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A Visual Breakdown of America’s Stagnating Number of BirthsBirths stayed flat in 2022, with numbers down among younger women
Cita de: sudden and sharp en Junio 01, 2023, 14:05:47 pmCita de: CHOSEN en Junio 01, 2023, 13:24:27 pmSin embargo, sigue sin ser compatible:-Que la burbuja inmobiliaria española sea un fenómeno popular y generacional -que lo es-.y-Que la penitencia de los catalizadores en España (banca y fondos) se traslade a las clases populares, ensoberbecidas y con rentas garantizadas por ley, verbigracia "antes le meto fuego".Mientras que el mecanismo de cebado de la burbuja es de sobra conocido y aceptado, hasta ahora nadie (ni los ppcc) ha explicado el mecanismo de transmisión inverso.Y aquí me remito exclusivamente al caso de España.No sé si te entiendo bien, chosen, pero la penitencia de los que hayan "jugado" la tienen en que el "capital" está inmovilizado, nunca mejor dicho y sujeto a los impuestos que tenga el estado a bien poner e imponer...... y sólo los que puedan se irán escapando a medida que baja el precio... o se quede quieto, porque dl nivel de underwaterización es personal e intransferible. Efectivamente.Trías de Bes escribió esto con toda su buena fe, pero en lo de "evitar que vuelva a suceder" parece que no ha habido mucho éxito. A brocha gorda, la transmisión inversa es simplemente que no hay dinero y hay que romper el cerdito. Algo así ya pasó en la crisis, ya se decía el "antes de malvenderlo le meto fuego", y aún así el precio medio bajó un 40% desde máximos (oficialmente). Y tuvo que salir el "si no lo vendo lo alquilo" porque ya había hambre canina. La "hotelización del inquilinato" ya da para discusión aparte.No será tan distinto esta vez. A medida que los propietarios no consigan vender (ya pasa por las hipotecas encarecidas), y que se vea que el alquiler tampoco soluciona nada (quieren matar el alquiler estable, pésima idea que descubrirán cuando prueben el alquiler por habitaciones), al final tras la pertinente fase de la rabieta habrá que asumir la realidad.La cadena de transmisión va a ser el dinero, por lo tanto. O más bien la falta del mismo.
Cita de: CHOSEN en Junio 01, 2023, 13:24:27 pmSin embargo, sigue sin ser compatible:-Que la burbuja inmobiliaria española sea un fenómeno popular y generacional -que lo es-.y-Que la penitencia de los catalizadores en España (banca y fondos) se traslade a las clases populares, ensoberbecidas y con rentas garantizadas por ley, verbigracia "antes le meto fuego".Mientras que el mecanismo de cebado de la burbuja es de sobra conocido y aceptado, hasta ahora nadie (ni los ppcc) ha explicado el mecanismo de transmisión inverso.Y aquí me remito exclusivamente al caso de España.No sé si te entiendo bien, chosen, pero la penitencia de los que hayan "jugado" la tienen en que el "capital" está inmovilizado, nunca mejor dicho y sujeto a los impuestos que tenga el estado a bien poner e imponer...... y sólo los que puedan se irán escapando a medida que baja el precio... o se quede quieto, porque dl nivel de underwaterización es personal e intransferible.
Sin embargo, sigue sin ser compatible:-Que la burbuja inmobiliaria española sea un fenómeno popular y generacional -que lo es-.y-Que la penitencia de los catalizadores en España (banca y fondos) se traslade a las clases populares, ensoberbecidas y con rentas garantizadas por ley, verbigracia "antes le meto fuego".Mientras que el mecanismo de cebado de la burbuja es de sobra conocido y aceptado, hasta ahora nadie (ni los ppcc) ha explicado el mecanismo de transmisión inverso.Y aquí me remito exclusivamente al caso de España.
Podría haber puesto otro ejemplo, pero cuál elige? la casa, indirectamente te está diciendo que es lo más valioso que tiene la inmensa mayoría de la gente, que es cierto. No te pondrá el ejemplo de que lo cambio por un van Gogh.
Airbnb sues New York City over new short-term rental lawAirbnb has sued New York City over a new law which the vacation rental company alleged would create a “de facto ban” against short-term rentals in New York City. The law, which goes into effect next month, requires short-term rental hosts to register with the Mayor’s Office of Special Enforcement, but Airbnb said the legislation is in breach of two earlier settlements with the rental platform and alleges that the rental application review process will only register a “minuscule” number of hosts.The company said in a lawsuit filed on Thursday that New York City only approved nine Airbnb registrations for short-term rentals, making up less than 0.04 per cent of active Airbnb listings in the city. New York City is a major market for the rental platform, and the company has already cited a slowdown in bookings in its most recent quarter.
U.S. money supply contracts for fifth straight month, still 33% higher than before pandemicThe printing press is grinding to a halt.According to fresh data from the Federal Reserve, the nation’s money supply continues to contract.In April, the M2 money stock print tumbled nearly five percent, representing the fifth consecutive contraction, which is the first time since the Fed launched the series.Despite the substantial decline, the money in circulation is still 33 percent higher than before the coronavirus pandemic.
Es imposible ser más claro que Niño Becerra a corto plazo: "Tiene una muy mala solución"Para el economista hay tres momentos clave que han provocado esta situación. "En los últimos 10 años, los alquileres se han subido un 51,4% y las rentas un 3,4%". Con este rotundo dato ha iniciado Carles Francino su charla semanal con el economista Santiago Niño Becerra, que ha dicho que "la realidad pura y dura es así". El experto ha apuntado que en estos 10 años el poder adquisitivo, es decir el sueldo, ha ido variando y que en los últimos dos ha bajado mucho. Niño Becerra ha puesto sobre la mesa que hay "ausencia de vivienda pública en alquiler, demanda creciente, demanda turística, jóvenes que no pueden acceder a la propiedad" y, lejos de ser optimista ha afirmado que "esto tiene muy mala solución". Francino ha querido saber que cuánto puede aguantar el sistema capitalista la brecha entre los sueldos y la vivienda y Becerra ha respondido que "en cosas como esta" el capitalismo es "salvaje y muy claro": "El precio seguirá subiendo mientras haya alguien que pueda/esté dispuesto a pagarlo". "A no ser que haya una actuación pública, da igual que sea estatal o municipal, que diga 'no, vamos a...'", ha comentado Becerra antes de hacer un repaso por las nulas propuestas sobre vivienda que ha habido en la campaña electoral de autonómicas y municipales. Becerra ha dicho que hay tres momentos clave que han provocado que se dispare el precio de la vivienda: la Ley Boyer de 1985, el fin de las VPO y la vivienda turística. "Si no hay por detrás una voluntad pública de compensar estas leyes del mercado mal asunto", ha apostillado. El economista ha puesto de ejemplo lo que está pasando en Baleares, donde la vivienda ha subido un 97,9%. "Está fuera de órbita. Lo diré más claro, o hay una voluntad de actuar para frenar esto...", ha dicho Becerra. "Esto tiene una muy mala solución. O se va por el camino del medio con el sable. Es decir, se ponen en marcha medidas... evidentemente la inversión que haga falta. Medidas claramente rompedoras para frenar el precio de los alquileres incluso con impuestos a viviendas vacías, forzar la salida de viviendas al mercado. Es decir, un sistema casi soviético, o esto tiene muy mala solución".
Matrimonio busca casa para alquilar: «Tal y como están las cosas, no sé cómo no hay más okupas»(...)«Llevo veinte años viviendo en la misma casa, pero ahora por una serie de circunstancias la propietaria la quiere vender. No me ha puesto fecha para mudarme, pero tampoco me puedo eternizar allí», explica. Así que hace medio año comenzó su búsqueda de una nueva casa. «Yo no estoy acostumbrado a los pisos, por eso busco una casita en Vilagarcía o Catoira», señala. Ahora que su prole ha dejado el nido, «estamos solo mi mujer y yo, no necesitamos algo grande», explica. «Pero no hay nada».Hace seis meses, cuando tras veinte años volvió a sumergirse en el mercado del alquiler, se encontró con que las cosas habían cambiado mucho desde la última vez que había buscado una casa para arrendar. «Hablabas con los caseros, firmabas el contrato y listo. Nunca me pidieron fianza... Ahora te exigen muchas cosas», explica. Tantas, que él en su cartel ya especifica que tiene buenas referencias de sus antiguos caseros y que no necesita una vivienda amueblada: «Para evitar problemas y líos si hay una avería, los electrodomésticos siempre son nuestros, y también tenemos muebles propios», señala. (...) «Me pedían 390 euros por una casa con pocas habitaciones y muy pequeñas, mal habilitada, con la huerta atravesada por un camino de servicio por el que pasan todos los vecinos, sin sitio para aparcar a menos de 150 metros... La agente de la inmobiliaria ya me vio en la cara que no».(...)«No acabo de entender qué es lo que pasa. En Vilagarcía hay un montón de viviendas vacías. ¿Por qué no las ponen en el mercado?», pregunta. Esa realidad lo desespera. «¿La gente que posee esas viviendas y las prefiere tener vacías a alquilarlas, no se da cuenta de que a lo mejor mañana es alguien de su familia el que necesita encontrar un sitio para vivir en cualquier otra ciudad?».(...)«La verdad, si yo tuviese algo para alquilar, lo alquilaría. Pero está claro que ahora la gente no está interesada y el alquiler turístico en esta zona también se nota mucho», señala. A estas alturas, dice, se siente «legitimado para dar una patada en la puerta y meterme en la primera casa vacía que encuentre». No lo hará, explica, porque «tengo una familia, un trabajo y un patrimonio, aunque sea pequeño. Tengo que perder, pero si no lo tuviese... La verdad, tal y como están las cosas no sé cómo no hay más okupas».
Francia también pone tope a los alquileres: no podrán subir más del 3,5 % el año que vieneos diputados franceses aprobaron en la noche del miércoles al jueves una proposición de ley del partido del presidente, Emmanuel Macron, que prevé limitar por segundo año consecutivo la subida de los alquileres al 3,5 % para contener los efectos de la inflación.El texto, que se tramita en el Parlamento por un procedimiento acelerado, servirá para prolongar los efectos de la llamada ley del poder adquisitivo de agosto del 2022, cuya validez expira el próximo 1 de julio. Dos artículos de esa norma imponen un techo del 3,5 % a los incrementos anuales de las rentas de arrendamiento de viviendas. Ese tope es aún más bajo, del 2,5 %, en las regiones de ultramar y puede modularse con un 1,5 % suplementario en Córcega.El diputado Thomas Cazenave, ponente de la proposición de ley debatida ahora, que fue aprobada con 259 votos a favor y 93 en contra, había insistido en que sin esta limitación los alquileres de vivienda que se tenían que revalorizar en el primer trimestre hubieran subido un 6,26 %, teniendo en cuenta el índice que sirve de referencia.Si la proposición de ley termina su tramitación parlamentaria —ahora va a continuar su camino en el Senado— las revalorizaciones anuales de los alquileres no podrán superar el 3,5 % hasta el segundo semestre del 2024.La medida francesa es muy similar a la que se aplica en España, donde este año se ha limitado por ley la subida anual de los alquileres al 2 % (salvo que propietario e inquilino acuerden libremente una subida mayor). De acuerdo a la recién aprobada ley de vivienda, ese tope será del 3 % en el 2024. A partir del 2025, la norma prevé la implantación de un nuevo índice de referencia que se aplicará para revisar estos contratos de arrendamiento y que sustituirá al IPC. La intención es que este indicador excluya los elementos más volátiles que afectan a la inflación, para que el coste de la vivienda no se dispare en contextos como el actual.La inflación interanual en Francia se ralentizó en mayo, gracias a una contención de los precios de la energía, de la alimentación, de los productos manufacturados y de los servicios, y se quedó en el 5,1 %, ocho décimas menos que en abril.
Interesante la evolución histórica del modelo. El modelo nació en la década de 1980 conjuntamente con la caída del comunismo.
Cita de: copo en Junio 02, 2023, 11:13:54 amInteresante la evolución histórica del modelo. El modelo nació en la década de 1980 conjuntamente con la caída del comunismo.El modelo nació con la crisis del petróleo. Después de décadas de prosperidad nunca vista, hubo países que tuvieron que implantar la jornada de trabajo de tres días a la semana porque la energía era carísima y el dinero no daba para más.Jimmy Carter osó decir en voz alta que igual había que aprender a vivir con menos. Tatcher y Reagan, dos personajes ominosos para nuestra Historia, dijeron que tururú. Vendieron una prosperidad recuperada, cuando en realidad era autofagia. Y hacer ricos a pocos a costa de la pobreza de muchos, con la falsa esperanza de "si trabajas duro progresas".Con el invierno demográfico estallando, vivimos 40 años después el fin de las trampas al solitario. O al menos, el inicio del colapso.
https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/big-data-predicts-the-when-of-civil-war-and-revolution-411b2cfa3708CitarBig Data predicts the when of civil war and revolution. The superrich are always the why. End Times provides the proof.David WinebergThe Straight DopeIt is fashionable to talk of the 2020s as a time of upset, instability, turmoil, revolution and war, all without any factual basis, just gut feeling. What is really shocking is that science and math show that it is all true. In End Times, Peter Turchin describes how countries come to this point predictably, and how all of it can always be traced to two factors: elite overproduction, and the concomitant immiseration of the 99%. In the regular cycle, the time for overturning everything is now.This is quite possibly the most important book of the decade, and affects absolutely everyone. It explains precisely where we are and where we’re heading, based on thousands of years of the same cycles. Unfortunately for the USA, this knowledge comes too late.To make a long, detailed, involved and complex story short, as the rich grow their families, their children want power and money. They take it from the poor, in low wages, low taxes on capital, removal of rights, reductions in aid, and increases in incarceration and fines (the “wealth pump”). They achieve their goals through a direct line to power, bypassing normal channels. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer and more numerous, protests begin. They are chaotic, leaderless and without clear goals. They evolve into bloodletting, literal or physical, which ultimately greatly reduces the number of the elite. Basic wages go up as fewer workers survive and are available, and equality reaches a high point.And the cycle begins again.The Chinese have seen this cycle endlessly: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” But Turchin can say this definitively because of a giant database called CrisisDB. It goes back thousands of years, through all kinds of societies and nations. And everywhere he researches, it is the overproduction of elites that strains the system. And causes its demise.It has long been proclaimed that human society, being composed of individual humans, is far too complex for any kind of model to operate consistently and successfully. But the data say that in high level, general sweeps, patterns and waves occur regularly and predictably. The differences make no difference.With war, the generation of the war cries loudly — Never again! The next generation enjoys some level of peace, but by the third generation, all is forgotten. People are emboldened again, and ready for the “glory” of another war.So with politics. Equality reigns for a couple of decades, then distortions begin to appear. Larger numbers of people become fabulously rich, and all their circle want to have their say in power. There aren’t enough positions in government or influence for them, so they become frustrated and embittered. The demands of the rich flood the halls of government. They fund radical candidates, arrange for removals and assassinations, and in general, darken the outlook. Laws begin to dramatically favor the rich at everyone else’s cost.The 99% become outcasts (flyover country, deplorables, welfare queens, poor, homeless). They look back at their parents, who had decent jobs, decent pay and decent households, and wonder how and why all that went away.This is exactly what Donald Trump tapped into, even though he clearly had no desire to change any of it. His actions enriched the richest, and his plans were to further impoverish the poor, but his words were to Make America Great Again. That appeal rang truer than anything today’s 99% had ever heard, and they bought into it, hook, line and sinker. But Trump was never going to be the solution. He would only speed up the process to disaster.Wages had been going down since the 1970s. Unions were shoved out of action. Universities became laughably unaffordable. So did housing. Even life expectancy dropped. Child labor laws are being softened to help suppress minimum wages. This is exactly the configuration of pretty much every civil war and revolution: the rich want their power, and the rest want decent conditions. Something has to give. And it is usually the floor, not the ceiling.That the lot of the 99% has not and will not improve fits totally into Turchin’s research. Unless someone comes to their aid and reduces the glaring inequality, governments will fall, constitutions will be tossed, domestic terrorism will increase, and civil wars will break out. And elites will light the match. In this decade. The Chinese knew it. So did Tsars Alexander II and III. Yet we keep falling into the same trap.Turchin has been working at this a long time. His team has built a remarkable dataset. It extends to the point of revealing that:-When societies are in equilibrium, human height is measurably increased. Americans were the tallest in the world in the 1700s. And before a civil war, people don’t grow nearly as tall; they actually, measurably shrink. It is plain for all to see.-Life expectancy changes as the cycle approaches the chaos stage. He says American life expectancy has never fallen three years in a row since the Great Depression of 1933. But it has just done so. And Covid-19 is far from exceptional. Major epidemics “are often associated” with these periods.-“Nearly half of the millionaires who thrived during the Roaring Twenties were wiped out by the Great Depression and the following decades, when worker wages grew faster than GDP per capita.” It was the greatest leveling ever seen in the USA.-“In one-sixth of the (global) cases, elite groups were targeted for extermination. The probability of ruler assassination was 40 percent. Bad news for the elites. Even more bad news for everybody was that 75 percent of crises ended in revolutions or civil wars (or both), and in one-fifth of cases, recurrent civil wars dragged on for a century or longer. Sixty percent of exits led to the death of the state –it was conquered by another or simply disintegrated into fragments.”-The “CrisisDB confirms that rise-and-fall cycles in societies with polygamous elites are substantially shorter than such cycles in monogamous societies.” In English — nuclear families produce fewer children, delaying the inevitable competition for power.In other words, the data has a lot more to tell us than we even know to ask. This is a whole new way to look at the world.It happens the same way all over and throughout history. Turchin examines not just the US, as it approaches this low point right now, but also England at several points, France, Russia, the Roman Empire and China, which has the longest record of it.The commonalities occur at every stage. When the cycle is fresh and people are equal, they co-operate. The common good is an important value to them. But as the rich grow in numbers and in wealth, and pull away from the pack, “the sense of national cooperation with which states quickly rot from within” takes over, Turchin says. This is as precise a summation of the US today as I have seen. It is shockingly true. People begin to fear and hate institutions. They want to seal the borders to keep what little is left for themselves.Turchin points out that it is the ruling class that wants open borders. They mean more competition for jobs, so lower wages and more government aid programs they can manage for profit. He cites Bernie Sanders saying open borders is “a Koch idea” and nothing he supports. But the ruling class always gets its way — until the end. It has been decades since voters had any real say in government. Legislators bow to rich donors. Voters only count during elections, not in legislatures. A billionaire has purchased himself a Supreme Court justice. The rot has become glaringly visible.It is the ruling class that scares off equalizing legislation, by say, calling inheritance taxes a death tax, even though it only applies to them and not the 99%. They are also behind denying climate change, calling it a hoax, in order to deflect attention from the ever increasing rates of fossil fuel consumption. In this environment, “money is free speech” Turchin says. Let there be no doubt who is leading everyone down the path to self-destruction. For Turchin, the “wealth pump is one of the most destabilizing social mechanisms known to humanity.” And unfortunately, “it is too late to avert our current crisis.”Elite overproduction has taken many forms. In many cases, it was military. The rich sent their children to the armed forces, to serve as admirals and generals. In religious societies, they became cardinals and high priests. Under royalty, they became governors, given stipends and pensions for life. Today, they are CEOs and kingmakers, buying elections to get pliable officials who will increase their wealth. In China, Turchin says, for two thousand years it was the educated. They had to take difficult civil service exams to get into government. To fail the exam meant a peasant’s life. Today, the Communist Party of China still operates this same way. If the Chinese can’t get into the party and pass the tests, they are doomed to have zero power or respect.And in all these cases, when there are more candidates than positions (Musical Chairs, Turchin calls it), there will be unrest among the elite. And it is the elites who will undermine the system before the 99% get organized. In Turchin’s terms: “The most important driver is intraelite competition and conflict, which is a reliable predictor of the looming crisis.” Today’s clue is rich parents bribing school officials to get their (apparently unworthy) children into top universities.But even that is no guarantee of success, as newly minted lawyers find they begin with a quarter of a million in debt and few prospects to rise to the top in an overstuffed industry.The civil service figures in another way as well. Smaller societies are not subject to the same cycle, because they might not have an administration, “but once you have a million or more subjects, you either acquire a civil service or suffer from such inefficiencies that your polity sooner or later collapses. Or loses in competition with bureaucratic empires.” Overpopulation has essentially eliminated that marker, making it merely an interesting footnote.As I read, my own warped mind kept sliding way out of scope of this book, to ecology. Because just when we’re beginning to understand what needs to be done to save the human race and its ecosphere, civil wars and wartime governments will have no time, no inclination and no money to deal with trivia like climate change. Power itself will be at stake. The 2020s could be the final nail in more than one coffin.In an appendix, Turchin salutes Isaac Asimov, whose 1960s era Foundation trilogy centered around “psycho-history”, the science fiction notion that the whole galaxy operates on a clear cyclical pattern of governance and inevitability (Turchin calls the real thing “cliodynamics”). Would that Asimov were around today to reflect on that as actually true.End Times is a six star book, not because of the writing style, which is friendly but a little flabby, but because Turchin pulls together a vast jigsaw puzzle and changes the face of history with it. It is dramatic. Every page is a revelation. Dots are connected. Questions are answered. Relevance gets established where no real importance had been noted before. It is important because it determines, reveals and reinforces a universal truth: it is the lack of governance over the rich that causes all the cyclicality of society. Instability, turmoil and wars can be seen as failure to control the elites from their corrupting influence in society after society, era after era. That is a significant step in our understanding of history and ourselves.This is a whole new way to see how the human world works. And we should be embarrassed that we didn’t realize it a lot sooner. Because we’re about to pay the price. Again.David Wineberg(End Times, Peter Turchin, June 2023)
Big Data predicts the when of civil war and revolution. The superrich are always the why. End Times provides the proof.David WinebergThe Straight DopeIt is fashionable to talk of the 2020s as a time of upset, instability, turmoil, revolution and war, all without any factual basis, just gut feeling. What is really shocking is that science and math show that it is all true. In End Times, Peter Turchin describes how countries come to this point predictably, and how all of it can always be traced to two factors: elite overproduction, and the concomitant immiseration of the 99%. In the regular cycle, the time for overturning everything is now.This is quite possibly the most important book of the decade, and affects absolutely everyone. It explains precisely where we are and where we’re heading, based on thousands of years of the same cycles. Unfortunately for the USA, this knowledge comes too late.To make a long, detailed, involved and complex story short, as the rich grow their families, their children want power and money. They take it from the poor, in low wages, low taxes on capital, removal of rights, reductions in aid, and increases in incarceration and fines (the “wealth pump”). They achieve their goals through a direct line to power, bypassing normal channels. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer and more numerous, protests begin. They are chaotic, leaderless and without clear goals. They evolve into bloodletting, literal or physical, which ultimately greatly reduces the number of the elite. Basic wages go up as fewer workers survive and are available, and equality reaches a high point.And the cycle begins again.The Chinese have seen this cycle endlessly: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” But Turchin can say this definitively because of a giant database called CrisisDB. It goes back thousands of years, through all kinds of societies and nations. And everywhere he researches, it is the overproduction of elites that strains the system. And causes its demise.It has long been proclaimed that human society, being composed of individual humans, is far too complex for any kind of model to operate consistently and successfully. But the data say that in high level, general sweeps, patterns and waves occur regularly and predictably. The differences make no difference.With war, the generation of the war cries loudly — Never again! The next generation enjoys some level of peace, but by the third generation, all is forgotten. People are emboldened again, and ready for the “glory” of another war.So with politics. Equality reigns for a couple of decades, then distortions begin to appear. Larger numbers of people become fabulously rich, and all their circle want to have their say in power. There aren’t enough positions in government or influence for them, so they become frustrated and embittered. The demands of the rich flood the halls of government. They fund radical candidates, arrange for removals and assassinations, and in general, darken the outlook. Laws begin to dramatically favor the rich at everyone else’s cost.The 99% become outcasts (flyover country, deplorables, welfare queens, poor, homeless). They look back at their parents, who had decent jobs, decent pay and decent households, and wonder how and why all that went away.This is exactly what Donald Trump tapped into, even though he clearly had no desire to change any of it. His actions enriched the richest, and his plans were to further impoverish the poor, but his words were to Make America Great Again. That appeal rang truer than anything today’s 99% had ever heard, and they bought into it, hook, line and sinker. But Trump was never going to be the solution. He would only speed up the process to disaster.Wages had been going down since the 1970s. Unions were shoved out of action. Universities became laughably unaffordable. So did housing. Even life expectancy dropped. Child labor laws are being softened to help suppress minimum wages. This is exactly the configuration of pretty much every civil war and revolution: the rich want their power, and the rest want decent conditions. Something has to give. And it is usually the floor, not the ceiling.That the lot of the 99% has not and will not improve fits totally into Turchin’s research. Unless someone comes to their aid and reduces the glaring inequality, governments will fall, constitutions will be tossed, domestic terrorism will increase, and civil wars will break out. And elites will light the match. In this decade. The Chinese knew it. So did Tsars Alexander II and III. Yet we keep falling into the same trap.Turchin has been working at this a long time. His team has built a remarkable dataset. It extends to the point of revealing that:-When societies are in equilibrium, human height is measurably increased. Americans were the tallest in the world in the 1700s. And before a civil war, people don’t grow nearly as tall; they actually, measurably shrink. It is plain for all to see.-Life expectancy changes as the cycle approaches the chaos stage. He says American life expectancy has never fallen three years in a row since the Great Depression of 1933. But it has just done so. And Covid-19 is far from exceptional. Major epidemics “are often associated” with these periods.-“Nearly half of the millionaires who thrived during the Roaring Twenties were wiped out by the Great Depression and the following decades, when worker wages grew faster than GDP per capita.” It was the greatest leveling ever seen in the USA.-“In one-sixth of the (global) cases, elite groups were targeted for extermination. The probability of ruler assassination was 40 percent. Bad news for the elites. Even more bad news for everybody was that 75 percent of crises ended in revolutions or civil wars (or both), and in one-fifth of cases, recurrent civil wars dragged on for a century or longer. Sixty percent of exits led to the death of the state –it was conquered by another or simply disintegrated into fragments.”-The “CrisisDB confirms that rise-and-fall cycles in societies with polygamous elites are substantially shorter than such cycles in monogamous societies.” In English — nuclear families produce fewer children, delaying the inevitable competition for power.In other words, the data has a lot more to tell us than we even know to ask. This is a whole new way to look at the world.It happens the same way all over and throughout history. Turchin examines not just the US, as it approaches this low point right now, but also England at several points, France, Russia, the Roman Empire and China, which has the longest record of it.The commonalities occur at every stage. When the cycle is fresh and people are equal, they co-operate. The common good is an important value to them. But as the rich grow in numbers and in wealth, and pull away from the pack, “the sense of national cooperation with which states quickly rot from within” takes over, Turchin says. This is as precise a summation of the US today as I have seen. It is shockingly true. People begin to fear and hate institutions. They want to seal the borders to keep what little is left for themselves.Turchin points out that it is the ruling class that wants open borders. They mean more competition for jobs, so lower wages and more government aid programs they can manage for profit. He cites Bernie Sanders saying open borders is “a Koch idea” and nothing he supports. But the ruling class always gets its way — until the end. It has been decades since voters had any real say in government. Legislators bow to rich donors. Voters only count during elections, not in legislatures. A billionaire has purchased himself a Supreme Court justice. The rot has become glaringly visible.It is the ruling class that scares off equalizing legislation, by say, calling inheritance taxes a death tax, even though it only applies to them and not the 99%. They are also behind denying climate change, calling it a hoax, in order to deflect attention from the ever increasing rates of fossil fuel consumption. In this environment, “money is free speech” Turchin says. Let there be no doubt who is leading everyone down the path to self-destruction. For Turchin, the “wealth pump is one of the most destabilizing social mechanisms known to humanity.” And unfortunately, “it is too late to avert our current crisis.”Elite overproduction has taken many forms. In many cases, it was military. The rich sent their children to the armed forces, to serve as admirals and generals. In religious societies, they became cardinals and high priests. Under royalty, they became governors, given stipends and pensions for life. Today, they are CEOs and kingmakers, buying elections to get pliable officials who will increase their wealth. In China, Turchin says, for two thousand years it was the educated. They had to take difficult civil service exams to get into government. To fail the exam meant a peasant’s life. Today, the Communist Party of China still operates this same way. If the Chinese can’t get into the party and pass the tests, they are doomed to have zero power or respect.And in all these cases, when there are more candidates than positions (Musical Chairs, Turchin calls it), there will be unrest among the elite. And it is the elites who will undermine the system before the 99% get organized. In Turchin’s terms: “The most important driver is intraelite competition and conflict, which is a reliable predictor of the looming crisis.” Today’s clue is rich parents bribing school officials to get their (apparently unworthy) children into top universities.But even that is no guarantee of success, as newly minted lawyers find they begin with a quarter of a million in debt and few prospects to rise to the top in an overstuffed industry.The civil service figures in another way as well. Smaller societies are not subject to the same cycle, because they might not have an administration, “but once you have a million or more subjects, you either acquire a civil service or suffer from such inefficiencies that your polity sooner or later collapses. Or loses in competition with bureaucratic empires.” Overpopulation has essentially eliminated that marker, making it merely an interesting footnote.As I read, my own warped mind kept sliding way out of scope of this book, to ecology. Because just when we’re beginning to understand what needs to be done to save the human race and its ecosphere, civil wars and wartime governments will have no time, no inclination and no money to deal with trivia like climate change. Power itself will be at stake. The 2020s could be the final nail in more than one coffin.In an appendix, Turchin salutes Isaac Asimov, whose 1960s era Foundation trilogy centered around “psycho-history”, the science fiction notion that the whole galaxy operates on a clear cyclical pattern of governance and inevitability (Turchin calls the real thing “cliodynamics”). Would that Asimov were around today to reflect on that as actually true.End Times is a six star book, not because of the writing style, which is friendly but a little flabby, but because Turchin pulls together a vast jigsaw puzzle and changes the face of history with it. It is dramatic. Every page is a revelation. Dots are connected. Questions are answered. Relevance gets established where no real importance had been noted before. It is important because it determines, reveals and reinforces a universal truth: it is the lack of governance over the rich that causes all the cyclicality of society. Instability, turmoil and wars can be seen as failure to control the elites from their corrupting influence in society after society, era after era. That is a significant step in our understanding of history and ourselves.This is a whole new way to see how the human world works. And we should be embarrassed that we didn’t realize it a lot sooner. Because we’re about to pay the price. Again.David Wineberg(End Times, Peter Turchin, June 2023)
Por fin mis obligaciones me permiten volver al foro. No voy a comentar los recientes eventos pero estoy muy sorprendido. Lo único que diré al respecto es para asustadísimos. Sin estar de acuerdo con la mitad de las cosas que escribe, espero que su salud le permita seguir posteando por aquí muchos años más.Respecto al fin del modelo y las últimas intervenciones de Benzino, copo y algunos más antes, soy pesimista. No es que el modelo no funcione, es que se sabe que no funciona y se mantiene artificialmente vivo a una escala psicópata que raya el sadismo.Si se quisiera arreglar el modelo se haría. Occidente tiene la capacidad para volver a estar en la senda de la excelencia si quiere, pero en vez de eso seguimos intencionadamente empeorando nuestro sistema educativo, creando conflictos donde no los hay (no hablo de guerras, que también, hablo de ideologías de género, agendas verdes y otras barbaridades) y dinamitando cualquier sector en el que Europa es puntero (como la automoción)La última ha sido de John Kerry, aconsejando a Biden que hay que cortar la agricultura para cumplir con la agenda verde https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-climate-agriculture-idINL1N3771SC¿Qué estamos haciendo? No sólo estamos desmantelando industria con la excusa del CO2, también estamos cerrando granjas y ahora queremos acabar con los cultivos. Sin trabajo y sin comida (y sin vivienda). Todo por decisiones políticas que nadie ha votado. La guinda estos días la ha puesto Von der Leyen diciendo que la UE no puede permitir un alto el fuego en Ucrania (¿la guerra no era entre Ucrania y Rusia? cómo va cambiando el discurso poco a poco)Estados Unidos consume más del 20% de los recursos del mundo para una población de poco más del 4% (los datos los puse en este mismo foro unos meses más atrás) y ahora parecería que se ha propuesto acabar con nosotros (la UE).Veo el ortograma, pero me da la sensación de que algo se nos escapa. Me da la sensación de que hay otra foto mucho más grande que la supervivencia del sistema capitalista y no soy capaz de verla. Para salir de un agujero lo primero es dejar de cavar, y aquí (el mundo occidental) en vez de parar nos hemos traído una pala todavía más grande.