Understanding Societal Collapse with Complexity Scientist Peter Turchin 

Although I get what you're saying, I doubt he is unaware. I get the feeling he was given the directive from his boss to protect the elite that academia relies on for donations.

@@daffyf6829 Just seems like run if the mill Trump Derrangement Syndrome and Climate Cult stuff.

They are castrated and fearfull.

ah, irony. have you considered your part in the collapse?

I get the feeling that the whole audience were Aspiring Elites

lol

Well said

The most vanilla talk about societal collapse published these days. Impotence at its finest. They are castrated and fearfull. No one will bother to touch these...

@@blaeks Fear the person that has nothing left to lose, and an axe to grind, they will do any job they deem "necessary".

@@Solsys2007 true

Wrecked like screeeeeeeech BANG

He knows damned well that mass immigration benefits wealthy elites at the expense of the native population. He knows it and doesn't care because he's a rootless globalist.

41:15 Why would we not want elites wiped out and capital appropriation?

I know, if the solution to an occurring societal collapse is to double down on climate authoritarianism, the person is obviously missing something foundational (about structural demographic theory). It is utopian thinking on par with "if everyone converted to Christianity" or "if everyone gave up their possessions an labour for a true communist state". The way to test if an individual follows science or dogma is to ask them 'clean hands' questions (from Atran's "In Gods We Trust"): if Trump policies le to a decrease in the wealth pump as Turchin said at one point, and if that also shut off the immigration pump which may (or may not) lead to real wage growth for commoners due to labour shortage, would you support such a thing or not. The answer to that (on both sides) is why this societal collapse will not stop and hasn't yet hit bottom

Same feeling here

Sums up today’s UK in general (especially southern England)

The French always protest. It’s just what they do and what they’ve always done. Same shit, different day

​@teddybearroosevelt1847 These recent riots were not "The French." Pull your head out of the sand.

That’s multiculturalism

Except that the Devil is a hermaphrodite.

An evolutionary process that seems a future option for us if the fertility researchers are correct. Parthenogenesis!

Good saying. Who is the devil in this argument and why is he going to hell?

Sounds fine to me!

@@gilianrampart8514 I had to crank my speakers to hear it, I think the microphone he was holding is sub par.

I agree, I cant hold thos to my ear for an hour. I can see how their voices fade as soon as they move their hands slightly, so I think the mucs are inferior but wish they'd increased the volume. Its especially necessary with a guest with a heavy accent and talks fast intermittently and mumbles.

The dominance of materially based arguments got us into the global ecological crisis that might well wipe humanity out in the long run. So value based arguments are urgently required. In a closed system, which our planet is, immiseration of the poor is only preventable by „immiseration“ of the rich.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nvAbKE8-jYA.html

Biases or poor questioning.

Agreed

Awkward interviewer. I could feel Turchin's reactions in my body. He did a great job off trying to transmit the information he wanted to though.

The interviewer ironically buys into the corrupt veneer of nonsense that current elites use to veil the wealth pumps running hotter than ever before. It's like he's presumed the Democrats in the US or Lib-Dems/Labour in the UK are doing their best to get us out of the poly-crisis, gosh darn-it, but greedy MAGA Republicans are whipping up a white-lash.. it's like, no, these elites in the Dems especially ramping up since the Clinton admin and for longer in the UK have been breaking down the social contract with social engineering and unsustainable spending, counterproductive policy, undermining education and social capital, etc. They have much more to do with the breakdown than the populist right movements. So do the business and Neoconservative elites that captured the Republican party a long whilr ago. George Bush Senior was the director of the CIA in the 70s and his son kicked off the most recent run of US wealth pump Imperialism that Obama and Biden extended. People have to escape blue team red team manipulation. It's the Uniparty.

Right on, like the problems didn't start with fundamental changes of law that allowed those with a different personality to enter our politic. This guy is establishment.

Oligarchs are never mean well but it seen to be an inevitable when society develop.

It’s a flawed experiment, influenced by the person conducting said study. Has been tried again with different results everyone was rather helpful and nice to one another.

Except that in the Stanford Prison Experiment they excluded psychopaths and sociopaths. The elite select for those traits.

Absolutely

Most of the elites that control universities , media , banks, and libral Tribe people believe the same marxis ideas or ideals this ignorant person spaw...

You mean mainstream. Academics and their interviews and lectures are usually regarded as elites anyway, of which he's been doing a lot lately promoting his book. I'd ditch the ideologically loaded elite word, it's been overused to the point of being meaningless. Anyone with job security is an elite, but too often thats loaded up to mean a faceless enemy in control of everything. A lot of figures and alternative left media are referencing and quoting Turchin, that's how I found him. mainstream news media also doesn't usually cover theory as need though, it covers events mostly. So I'm not sure why you're even expecting them to do that, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. Allegedly Turchin predicted Jan 6th though, not sure if that's explicitly true yet. Not sure if CSPAN books is still around or whatever, but maybe he'll start popping up and embraced by the elites, as you would put it. Anyway, you're expectations are too high, and your terminology loaded. The media you are talking about doesn't generally cover things like this because it's not a news event. Maybe if the book is successful he'll be featured for short interviews and clips, like the occassional academic that becomes mainstream along with current events. Or maybe it's all a big conspiracy to hide the truth from us because elites be eliting. Most people would get lost and/or resent what Turchin is presenting anyway, the masses aren't ready to self reflect or take self responsibility. It's not the illuminati we have to worry about, it's the illiterati that are so easily swayed by the winds of capital.

"Elite" media is all just propaganda.

You're so smart.

problem is affluence, not elitism.. top 25% shittin on the bottom 75%, and the 75% dont realize that 9ettin9 on the top 25%s level i unsustainable... o well

read my book “Social Pandemic” - A Terminally ill Modern Society

Precious metal currency was an improvement to granary based currency because gold doesn't rot or get consumed. Paper money representing precious metals was an improvement to precious metal coins because it can't be split or shaved or otherwise reduced. Fiat currency is an improvement on precious metal based currency because it is way more efficient and less costly than storing, securing, maintaining and transporting precious metals.

​@@daffyf6829Fiat money cannot be split or shaved, it can be created out of thin air. Are you taking a piss?

@daffyf6829 Simply isn't enough physical PMs to back world money and grow like the world did and use it for industry also.

​@@daffyf6829Currency without backing is no improvement. If currencies can be created out of thin air they will be, and have been. Have you seen the balance sheets?

@@gcanaday1 fiat currency is backed by the nation's productivity, which is definitely something. It's basically a standardized bartering system. More importantly, it scales effortlessly with population growth and infrastructure investment and is resistant to outside influence (see Mansa Musa's effect on gold prices during his pilgrimage. See also the inflation of the California gold rush). Lastly, it's easy to maintain and control. Some people see this as a bad thing, and I agree with the concern to an extent. It doesn't take much irresponsibility from a Nation's banking system to throw a wrench into the whole thing (see Zimbabwe). To me, the benefits far outweigh the risks though.

Exactly : CIA sponsored the Neo Marxists.

Exactly, and no one explains that better than James Lindsay

Exactly, but the whole "woke" machine has a second purpose. It also discredits the "Left", in that they have labeled it leftist and people aren't smart enough anymore to examine that.

Aggressive support for LGBTQ? We were treated like felon criminals under the law even in "liberal" Massacusetts, in my lifetime. The ones most bringing about societal and global collapse are the gay-hating, Christian-embracing authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, who constantly threatens nuclear war, disrupts global grain supplies, kills hundreds of thousands, creates orphans, Same for Trump, who calls global warming a "hoax", while unprecedented climate disasters are occurring around the globe, and called covid a "hoax" before it killed over a million Amercans. You can try to scapegoat gays, just like Christian professional bigots have tried to blame gays for hurricanes, earthquakes and 9/11. But your collapse is mostly due to your own choices, Your collapse, in the eyes of a gay man, is fully your just deserts. I no longer dream of real justice, or to change you, or to try to make friends with people like you, All that is left is a desire to watch your bigoted ilk fall into the mass graves that you've been digging for yourselves.

That seems to make sense so I have to ask why they haven't been indexed to inflation (and things like COLAs have been removed). The obvious answer for me is that to index these things to inflation means less profit is there to extract with the "wealth pump"

@@dinnerwithfranklin2451 I have to say, I think you're right.

It is a rule of relativity. As intellect increases sound quality decreases.

I suggest taking a mental laxative. 😏

@@paulheydarian1281 Is that what you used to shit your brain out? 😁

It is telling that these ideas are new to you. The question you really need to ask is who owns our political infrastructure and how do we implement democracy more democratically?

6:16 What are you doing trying to rewrite history? Get your facts straight you lying $#@%

Not only are they not new, they are dilluted to appeal to what seems to be a lefty audience. Demographics and other important factors left out.

“The glorification of greed” , I’d say was the start…

Yes, Reagan and Friedman are the ones responsible for human beings being greedy. There was no sign of this greed until they arrived on the scene. 🙄

Greed is in every persons heart, I know it is in mine! When is it enough?

@@thewrightoknow Couldn't disagree more, greed is produced thru ideology. We could easily set up a society whereby greed was not a dominant attribute at all.

@@gordonpepper1400 I think the heart of man throughout the history of mankind is self evident that selfishness is in every person, even those who think not.

You mean giving rich people more money?

You mean more taxes?

Unfortunately that seems to be true. The only time in U.S. history, and one of the few times in world history such massive wealth inequality has been reversed without mass violence was the Progressive Era after the Gilded Age.

If you're the 1%, then yes.

Government is the creator of it own currency. Government debt is sovereign debt and can be spent directly into circulation. Demand for government money debt, is created by it must be used to pay your taxes. Private banks inflate the currency through fractional reserve lending. Lending what they don't have at interest, and the interest, the loan principal was never actually created. The private banks collect actual created hard currency in loan payments. Money for nothing total controle for free. Federal reserve bank is a private bank originally for profit until most American people took gi bill loans and went directly into debt to the private banks. There is a whole history to how we got here they don't want you to know. I can't teach it in a chat. So do your self a favor stfu until you understand the debt based economic system. Your government doesn't need to barrow money its a sovereign. NY banks wanted 40% interest to fight the civil war. Lincoln simply printed 500 million in greenbacks fought and won the Civil War with it. Read!!!

I was not sure that there was anyone left who had that insight. Bingo. It is the wealthy who most fear Marxism and communism, the real reason being that they simply don't want their stashes, good life, and ill-gotten gains touched. The little people are suckers for the rich man's propaganda, so work against their own class interests, But capitalism, in addition to waging vicious, no-holds-barred open war and covert war on anything to the left of Reagan, also has had to make concessions to the little people, precisely to ward off the chance of their being seduced by the Marxist siren song.

You're both very wrong. They are those who push for the left, because they are those who can fund or defund, and thus control it. It is the situation in the West *now*. It has been and will forever be used as the hammer on its flags.

What if that's what the ruling media elite want your to believe?

That’s why I don’t think the sky is that bright, cause he could not see through the propaganda.

I know highly capable Silicon Valley engineers who are great capable people but their ideas are so out their that they can help nobody

I'm not sure that conflation is accidental.

@@adriankovac1943 no doubt, but can you give us a name or an exmple?

All they mean by elites are people who have alot of money and social position, standing or power.

Sure, if plagiarizing Marx makes him a genius, yes, he is.

Interlocutor is obtuse

The workers became obsolete. That’s why they became obsolete. Like the flight engineer and navigator in an airline cockpit. A corporation’s primary responsibility is returning shareholder value. Plain and simple. Instead of fighting it, own shares in companies with growing revenue and improving margins.

Shout out to the Schmack! He makes this guy look like an eager high school student. I've only watched the first ten minutes of this video, and am done with it. Yes, some of my hesitancy is because of his heavy accent, but he's not really getting into any juicy meat and potatoes. Ten minutes of the Schmack and I was hooked; have since watched several hours of his talks.

​@@tarico4436you are strange

50 years of oil reserves left and 100 years of uranium left, and still limited resources and ability to access renewables at scale. The dystopian future is a bit scary to say the least.

So is the corporate hostile buyout of the global political system.

New energy sources will do very little to benefit the "lower classes" since this new energy will only be controlled by elites. Same with any technology. It doesn't help all unless it is free from elite control.

Wow all our issues just happen to be related to solutions that involve giving the government more money!

@@subcitizen2012 50 years of oil reserves says who ? Iraq alone is using few of the oil fields and majority are unused and are closed after the 2003 democracy installation by western nations. Iran Venezuela is sanctioned with 3 or 4 largest oil reserves.Giant reserves in Kazakhstan and Caspian basin, where did you find the information of 50 years ? There is not enough copper to "transition" to Green dream.

Priests didn’t give us computers, medicine, space flight, etc It’s a pity you can’t see the benefit of the scientific method and can only go as far as ‘I like/don’t like it’.

@@NapoleonGelignite They kiiiind of did though. There would be no science without the work of Catholic and Muslim members of religious orders in the Middle Ages. I’m not going to list the priests in the modern era who made deep contributions to the enlightenment. Anyway, the irony is that you’re the small minded person who is putting words in my mouth and fabricating a straw man. I made no comment about the scientific method. I was commenting on eschatological thinking, which is what a lot of climate change discussion is. Anyone with an understanding of the history of thought can see the straight line going from Greta Thunberg to Noah’s Ark. You’re clearly just another internet NPC who wants me to be some sort of Republican denier of everything. A boring and heavily unscientific presumption. Bye.

@@NapoleonGelignite that's not what he said. He said protests used to be the ones delivering apocalypse speeches, the 'scientists' of apocalypse.

now it is programmers!

@@GeorgeTsiros - you seem ok with programmers making your phone useful. You should go back to chalk and blackboards.

GO BUCKS!

Fortunately, free will does not exist.

Tax the rich. That or eat them.

ETR !!

The presenter however could not be more full of shit. Everything he said was a repetition of old views and arguments which are nothing more than propaganda. How do people like him live with themselves. Oh I forgot, they have no conscience.

Any recommendations?

Spoken thoughts are only ever as clear as the mind that receives them.

Yes, the main impression I came away with is that society may soon collapse under the weight of its academic fads.

​@@bradleyholland4881true, but intelligibility of the message matters. Internal coherence. You can also have 2 intelligent minds who can't connect despite competent messaging. Extreme example: one speaks modern English only, the other one Old Anglo Saxon English only

@@jtzoltan your example is not extreme, it is absurd because such an example doesn’t exist in reality. And who said that intelligibility doesn’t matter?

​@@bradleyholland4881or the mouth thats speaks them In fairness he speaks wirha. Jeavy accent a loap and speaks wirh an odd cadance. Its not exactly weird that somone would find his speech difficult to comprehend.

We don’t need elites for organised society.

@@atticustay1 id like to find out.

It's semantics. You are going to have to have some people running things. Once you have that, you have elites. Call it what you want.

This line of thinking is a sign of revolution. There are always elites and hierarchies in society. No such thing as a utopia where everyone contributes to decisionmaking and leadership equally and everyone receives the same amount of wealth and resources. Last I heard they tried that in the Soviet Union and communist China, and ended back into an oligarchy where a few elites controlled all once more, and killed tens of millions to get there. Even in nature there are always hierarchies in every animal group. You may not want it but it is a law of nature and cannot be avoided, only tweaked

I so much agee with your comment. But… As with popularism where politicians will say anything to get to power, people tend to vote for short term gains. Is that all good? Since the world around u dont work that way the direct democratic model wont provide for long time planning that is needed to always make sure your society is not taken over by another state that on long term plans to conquer more land and resources including the place where u live. Looks like we humans cant figure out a model that works long term and even if we could we dont seem to be able to stick to such a model over time. And we are only human, humans apear with different driving aspirations and tend to use whatever model from marxism to democarcy to justify their personal gain.

This is one of the big ones. I haven't looked at other countries, it's probably similar, but for US and UK, supposedly there's enough money off shore they belongs in the respective systems and economies they the interest payments alone on that wealth are the entire tax base of the two nations. Our governments and our people have been robbed blind, and there's an air of complicity everywhere, it's why we seemingly can't reappropriate those funds.

But, but.... Freedumb!

Thank you 👏

We need immigrants; wages are too low for inflation increasing. Corporate America is trying to stay alive on the backs of their workers. 😢

We need more immigrants for our capitalism to grow so we can revenue out of debt. 60 million willing immigrants worldwide, and no reason for them not to come except for racism and xenophobia. Barring their entry is part of the reason the foot of our future is getting shot off. Or we can keep devolving into a nationalist diet fascism that blames other ethnicities and culture for our problems.

US immigration has a strategy to it like it or not - as long as the US manages to succesfully "integrate" immigrants succesfully it is what keeps the American hegemony sustainable. Otherwise, USA would have been on demographic decline like rest of Europe and Asia with a lot of older people and few young workers

​@@kirstinstrand6292 immigrantion to the US encourages population and society depletion of the nations of emmigration. the people lose out except those exploiting all this for profit and power. not a good policy

With AI handling all of the service jobs we won’t have much of a need for unskilled voters any more. Could be a tricky situation as we may have to go back to importing doctors and lawyers.

Marketing

That has never been true.

@@annoloki The whole concept that this gentleman is complaining about is a wealth pump from seeking credentials without adding value to broader society. Look at James Watt. He discovered half of thermodynamics as an instrument maker. He applied his knowledge to create steam engines. That is what the elites should be doing. To some degree it happens in Silicon Valley. But politics and corporate credentials cuts off people with high barriers to entry and is funded with fiat.

Bitcoin fixes this

I googled it and got a bunch of conspiracy theory websites. Please state an example of how lowering the interest rate benefits specifically the richest in society.

@@Ikbeneengeit Artificially low interest rates primarily benefit the wealthiest in society through a number of means. Firstly, they can easily access cheap borrowing, enabling them to fund substantial investments and expand their wealth. Secondly, as asset values rise due to increased demand, the wealthy, who often hold significant investments in scarce assets like real estate and stocks, see their wealth grow further. Thirdly, they can refinance high-interest loans at lower rates, reducing expenses and freeing up capital for more investments.

Okay, yeah 😵‍💫

Rather concerned that the first assumption you saw fit to put forward for investigation was democracy. My first assumption would have been to question why it is that greed drives the so called elite and and why enough is never enough. When we have the answer to that we may find ourselves on the way to a more peaceful future.

@@hilaryporter7841 Hi Hilary porter, thank you for such a sensible response, my issue with the concept of democracy is based on its fundamental flaw! that the majority is always wrong!. When I first encountered this I was a bit put out by the sheer dogmatism of the claim but further investigation reveals that the underlying issue is the because any suggestion that a majority will vote for has to be so weakened and diluted or otherwise compromised that it is of no value!. More recently I have uncovered another more serious problem, relating to the fact that absolutely all of us live as separate individuals in our own space with our own sets of values and interests, while some of these o=are we have in common with others we cannot ever expect to live in any form of fully homogenous culture, this for ever precludes any sort of majority rule. The much more interesting topic you mention is the issue of primary motivation, that it would be nice to be able to understand why some people put such short term short sighted ambitions that we see as greed, those that I have met and talked to use a number of ways to justify themselves, the most common being some obscure reference to a distorted picture of evolution that 'explains' such selfishness. Sadly this falls apart at the first logical test where we find of course that sensible collaboration with other people can yield much greater benefits as long as you will allow others the freedom to do good things. For long time I considered the possibility that there might be some primary emotional driver or drivers and here we find some interesting ideas. It seems to me from observations of myself and many others that one of the b=natural characteristics of humans is quite high levels of emotional insecurity and anxiety, like others I thought that the origin of such feelings had to be some external events or agency and that stimulated the desire to control those events and agencies in order to suppress the feelings. I quickly found that nothing I could think of worked however hard I tried!. In the end I gave up trying, and guess what, with the pressure off everything seemed to change!, now I see others apparently still trapped in the same endless circle of effort and search for a security they don't even need. This could account quite neatly for why some sad individuals expend unlimited effort and resources to get richer and richer while getting more and more desperate. This is of course a major over-simplification, given that each and every one of them is on a similar but divergent path. each with its own unique agenda. There is one last small point that I feel I should try to make, when I was quite young I was sure that all I had to do was find out out what was going on and how it all works and I would be able to get some sort of grip on things, in my early thirties I began to realise that I had managed to resolve most of the mystery but it made absolutely no difference! we all us carry on doing things in the same weird ways regardless, it appears that not only do none of us ever have any real control over others we have even less over ourselves, everything that happens is the consequence of earlier decisions, by the time we realise what is happening the die is cast and all we can do is roll with it all. Then we get caught up in the next unpredicted round. I very much doubt that we mere humans have what it takes to behave in properly sensible ways. I suppose I do still hope to be proved wrong, perhaps you could be the one to do that!. Cheers, Richard.

Lol.

​@@richardharvey1732Sadly, your position isn't always correct. The majority isn't always wrong. It's just not right all the time. No-one is, including you. Ideas are definitely organic in that they evolve according to their environment, and deciding between one and another is rarely clear cut. Compromises often have to be made for progress to be possible. Uncertainty is a constant, and operating in that requires wisdom, which is hard work. So, the back and forth between extreme optimism and extreme pessimism about the human condition is a feedback loop that has consequences. So we should concentrate on the inputs. GIGO applies in every system.

Turchin went to university in Moscow in the '70s, of course he's familiar with Marx. All Soviet high school students had to take Marxism classes.🙄

Turchin has read Marx, and his theories do, partially, incorporate Marx insights. He does, however, reject Marx as being some kind of allknowing God. And he also incorporates Malthus, a guy Marx hated.

Lol, alright. What does that make you then? Something else so easy to refute out of hand?

Toynbee 2.0?

​@@joejohnson6327If they had been seriously studying Marx hard to see how the 80s and 90s happened.

Ally with the working classes and expropriation.

How about we REPEAL the federal income tax AMENDMENT and the federal reserve act? Its access to more money, other people's money, that they use to effect their interests and which causes greed and bribery.

WE allow the elite to exist. WE permit them to amass such wealth. They are playing a game and we PLAY ALONGA

That sounds incredibly inefficient. What kind of workplace to you spend your time in?

@@jondavidgriffin what is inefficient is our current economic system. Every 4 to 7 years it tanks leading to lost job opportunities, layoffs, etc. The current economic system also tends inexorably toward economic inequality, effectively imploding on itself. Any of the reforms we put in place to curb this tendency and turn off the wealth pump are eventually undone. We tolerate the inefficiency of democracy in the political sphere because democracy beats other forms of government. If democracy is so great why not democratize the economy? Arguably, without a democratized economy we cannot truly have a democratized political sphere. The workplace is where we spend some of the most productive hours and years of our lives. Why should our status as democratic agents end when we go to work?

@@AdamGeest you are making a couple of assumptions that shouldn't be made. Firstly that economic inequality is a bad thing, and secondly that democracy is a good thing. I don't agree with either.

@@jondavidgriffin Go be a slave in a capitalistically structured business where the man takes more than half of the value you add to the company away from you. Please do so in an authoritarian country.

@@AdamGeest what are you, like 19 years old or something? I started my own business. It's easy and cheap to set up you just need good ideas or a strong work ethic, or both.

Care to contribute to it in the comments instead of misguided focus on personality and process of communication?

Yes, I agree with your point. The host wasted a lot time trying to show his understanding, or lack thereof.

There is a human nature that is determined by our biology. Becauae of this shared human nature, humans tend on a societal level react in recurring ways. The reactions are not exactly the same, because culture also influences things, but nevertheless you can deduce predictable actions from this. It is just that we have denied this reality and have been living under the dogma of tabula rasa.

Important contradiction is the nation-based character of imperialist exploitation and national military industrial complex.

Well said