A Russian flavoured theory

I read yesterday at reference 1 of a newish theory from an academic from the US, one Peter Turchin, born and raised in what was then the Soviet Union, before moving on to the US to complete his education and to clamber up into academic life there - where he invented something called cliodynamics. To be found at references 2 and 3.  A sample of his work is to be found at reference 4, from which the snap above is taken.

It seems that part of this theory is the tendency for established elites to reproduce too quickly, which means in the US that the universities are churning out far too many people with far too grand expectations, so creating an unhappy underclass of wannabee elitists, all too apt to turn to stirring up trouble as an alternative career path.

I have not got very far with this yet, but it does strike me that both China and India are producing graduates in very large numbers and I believe that India, at least, is having trouble absorbing them into what they would regard as decent careers, rather than sinking back into the gig economy from whence they perhaps came. Maybe all the (computer) hackers of central and eastern Europe are another example.

Clearly meat for several noisy bar-room discussions here. Maybe there will be more news on this front later.

PS: I have completely forgotten what put me onto this rather elderly piece in the Financial Times. So elderly that I had to resort to Bing to find it, the search button provided by the Financial Times not doing the business at all.

References

Reference 1: The real class war is within the rich: An academic blames ‘elite overproduction’ for political turmoil in the west - Janan Ganesh, Financial Times - 2020.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Turchin.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliodynamics.

Reference 3: Population Dynamics and Internal Warfare: A Reconsideration - Peter Turchin, Andrey V. Korotayev - 2006. Open access.