evolve in the first place? They're quite new. for 95% of our evolutionary history we lived in small humans homo sapiens lived in smallcale societies”
In the United States, the number of decamillionaires (people with inflation-adjusted wealth of $10 billion or more) increased tenfold over the 40-year period since the wealth pump was turned on in the 1970s, directly expanding the pool of elite aspirants seeking political and economic power.
“when the wealth pump got turned on during 1970s, if you look at the number of people who of wealthy people, super wealthy people like people who have 10 billion or more dollars in inflation adjusted terms. Over the 40 year period of time, the numbers of these deca millionaires increased tenfold. 10fold.”
The iron law of oligarchy states that people with power are tempted to translate their power into personal benefit (wealth, status), and this is a universal tendency, not dependent on individual malice or greed—it is structural.
“It's uh it's known actually there is a term for it the iron law of oligarchy. Uh people are tempted to translate their power into uh you know good uh things for themselves. All right.”
In the United States, worker productivity grew continuously over the past century while worker wages stagnated after the 1970s—the extra wealth produced by productivity gains was pumped toward elites, not workers.
“you may have seen this graph of how worker productivity goes like this over the past century when worker wages go like this until 1970s and go like this and even now are declining. So all of that extra wealth was pumped somewhere.”
US life expectancy declined beginning in 2017 and continued declining before COVID-19, contrary to the long-term trend of rising life expectancy, signaling real imiseration rather than merely stagnant wages.
“in 2017 suddenly the life expectancy of Americans uh not only stopped uh growing, it actually declined and it kept declining even uh before co”
Patriotic millionaires and some wealthy individuals (e.g., Nick Hanau) explicitly argue for higher taxes on themselves and warn of coming upheaval ('pitchforks'), showing that not all elites are purely selfish and that some recognize the danger of unchecked wealth concentration.
“There is uh Nick Hanau who has been writing these articles about the pitchforks are coming and things like that. So human um humans have uh different people have different motivations but as a group as a group they uh they act u in the interest u of their class”
Current US youth bulge is subsiding, which is a reason for cautious optimism because revolutions require revolutionary troops—young people willing to risk their lives—and declining youth numbers may reduce revolutionary potential.
“we had a um some movement of this age uh bulb uh during the 20 201 is subsiding. So, that's uh one of the um um you know reasons why situation may not get too dire because revolutions you have to revolutionary troops at least have to be young and willing to you know to um uh to risk their lives.”
Warfare has been an enormous empirical driver of progress and cooperation between societies historically, but it must be abolished in favor of nonviolent competition (market competition, institutional competition) because nuclear weapons make large-scale war catastrophic.
“even though uh uh empirically warfare is a has been a huge driver of uh progress. Um um I hope that u we can uh abolish it. We have to abolish it. This is one of the serious problems that we have not yet solved and we we can continue having competition between societies but taking you know nonviolent forms like firms competing in the marketplace that's a wonderful mechanism for uh weeding out the bad businesses and rewarding good businesses.”
Democracy is better than alternatives, but it is not automatic or guaranteed; democratic institutions and norms require active defense and cannot be passively assumed to protect themselves.
“I mean yes democracy um is uh much better than the alternatives but um you know I don't go to sleep uh every night uh peacefully because I'm sure that democracy automatically will take care of all these types of things you know well no”
The spread of revolutionary movements across geographies (e.g., Spring of Nations in 1848 spreading across Europe in 6 months) demonstrates the role of cultural transmission and ideological contagion in revolution, not just local structural conditions.
“the cultural and influences like uh the spring of nations in 1848. um it started in one state and it spread within like six months all of Europe apart from um British Empire was um up in the revolutionary smoke.”
Turchin's models of societal dynamics are better than previous alternatives at capturing important aspects of reality and have some predictive capacity, but they remain imperfect and require continued development and empirical testing.
“our models, um, are better than what, uh, we had before because they seem to be capturing important parts of the reality and they can be to a certain degree predictive, right? Giving the caveats that I said, but they are imperfect. So what we really need we need to uh invest more in uh in developing these uh types of science”
Youth bulge (surplus young population) is a critical but sometimes overlooked factor in disintegration; the Arab Spring was driven partly by youth bulge, and the US experienced a youth bulge in the late 1960s–early 1970s that produced political turbulence despite the absence of immiseration at that time.
“So age um dynamics of age structure is very important uh you may have heard the term the youth bulge. So um uh youth bulge was extremely important in u the Arab Spring for example. All right. Um and in the United States we had a youth big you uh youth bulge in um uh late 60s early 70s which resulted in a lot of um um you know uh political and social turbulence but there was no at that point there was no imiseration whatsoever. So all those college students you know like the weatherman underground they wanted to trigger the revolution but the workers were not interested things were doing well they were doing better than their parents.”
A questioner argues that since 1800, dramatic increases in living standards have occurred globally due to technological change, human capital investment, new approaches to education, and capital formation, and worries that eliminating elites could undermine the conditions for future technological progress and income growth.
“if you go back to 1800 until more or less the current time since we got out of the Malfusian before before 1800 there was very little increase globally in in uh in in people's living standards and since then they've grown dramatically because of technological change human capital investment people thinking differently about their children educating them and also of course uh formation of capital. And if you I I worry about what you're s [47:32] what you are saying because if you don't have those elites who are going to cause those things to set the structures for to enable that kind of technological growth you can't get growth in income.”
Audience question about British stability for 500 years: Britain has not had civil war since ~1650s; is this luck (empire, industrial revolution) or structural difference?
“The British have been famous for the last 500 years of muddling through and they haven't sort of had revolutions and so on since then. Is it something to do with the British or was they just get lucky with having an empire and then an industrial revolution?”
Deaths of despair—suicides, alcohol-related deaths, drug overdoses, and associated vehicle fatalities—began rising noticeably ~20 years ago (circa 2004) among the US population without college degrees, reflecting imiseration at the individual level.
“You may be familiar with the idea of uh death of despair. All right. So that's uh that hit to about 20 years ago it became uh noticeable and these are the deaths of despair are suicide the deaths from alcohol uh abuse uh drug abuse and also it is often followed by increased you know uh vehicle um uh fatalities”
External pressure (geopolitical conflict) tends to mobilize population support for regime leaders even when those leaders have broken social norms; winning wars further legitimizes regimes even if underlying structural conditions are poor.
“if um United States um and China don't uh start uh throwing a bombs what certainly is happening already the Chinese um are uh all um getting behind their leaders who who in fact have broken some uh social norms like she was supposed to be out [1:02:37] but he is still in um all right so but uh the external pressure is always mobilizing uh support for uh the regime and that's what uh is uh happening uh almost in any war. Now if a country loses war that can be trigger uh for um you know a breakout of revolutionary civil war or something like that but uh winning war uh uh legitimizes the regime further”
Elites can be constrained to act pro-socially through two mechanisms: violent overthrow of the elite class (revolution) or through elite fear of violent uprising, which motivates voluntary reform ('reforms from above').
“in the past uh that has been done either by a violent overthrow of one elite class and a new one coming it or by elites getting so frightened. In all these four cases that I gave you of successful outcomes, there was a very strong element of fear because the elites essentially, you know, Alexander II told uh the nobility in 1860 or so. Um we either have um uh reforms from above or revolution from below.”
Turchin's research on the evolution of large-scale complex societies finds that competition between groups (intergroup competition) promotes cooperation, whereas competition within groups is destructive of cooperation.
“the other half is I'm very interested how this wonderful uh large scale complex societies that are in principle capable of delivering high quality of life for all, how did they evolve in the first place? They're quite new. for 95% of our evolutionary history we lived in small humans homo sapiens lived in smallcale societies so I have another book called outer society where I talk about this and warfare turns out to be a very important um explanatory factor so the difference is that competition within groups is destructive of cooperation competition between groups is actually promotes uh cooperation”
Modern wealthy elites who work in knowledge sectors (Meta, Google, Apple, finance, law) benefit from structural features of their industries (where wealth flows toward capital and specialized labor) rather than from deliberate wage suppression, yet they still participate in and benefit from economic structures that skew distribution toward them.
“the workers at Meta and at Google uh and um at Apple or the workers in professional services like lawyers or accountants or investment bankers, those firms don't seek to emiserate their employees. They are located in a sector of the economy where the fruits flow towards them for structural reasons.”
If full employment is no longer the norm and unemployment or labor force participation decline significantly due to automation, new economic paradigms beyond wage growth and progressive taxation will be required to address imiseration and prevent disintegration.
“if we see periods of full employment no longer being the norm, if we see significant rises in absolute unemployment or uh rises in declines in labor market participation, people who choose to step out of the economy for reasons that we well understand, driven partly by the nature of the economy and driven partly by advances in technologies, then we're in a different economic paradigm that won't be responsive to those two suggestions.”
AI will automate approximately half of all legal work, and the US already overproduces lawyers at a 3:1 ratio (three lawyers graduated per available position). With AI displacement, this ratio will reach 6:1, creating an extreme game of musical chairs among educated elite aspirants.
“AI um is going to u automate about half of what lawyers do. So right now in United States we overproduce lawyers 3 to one. There are three times as many lawyers u produced uh graduated every year compared to the positions they have now. uh you have those positions it will be six to1.”
Business employers in the US are keenly aware of wages they pay workers and deliberately use immigration and labor market manipulation to suppress wages, as explicitly stated in industrial magazines a century ago and implicitly continued today through import of foreign workers and union-busting.
“employers are very keenly aware of the wages that they pay to their workers and one of their jobs according to the neocclassical economics is to increase the profits from which of course they also profit and therefore it is an obvious thing. In fact, um in um about a 100 years ago when um the the businessmen were much more frank about expressing their thoughts, you could read in industry magazines like the Iron Age or something like that. You know, one factory owner writes, 'I love to have a big crowd of Europe, Eastern Europeans in front of the gates of my factory because my workers walked by them and they see that if they demand more wages there, they kick them out and grab one of those people.'”
Democratic parties in the US and UK (Clinton-era Democrats, Blair's New Labour) shifted from being parties of working people (as they were during the New Deal) to being center-right parties aligned with wealthy interests, marking a crucial turning point in elite capture of both major parties.
“the Democrats were a party of working people in during the New Deal. I mean and then um especially yes Clinton moment was that turning point uh when um they became much more center.”
Many counter-elites do not consciously pursue power for selfish motives; they genuinely believe they are struggling against an unjust social order and seek to reconfigure society toward greater justice and equality, even as they compete for elite positions.
“Or also they could be genuinely trying to better better the conditions of the people. Aha. Um and so that would be that would be saying I I want a more egalitarian society and I want to reconfigure the society and more unjust. Um and I want to change it maybe overthrow this unjust social order and replace it with a much better one.”
Ideological power (control over information and narrative) is wielded primarily by bureaucratic elites in the US through ownership of traditional media, but is increasingly contested by new social media platforms and independent journalists (Tucker Carlson, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald) who reach larger audiences than corporate media.
“ideological power was thoroughly controlled by the uh bureaucrats essentially because they own the newspapers and things like that. So one helpful um I think sign is that as a result of new social media now you know so Tucker Carlson you may like him or dislike him but he was criticizing the ruling class and uh many of things he said would actually parallel what I say in my book all right about uh the ruling class and the workers were abandoned so he got fired but just yesterday uh he's now on the Twitter platform or something like that and of course others there's whole culture of um of new muck rating uh journalists like Matt Taib you know Glen Greenwood and so on uh who have been pushed out from corporate media but they are they have created their own platforms and they are more influential”
Trump is an exemplar of a 'billionaire counter-elite'—a wealthy outsider who mobilizes grievances of excluded populations to challenge incumbent elites and secure political position, exemplifying elite overproduction dynamics where frustrated wealthy aspirants use popular mobilization as a tool.
“Trump is the classic example of being precisely being the billionaire or supposed billionaire. We don't know. He's a billionaire counter elite who mobilizes the grievances of people who are left out the system in order to fight elite games or or preserve positions of power”
Cliodynamics is a science of history that studies the health of societies by examining deep historical roots of phenomena (reaching back 100–1000 years, not just decades), enabling understanding of societal trajectories and how to nudge them toward positive rather than negative outcomes.
“think about it. Our society spend a huge amount of money on medical research, right? Because we want to be in good health. Also, um, I used to be a biologist and we study ecology and we want to have our ecosystems to be healthy. But how come we spend so little money on studying the health of our societies?”
Historical crises tend to follow similar abstract patterns (imiseration, elite overproduction, state weakness) across very different societies and time periods (medieval to modern, US to China), suggesting universal structural principles underlying societal collapse.
“It's amazing in fact how closely different societies given of course all the differences u between now and uh you know in middle ages and between let's say China and um uh and US and so on but uh at the more abstract level in terms of those uh uh imiseration and illiterary production uh these are especially literal production is seems to be ubiquitous factor.”
Imiseration—declining living standards for the general population—is the first warning sign of disintegration, and operates through a 'wealth pump' mechanism where elites reorient the economy to direct an increasing share of output to themselves rather than workers.
“declining u uh living standards for the general population which the technical term is imiseration”
The wealth pump produces elite overproduction through two pipelines: the wealth route (inheriting or acquiring wealth, which enables translation into political office) and the credential route (obtaining degrees and credentials to access elite positions), both amplified by wealth concentration.
“There are two uh pipelines leading to elite uh positions. One of them is wealth. You either inherent wealth or you um acquire it. All right. The second one is u uh get holding the right degree credentials essentially. So both of these uh pipelines are operating the wealth pump.”
External crises (wars, inflation, food scarcity, cultural movements) serve as triggers for the outbreak of revolution or civil conflict in societies with structural instability, but without adequate structural conditions (imiseration, elite overproduction), external shocks alone do not trigger disintegration.
“typically they serve as uh triggers. So, a defeat uh an external war, right? So in Russia for example that was a trigger for 1905 revolution and also in 19 1917 revolution or sudden increase in of inflation and and the cause of food was a factor that played in the Arab spring”
Societies that decline to invest in understanding their own health (via cliodynamic science) repeat cycles of crisis and collapse instead of learning from history and implementing preventive measures.
“Our society spend a huge amount of money on medical research, right? Because we want to be in good health. Also, um, I used to be a biologist and we study ecology and we want to have our ecosystems to be healthy. But how come we spend so little money on studying the health of our societies?”
Society spends enormous resources on medical research to maintain biological health but invests negligibly in understanding and maintaining societal health despite the deep historical roots of many social problems requiring century-scale or longer analysis.
“Our society spend a huge amount of money on medical research, right? Because we want to be in good health. Also, um, I used to be a biologist and we study ecology and we want to have our ecosystems to be healthy. But how come we spend so little money on studying the health of our societies?”
The host argues that a pathway out of disintegration requires organizing, thinking clearly about solutions, mobilizing citizens into pressure groups, and engaging elites in dialogue over solutions—transforming positions of passivity into 'enlightened activism' that can drive behavioral change without requiring violent revolution.
“And so I think what it does is it [1:05:13] gives space for entrepreneurs, researchers, policy makers, and citizens movements to galvanize in this rather scary moment we're in where we have some ideas about a what a more just and a more sustainable world might look like. And there's some things where I think even in the conversation today, we're still feeling ourselves towards a proper and adequate response for what is almost certainly going to happen in the next decade or so. And so I think being able to organize, being able to think, being able to gather together people as as pressure groups and then to carve out solutions and have that division of labor between organization and fear and then solutions in engagement with elites, then I think offers a pathway out of this.”
Elite overproduction produces institutional degradation and breakdown of democratic norms: frustrated elites who fail to achieve positions become tempted to break rules of the game (e.g., fraud in elections, violence), which then triggers broader institutional collapse and intra-elite conflict.
“as the numbers of elites uh trying to get in um increases the number of frustrated elites who don't uh get the positions grows even faster and them and they uh some proportion of them is tempted to start breaking the rules of the game. So if you try to play this game of musical cheers, I I can bet you as soon as you you get to 20 or 30 people per 10 musical chairs, there will be one individual who will do something sneaky like stand by chair and while everybody's moving and then uh people will figure it out and so then now they will crowd chair a few start you know pushing each other then fist fights and so on. it will quickly escalate to chaos and that's essentially why we see the uh degradation of the social norms and institutions governing elections uh in the United States.”
Just-green-transition jobs policies will likely fail to create sufficient employment for displaced workers because renewable energy, solar panels, wind, batteries, and materials science will drive decarbonization through technological displacement rather than mass employment, and such jobs will not be geographically distributed to replace coal mining, transport, and retail work.
“the way that we're going to get to the just green transition is going to be driven by tech and by solar panels and by wind and by batteries and by molecular biology and by material science in ways that are not going to create jobs at the rate of displacement of AI at all. And even if they do, they're not going to be in the same place where you have coal miners or transport workers or retail workers who are going to be disrupt who are going to be disrupted.”
Turchin's model involves nearly 200 historical cases of societal crisis, providing a statistical database to analyze patterns and test which structural factors correlate with different outcomes.
“we have now nearly 200 uh cases of historical societies going into crisis and then emerging uh from it which allow which gives us a pretty good database to run some statistical analysis.”
Universal Basic Income (UBI) has uncertain effects on disintegration dynamics and cannot be evaluated without modeling its impact on the specific mechanisms (imiseration, elite overproduction, state weakness); modeling is required before firm policy recommendations can be made.
“there is a lot of argument some people and people have brought u potential negative effects So in because human societies are nonlinear systems right there could be unexpected uh consequences of even right uh you know uh motivated actions what's what we need um I cannot tell you whether it's a good thing or bad thing we need to uh to put that into models and run them and see uh what would be uh the effect on the 10 to 15% thing.”
The United States entered a disintegrative phase by January 6, 2021, when the President encouraged an insurrection against electoral results, though warning signs were abundant by 2010 and potentially visible in the 1990s.
“in the United States we have certainly entered the disintegrative period. All right. I think it became very abundantly clear on January 6 of 2021 if not before”
Crisis outcomes are highly variable and follow a distribution: most crises are severe (involving population decline, elite extermination, state collapse), but 10–15% of historical cases end without major bloodshed, suggesting that non-violent resolution is possible but statistically uncommon.
“we have collected nearly 200 cases of crisis and we see that the crisis outcomes extremely variable. For example, you can rank them the severity of crisis by whether population declines or even collapses, whether elites are exterminated or not. Is there fragment? Does the country fall apart and things like that? And essentially, it's like a distribution. So, in most cases, it's fairly dire. All right? Sometimes it's outright collapse. All right? Not not as common nowadays than as it was, let's say, a couple thousand years ago. But then there is this um left hand um uh end of the distribution 10 15% of crisis end up without major bloodshed”
End times (the title of Turchin's book) does not mean apocalyptic extinction but rather the end of one historical period and the beginning of another, requiring navigation through bifurcation points to ensure positive rather than catastrophic outcomes.
“Well, first of all, as usual, I did not come up with a title. It was my publisher. And so what I mean um and because I am by nature optimist although uh with age I have become more realistic. That's what I'm a realistic optimist. Um so um end times uh are also the times of new beginnings.”
US and UK political elites show no understanding of how their societies entered disintegration; Republicans blame Democrats and vice versa, but neither party has addressed stopping the wealth pump, which is the foundational requirement for crisis resolution.
“unfortunately I don't see any evidence that our political elites um in fact anywhere um uh certainly in in US or UK have an understanding of how we got into this situation because they they blame each other. The Republicans blame Democrats, Democrats play blame uh Republicans.”
Current efforts to address disintegration—including Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and green jobs programs—are necessary but insufficient because they do not address the fundamental wealth pump mechanism and do not restore worker power, minimum wage growth, or progressive taxation at the scale required.
“the biodnomics um has not done the most important thing you have to do um in order to get out of the crisis. You have to stop the wealth pump.”
Reagan and Gorbachev explored international cooperation, and Reagan suggested that if both superpowers faced a common external threat (e.g., Martian invasion), they would be able to cooperate more easily, illustrating the role of external pressure in driving internal cooperation.
“um our leaders unfortunately know this and so they've been using u this uh war you know uh type thing uh as uh a device to uh mobilize population behind uh them uh Roen Ronald Reagan um uh it's once he was talking with me Gorbachov and they were exploring how Russia in the Soviet Union could cooperate better better and Reagan suggested well if you get attacked by Martians you know then then I'm sure that you'll be able to cooperate better.”
There is no large-scale human society that has been successfully governed by anarchist principles, so elite constraint rather than elite elimination is the viable path.
“This is uh anarchist idea and it's uh I I know no large scale society that uh has been governed by an anarchist uh principles. It doesn't work.”
Outside elite reproduction comes soon after immiseration, providing additional evidence to populations that society is unjust, because people are 'going to sleep hungry'.
“because elit reproduction comes uh soon after uh imiseration um there is additional reasons to say that the society is uh horribly unjust because people are going uh you know people going to sleep hungry”
During integrative phases, well-being of the general population tends to increase, particularly at the beginning of integrative phases.
“during those uh periods there is little internal violence and also the uh well-being of especially during the beginning of the integrative phases the well-being of general population tends to increase”