:-D

Thank you

Brilliant analysis and clarion call. Please take the time to read this piece.

Humor!

I'll need to change my name to "Madame Defarge"! 🧶 🧣

Unless you really like knitting.

Digression: I am an Agatha Christie-phile. A major plot-point in my absolute favorite of her novels is also an allusion to Mme Defarge!

Miss Marple's final novel appearance was 50 years ago.

However events play out in America, the current status quo is unsustainable, and we are rapidly approaching critical mass.

We need another FDR

It's not a long read, thanks very much!

Not true. There is a only small minority of Dems in Congress who think that, but this division is pushed on purpose to divide us.

It's literally the only job in America where insider trading is legal.

It's the only job in the country were you can legally take unlimited money from undisclosed sources.

It's the only job in country in which 80+ year old elected officials make decisions impacting hundreds of millions of people based almost entirely on who gives them the most money.

Progressives want to end that.

They will do anything to stop them.

Clearly, If progressives were the base and philosophy of the DNC the campaign and election landscape would reflect a resistant, oppositional force we have not seen. Where is all this overt, progressive backlash we need rather than the villainizing we see from within the party portraying progressives as too extreme, far-left and untenable?

I'm progressive and nobody has destroyed me.

I don't understand your comment.

Seems like Peter Turchin is our own Harry Seldon - at least in some respects.

“ If you are over sixty, you were born inside the third ending. It is not a theory. It is your childhood. “





we were so spoiled

✌🏻

than asimov's "mule"

We'll have trumps to worry about for another generation or two.

manufactufring ai without programming for 3 laws should be considered illegal.

The attack on the uber wealthy who move the world behind the scenes. The myth of the empty throne because no one king exists. Slavery theoretically outlawed but never prosecuted against the world's elite.

May the Will of D rise up and topple the Musk, Thiel, Koch, Bezos and the rest of the Epstein class and their protectors.

Do it now.

There's not much more that I can say, except choose door number 3.

No one-per-center (besides FDR) ever chose that ending, it was forced on them by Americans who spent their lives being exploited and used by the ultra-wealthy. If Europe had had a New Deal leader like FDR there probably never would have been a Hitler or World War II. But that's beside the point.

I've read a couple of Peter Turchin's books and they are quite inspiring. There's more to this than computer modelling, it's a synthesis of history, economics and cultural influences. It's worth the time to track down Turchin's books.

Ahhh, usually you can only get 100%.....

So not sure what those percentages really mean.

I’ll read it later. Thanks!

If one does read the history of our species a pattern quickly emerges.

Catastrophic event happens, the ppl alive that experienced the catastrophic event swear 'never again!'... and then 3-4 generations later it happens all over again.

IMO- Ppl seem to think that the advancement of our civilization through technology & standard of living also included an upgrade in human behavior... it did not.

We still suffer from the same set of emotions as Romans, Greeks and Sumerians suffered from.

I knew the night of December 12, 2000 when the GOP controlled SCOTUS stopped the legal Florida vote count and installed W against the will of the people that our country had been put on the path to dictatorship. Here we now are.

pushed through by almost the entire legislative branch, due to 9/11 fears....which actually ushered in a path to authoritarian rule, as evidenced by the entire ICE mess we have today.

The AI bros who are busy gathering every bit of data they can find about you, with plans to use it to manipulate you and/or sell or give to others who want to manipulate you, want you both distracted by and dependent on generative AI tools. That's the baited trap.

Steer clear of generative AI as much as possible. Even if you think it's just a tool you're using, it's dumbing you down, making you dependent, and influencing you much more than you realize. There have already been plenty of studies to confirm that.

…has been mentioned around these parts on several occasions; his book The Twilight of American Culture (2000) foresaw much of the decline that has become obvious in the last few years. Twilight is one of the works in Berman’s “America trilogy”, which I would recommend to all DUers interested in how we got here.

...The Great Leveler.

Subtitle:

Technology has made the world smaller and faster...and created more dependencies. It would be interesting to know how the model compensates for that. I would also say nuclear proliferation also has to be factored in.

Those in power blaming the less fortunates' struggles on another group of less fortunates.

When Turchin writes of too many educated elites not getting their fare share I think of the reason why the GOP doesn't want an expanded educated class who can think, be smart and practise critical thinking.

Divide and conquer has not caused any revolution due to misplaced blame, but this:

"Most of the time, it's the overproduced elites. They apply their thinking ability, smarts, and critical thinking skills to organizing the revolution. "

could.

Whole piece well worth reading. Thank you.

It's just too bad he didn't factor in the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Maximum Power Principle that act together to shape the structure and behaviour of large groups of organisms over hundreds of millions of years. Think of that as the final Hope Extinguisher for growth-driven societies.

Physics wins all arguments.
Estamos tan jodidos!

A little thing called the Civil War?

I am pretty sure that any model considering this would be awash in unconfirmed and probably anthropologically biased guesses

When building a model about how Moose move about their home range we made many wags, which for the uniformed means wild ass guesses

I am pretty sure that mathematical skill wouldn't and couldn't correct for any BAD assumption that went into the building of the computer code.

I suspect, but never looked at the model, that what it most likely does is produce projections built around common sensical guesses.

Analytical models have few variable, lack reality, but can be solved by applying calculus. I can't imagine this problem with a handful of variables which whould make the calculus tractable.

Numerical models are often plush in variables, for which there is little data to characterize mathematical relationships with other variables. I can imagine a group of modellers thinking they were including all the variables THEY felt were important.

Check out Turchin on Substack or Cliodynamica. I just read a long discussion of how you try to assess cause and effect from historical data using effective and noneffective models.

Caveat emptor on this pseudoscience nonsense.

Sorry, but Hari Seldon is still very much a fiction.

Is also a good read.

To be clear, these models do not "predict history" as some are trying to say above to refute them, they are taking reams of historical data and plotting out the cycles that appear with rather astonishing regularity.

IIRC from "Generations" we are at the fourth turning, that is when we baby boomers were born, we were the newest and youngest generation. Now, with the silent and greatest generations rapidly dying out, baby boomers are the oldest generation. What has stuck with me over the years is that this configuration of cohorts where an "idealist" generation like us baby boomers is the oldest generation, is the best configuration for progressive accomplishments.

If you read the histories of the 1920s and 30s, you can see the similarities and parallels to the present.

of what I (and no doubt, many others) have long felt was coming... one way or the other.

Instead of breaking up monopolies in the banking and investment system we bailed them out.

If there are no consequences for bad decisions and you don’t remove the people who did them then they’re just going to hang around and do it again.

Contrast what was done after the 2008 facial crisis (systemic bail outs) vs what was done after the S&L crash in the early 1980s (prosecution with jail time along with liquidation of bad financial institutions and loans).

IMHO another financial problem is brewing with AI. The $1M question is do we bail out the tech bros and folks who sold us this crappy bill of goods or do we send them to gulag where the belong?

and Soread

I GREATLY appreciate insight like this, and insights spelled out like this! Most informative and clarifying.

Read the whole thing, nodding throughout. (NODDING. NOT nodding OFF.).

Joe Biden



✌🏻

He was right then, he’s still right today.

This was all very obvious.