End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration

by Peter Turchin

We start the engine in 1960 and first run it for the sixty years for which the history is fixed. From the MPF point of view, the most important trend during this time is the decline in the relative wage. The decline in the relative wage turns on the wealth pump, and elite numbers begin to increase in an accelerating manner. By 2020, both immiseration and elite overproduction, and thus the PSI, reach very high levels. The radicalization curve, tracking the number of radicals, which had been staying flat near zero, starts to grow after 2010 and literally explodes during the 2020s. So does political violence. At some point during the 2020s, the model predicts, instability becomes so high that it starts cutting down the elite numbers. Remember that MPF is a model, which means that it abstracts reality into mathematical equations.