now
Too early for a Wake-Up Call? Think . . .It's never too late even after four long years of Donald Trump taking-over this exceptional stage of American politics with his own brand of Reality TV - con-man style. We've all gotten punked and played for fools; some for all of the time. That's where we are right now while all the votes are being counted, suspended in the interim by instability and chaos.
We have been there before twenty years ago when a decision by the Supreme Court stopped counting-the-votes in the state of Florida. It is not improbable that is theTrump tactic this time around - tricky it may be in the game-of-politics if the rules of gaming theory apply. However, we now have both Chaos Theory and Auction Theory to shine some light and open our eyes:
Can too many brainy people be a dangerous thing?
Some academics argue that unhappy elites lead to political instability
TENYEARS ago Peter Turchin, a scientist at the University of Connecticut, made a startling prediction in Nature. “The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe,” he asserted, pointing in part to the “overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees”. The subsequent surge in populism in Europe, the unexpected votes in 2016 for Brexit and then for President Donald Trump in America, and a wave of protests from the gilets jaunes to Black Lives Matter, has made Mr Turchin something of a celebrity in certain circles, and has piqued economists’ interest in the discipline of “cliodynamics”, which uses maths to model historical change. Mr Turchin’s emphasis on the “overproduction of elites” raises uncomfortable questions, but also offers useful policy lessons.
As far back as ancient Rome and imperial China, Mr Turchin shows, societies have veered from periods of political stability to instability, often at intervals of about 50 years. Consider America. Every pundit knows that Congress has become gridlocked, with Democrats and Republicans unwilling to compromise with each other. Fewer know that it was also highly polarised around 1900, before becoming more co-operative in the mid-20th century
What causes these lurches from calm to chaos? Mr Turchin views societies as large, complex systems that are subject to certain patterns, if not laws. That is an entirely different approach from much of academic history, with its preference for small-scale, microcosmic studies, argues Niall Ferguson of Stanford University. In a paper published this year Mr Turchin (with Andrey Korotayev of the Higher School of Economics in Russia) examines the prediction of instability he made in 2010. His forecast model contains many elements, but like Karl Marx Mr Turchin seems to believe that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Where Marx focused on the proletariat, though, Mr Turchin is more interested in the elite—and how its members struggle against each other. . ."
Predicting an earthquake
Mr Turchin’s theories predict that political tremors eventually subside. “Sooner or later most people begin to yearn for the return of stability and an end to fighting,” he argues. Already the data show that support for both left- and right-wing populist parties in Europe is waning. Polls suggest Mr Trump will soon be voted out of office. Another option for those looking to avoid instability is to reduce the number of aspiring elites. Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, has pressed for better vocational education, saying that “We need to recognise that a significant and growing minority of young people leave university and work in a non-graduate job.”
Yet enlightened elites can prevent the emergence of political instability in more effective ways. In the early 20th century American reformers raised inheritance taxes to prevent the emergence of a hereditary aristocracy, and engaged in massive trust-busting. Modernising urban-planning systems could lower housing costs, and deregulating labour markets would help create good jobs for “excess” elites. Mr Turchin’s analysis of the structural forces governing societies is an intriguing explanation of political unrest. But cliodynamics need not be destiny. ■
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "Graduates of the world, unite!"
_https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2020/10/24/can-too-many-brainy-people-be-a-dangerous-thing
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