Cliodynamics of End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration<\/strong><\/p>\n Social and political turbulence in the United States and Western Europe has been rising over the past decade. The research by Peter Turchin of Complexity Science Hub Vienna, which combines analysis of historical data with the tools of complexity science, has identified the deep structural forces that work to undermine societal stability and resilience to internal and external shocks.<\/p>\n During this Quantitative History Lecture, Peter Turchin will look beneath the surface of day-to-day contentious politics and social unrest, and focus on the negative social and economic trends that explain our current \u201cAge of Discord.\u201d One of the most important, but little appreciated, such hidden forces is a perverse \u201cwealth pump\u201d that, under certain conditions, begins to transfer wealth from the \u201c99 percent\u201d to \u201c1 percent.\u201d If allowed to run unchecked, the wealth pump results in both relative impoverishment of most people and increasingly desperate competition among elites. Since the number of positions of real social power remains more or less fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. In historical terms, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. <\/p>\n Date: December 12, 2024<\/p>\n Time: 12:30 – 14:00 Venue: KK301, K.K. Leung Building, HKU Main Campus<\/p>\n Language: English<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224644","event","type-event","status-publish","hentry","seminar-categories-quantitative-history-series-sc","event-natures-seminar-calendar","event-natures-sc-economics-seminar-seminar-calendar"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/224644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/event"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/224644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224664,"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event\/224644\/revisions\/224664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hkubs.hku.hk\/sc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n12:30 (Hong Kong\/Beijing\/Singapore)
\n23:30 (-1, New York)|20:30 (-1, Los Angeles)|04:30 (London)|13:30 (Tokyo)|15:30 (Sydney)<\/p>\n