Oh good. Reading it, I was thinking: I don't think this is quite his thing. So I do wonder whose Substacking enthusiasm got me to say "I should read this", because it feels to me like something I ran into hereabouts.
I have not read the book, but every time I read Turchin I want a description of elite overproduction that is not just reducible to population growth. Obviously the ratio of US Presidents/person has shrunk considerably over time, but this would just imply permanent crisis. So if that's not it, then there has to be something that _creates_ more positions for being elite, but what is it?
Right. And what would keep any society from just making elite titles for everyone (sort of the Harrison Bergeron thing that The Incredibles nudges at). Reading this book, I was looking for exactly the description you mention here--what is putting pressure on societies that makes them make more elite positions to the point of "oversupply"? And all I got was some weak-tea Malthusianism that gets undercut in the details. (For example, in some cases, he's got elite oversupply being a result of in-migration of a particular group of people, in other cases it's mysteriously endogamous, etc.) This is partly a result of his unwillingness to describe "elite" in terms of income differentials *or* social power, precisely because he wants to maintain that in situations of oversupply, elite *status* remains the same but there isn't enough to go around to make an elite really elite. Well, why not? And what does it mean to maintain that someone's an elite who is neither powerful nor wealthy? (And for that matter, to exempt some powerful and wealthy people from the status of 'elite'?)
It really does feel sort of like a historical sociologist's version of "The Aristocrats": the punch-line answer to every war, political crisis, economic collapse, etc. is "elite oversupply", regardless of the difference in the details and without any consistent explanation of why it happens.
I really do not think I have read it...
I do think (a) there is probably something very worthwhile in Turchin, (b) but when I try to understand it, I bounce off of it...
Brad
Oh good. Reading it, I was thinking: I don't think this is quite his thing. So I do wonder whose Substacking enthusiasm got me to say "I should read this", because it feels to me like something I ran into hereabouts.
I have not read the book, but every time I read Turchin I want a description of elite overproduction that is not just reducible to population growth. Obviously the ratio of US Presidents/person has shrunk considerably over time, but this would just imply permanent crisis. So if that's not it, then there has to be something that _creates_ more positions for being elite, but what is it?
Right. And what would keep any society from just making elite titles for everyone (sort of the Harrison Bergeron thing that The Incredibles nudges at). Reading this book, I was looking for exactly the description you mention here--what is putting pressure on societies that makes them make more elite positions to the point of "oversupply"? And all I got was some weak-tea Malthusianism that gets undercut in the details. (For example, in some cases, he's got elite oversupply being a result of in-migration of a particular group of people, in other cases it's mysteriously endogamous, etc.) This is partly a result of his unwillingness to describe "elite" in terms of income differentials *or* social power, precisely because he wants to maintain that in situations of oversupply, elite *status* remains the same but there isn't enough to go around to make an elite really elite. Well, why not? And what does it mean to maintain that someone's an elite who is neither powerful nor wealthy? (And for that matter, to exempt some powerful and wealthy people from the status of 'elite'?)
It really does feel sort of like a historical sociologist's version of "The Aristocrats": the punch-line answer to every war, political crisis, economic collapse, etc. is "elite oversupply", regardless of the difference in the details and without any consistent explanation of why it happens.
Albert Hirschman: The Social Limits to Growth anticipated this and understood it
I mean, that's both a yes! he is contributing to an ongoing discourse and a hey! this is not quite the novel finding.