Peter Turchin— A Radical Proposal After Brexit: End the European Union and Begin Destructive Creation

The overall trend over the last 10,000 years has been for humans evolving to cooperate in ever larger societies—from living in farming villages of a few hundred people to nation-states of today and even supra-national formations like the EU. But cooperation is fragile. We know from studying history that cooperation tends to go up and down in cycles. Currently, and according to all the indicators, both the United States and the European Union are in a downward, disintegrative, phase of the cooperation cycle.

There are several interlocking reasons why the EU, in particular, has entered the disintegrative phase. Let’s discuss them in turn.…

This development is, in large part, a result of the spread of the corrosive ideology of neoliberalism from the US to Europe. As the European elites adopted the neoliberal views en masse, it changed their attitudes and behaviors in several ways. 

First, neoliberalism freed them to pursue self-serving policies, such as reducing corporate taxes…

Second, the reference group for European elites became other wealth- and power-holders in Berlin, London, and Washington, not their own populations.…

In addition to the spread of neoliberalism, which, as I stated above, is an ideology corrosive of cooperation, different EU members found it difficult to cooperate with each other, because they did not share a well-defined common identity. Additionally, different groups evolve different institutions that promote cooperation. This is why, as the political scientist Robert Putnam found, ethnically diverse groups find it more difficult to cooperate. It’s a coordination problem.…

You cannot build an identity and a common set of institutions in one fell swoop. The rapid expansion of the European Union far beyond the area where Europeanness was born (the Carolingian Empire) was, in my opinion, a big mistake. Positive social change is gradual and slow; it’s breaking apart that can occur quite rapidly.

But breaking apart is also an important aspect of social evolution. When social formations become dysfunctional they must be somehow swept away and be replaced with more cooperative formations. After all, that’s how free market economics works. Unprofitable firms go belly up, and more efficient ones grab their market share. Joseph Schumpeter called this “creative destruction.” For reasons I explain in Ultrasociety I prefer to reverse the order, “destructive creation”.…

Evonomics
A Radical Proposal After Brexit: End the European Union and Begin Destructive Creation
Peter Turchin | Professor of Biology and Anthropology in the University of Connecticut and Vice President of the Evolution Institute

Noah Smith — A big sweeping theory of modern history

I like big sweeping theories although I would not say they are "theories" in the scientific sense since as Noah observes they are not testable.

Rather these kinds of explanation are frameworks on which to hang explanation of past events in terms of patterns that may reflect some consistency in human behavior, even through contingency plays a greater role in history than determinism.

If this is your thing, it's worth a read even through Noah is an amateur in this field. But he is highly intelligent, well-informed and understands modeling, so his contribution is worth considering.

It's just an outline that would need to be worked out, but there is a solid basis for it in political economy as a major historical factor. It's an interesting excursion into linking historical cycles with economic cycles.

It's also a good sign that at least some pretty mainstream economists are looking out the window and thinking out of the box. I hope it gets some notice and gets others thinking about such matters.

Noahpinion

A big sweeping theory of modern history
Noah Smith

Nature — Human cycles: History as science

Advocates of 'cliodynamics' say that they can use scientific methods to illuminate the past. But historians are not so sure.

Read at at Nature
Human cycles: History as science
Laura Spinney
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)

To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the appearance of three peaks of political instability at roughly 50-year intervals is not a coincidence. For the past 15 years, Turchin has been taking the mathematical techniques that once allowed him to track predator–prey cycles in forest ecosystems, and applying them to human history. He has analysed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way1. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. “I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,” he adds.

Sounds about right to me. And it is also in line with Ravi Batra and Strauss & Howe, although S & H see the historical cycle spanning ~80 years, i.e., four generations, rather than fifty years, i.e., two generations or the "father-son" cycle.