Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Welcome to our final episode of the voter Nomics series
Speaker 2: where Politics and Markets Collide. I'm Stephanie Flanders.
Speaker 3: I'm Adrian Woodridge, and I'm alegra Stratton.
Speaker 2: So we set up this podcast with the working thesis
Speaker 2: that this year of elections would not just reshape politics,
Speaker 2: but teach us some lessons along the way about the
Speaker 2: conflict between politics and economics. Now that year is nearly over,
Speaker 2: we've got most of the elections behind us. We're not
Speaker 2: forgetting the Garnian elections on December seventh, and I think
Speaker 2: we now have German elections coming up in the next
Speaker 2: few months. But we did think this was a good
Speaker 2: moment to reflect on how all of those votes have
Speaker 2: panned out and what it means for markets and economies.
Speaker 2: A bit later, we're going to speak to Peter Turchin,
Speaker 2: professor and author whose recent book End Times, Elites, Counter
Speaker 2: Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration offers a pretty
Speaker 2: overarching explanation for all of it, not just America's division
Speaker 2: and civil strife, but the device of politics we're seeing
Speaker 2: around the world. He says it's all part of a
Speaker 2: basic cycle of integrating and disintegrating forces within societies. That
Speaker 2: gets repeated again and again throughout history. And before you
Speaker 2: dismiss all that, you should know that he first predicted
Speaker 2: we would do one of these cycles back in twenty ten.
Speaker 2: But first, Adrian Allegra, it's a big question. But maybe Adrian, first,
Speaker 2: what are the big themes that you're taking away.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a year of anti incumbency votes overwhelmingly, not
Speaker 3: not quite in India, but almost in India. That is
Speaker 3: to some extent driven by inflation. And you know, we've
Speaker 3: had inflation ripping through the economies of the world and
Speaker 3: creating a lot of annoying about existing ruling classes or
Speaker 3: existing political regimes. But I would have add two qualifications
Speaker 3: to that over arching view. One is that despite the
Speaker 3: anti incumbency things, this anti incumbascy revolution has tended to
Speaker 3: resolve in favor of the right rather than the left.
Speaker 3: You know, it hasn't been the Corbyns of this world
Speaker 3: that have been leading the anti incumbassy revolution. It's been
Speaker 3: the Trumps. It's been people on the right in general.
Speaker 3: Written a bit of an exception, but overwhelmingly it's a
Speaker 3: sort of populist right wing movement. And secondly, America wasn't
Speaker 3: entirely an anti incumbency vote. It was a sort of
Speaker 3: restoration vote. You know, people voted for the guy who
Speaker 3: was in charge in twenty sixteen because they perceive him
Speaker 3: to be a stronger person, perceived that a better age
Speaker 3: than one that the Democrats had created. So anti incumbency
Speaker 3: driven by inflation, but a strong flavor of the populis right,
Speaker 3: and some extent a restoration of the old Trump order
Speaker 3: in the most important of these elections, which is United States.
Speaker 1: So for me, I think one big theme very similar
Speaker 1: to Adrian's what a surprise. But then actually other than that,
Speaker 1: I don't I think it's quite difficult to see themes. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: inflation is the big killer. It's really hard to get
Speaker 1: back in if people have been made to feel even
Speaker 1: if things getting better, people have been made to feel poorer.
Speaker 1: We did say at the beginning of the series that
Speaker 1: one term governments might get more likely people are dissatisfied
Speaker 1: and choppiness is the result. And I think if you
Speaker 1: look at the actual results, I mean, Adrian's sort of
Speaker 1: sweep is right, but actually the French election, Macrong reduced
Speaker 1: his number of seats, but actually it was the left
Speaker 1: that were victorious there, not per se the far right.
Speaker 1: In the UK, you had a landslide for Starma. I
Speaker 1: think that we were worried about the rise of misinformation
Speaker 1: and so on. We questioned how much social media would
Speaker 1: play a part. In the end, it was podcasts that possibly,
Speaker 1: if not won it, then swayed it in America. I
Speaker 1: am uncomfortable saying they are kind of left right findings
Speaker 1: that were really clear.
Speaker 2: One thing for me, and it maybe that I've been
Speaker 2: thinking too much about the book that we're discussing later
Speaker 2: in the episode. But the economic blowback was very much
Speaker 2: about the legacy of COVID for the economy, and there
Speaker 2: was a reaction to the inflation that had come after
Speaker 2: COVID and possibly the sort of mismanagement of some of
Speaker 2: the response to COVID, and that obviously was one of
Speaker 2: the overwhelming things driving dissatisfaction with the economy, whether in
Speaker 2: the US or elsewhere, but there's also been a react
Speaker 2: in many places. There was also a reaction to the
Speaker 2: lockdowns and to what that had done to people, the
Speaker 2: isolation that had brought, the impact on schools. It felt
Speaker 2: like there had been a sort of building reaction which
Speaker 2: I think a lot of sort of mainstream opinion had
Speaker 2: just underestimated how wounded people felt and were angry at
Speaker 2: the way that COVID not just not about parties and
Speaker 2: number ten or anything else, but about the lockdowns and
Speaker 2: how the inequity that demonstrated in society, the people who
Speaker 2: could work from home versus the people who couldn't, the
Speaker 2: people who were at schools that found it quite easy
Speaker 2: to work from home, and versus the vast majority who work.
Speaker 2: When you mix in with that, immigration, which is probably
Speaker 2: the second biggest feature driving a lot of these elections,
Speaker 2: there is that feel of a scarcity of resources and
Speaker 2: the focus on the haves and the have not. And
Speaker 2: it's not just money, it's housing and being able to
Speaker 2: afford housing. It's schools being full of immigrants. So it's
Speaker 2: very striking because it does feel like a throwback to
Speaker 2: earlier times.
Speaker 3: I think there's a sense in which there's a feeling
Speaker 3: of the elites getting it wrong again. The elites, when
Speaker 3: they were in charge of the global financial system says
Speaker 3: that we can regulating all this finance, and we're in charge,
Speaker 3: and we'll be able to do it. And in fact
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight came along and they got it wrong,
Speaker 3: and the elites united behind the idea of the lockdown,
Speaker 3: with Sweden as the big exception. And there's a sort
Speaker 3: of in retrospect more and more of a sense that actually,
Speaker 3: they may have got it wrong. This may have been
Speaker 3: a judgment call. That was that they overreacted and they
Speaker 3: used their power to lock us down in all sorts
Speaker 3: of ways, which was a and overreaction, exposed the over
Speaker 3: zealousness of the state. But also they didn't always apply
Speaker 3: it to themselves, which is why the parties in number
Speaker 3: ten and Dominic Cummings and the rest were so important
Speaker 3: to them. And also I think that the thing that
Speaker 3: the last point that you talked to, which is immigration,
Speaker 3: I think we're at the beginning, not at the end
Speaker 3: of concerns, anxieties, the backlash against immigration, and this is
Speaker 3: going to sweep through European societies and indeed American and
Speaker 3: has swept through American society in a way that's going
Speaker 3: to be extremely discombobulating to those elites unless they can recalibrate.
Speaker 3: And I would point to the example of Denmark versus Sweden.
Speaker 3: Sweden took in as many immigrants as will want it,
Speaker 3: and is now going through a massive reaction against that.
Speaker 3: Denmark was much much more control and it's not a
Speaker 3: big political political issue in Denmark. So I think this
Speaker 3: populist wave will be more driven in the future. Even
Speaker 3: if inflation is tamed, immigration will drive it and continue
Speaker 3: to push politics towards the bopylist right in Europe.
Speaker 1: I agree with both of you that the effect of
Speaker 1: lockdown and the pandemic on the UK election and on
Speaker 1: elections around the world has been under reflected on. But
Speaker 1: the aspect I find most challenging is the economic one,
Speaker 1: which is because I think you guys have touched on
Speaker 1: the sort of social aspects of telling people to not
Speaker 1: leave their homes and so on, which still to this
Speaker 1: day is extraordinary, isn't it. But it's more the furlough
Speaker 1: and other bits of economic policy were extremely expensive. That's
Speaker 1: partly why we've then got to a general election where
Speaker 1: a conservative government of all governments has found themselves defending
Speaker 1: having put up taxes and people feeling very kind of
Speaker 1: beleaguered financially. But actually, if we think back to the pandemic,
Speaker 1: we had a situation where the government was paying people's
Speaker 1: wages to not go out. For me, that kind of
Speaker 1: dissonance between Wow, there's a huge amount of financial support
Speaker 1: that flowed from the central government to the people, but
Speaker 1: it was quite quickly forgotten. I'm not saying it shouldn't
Speaker 1: have been forgotten. People move on very quickly, but I
Speaker 1: think there was an economic lag to that that had
Speaker 1: a political consequence. And one of the disappointments for me
Speaker 1: about the COVID inquiry is that if we have another pandemic,
Speaker 1: what is the right way to handle it? Is the
Speaker 1: right way to handle it furlough and huge central government programs,
Speaker 1: and of course your challenges are right around is the
Speaker 1: right way of lockdown and so on? And we didn't
Speaker 1: really see the inquiry go into that. And obviously that's
Speaker 1: slightly marginal issue compared to all these elections we've had
Speaker 1: this year, But equally, if we have another pandemic or
Speaker 1: another phenomenon that challenges our sense of the nation state
Speaker 1: and the fundamental need for a government to protect people's
Speaker 1: health and so on, what's the right response and what's
Speaker 1: the response that doesn't mean that you are bringing up
Speaker 1: your national debt and your levels of expenditure to eyewatering levels.
Speaker 3: What about technology? We're not talking very much about technology
Speaker 3: or Russian interference or the political processes being revolutionized by AI.
Speaker 3: Was this a year in which the technology dog didn't bark?
Speaker 1: We saw a few, didn't we We saw a few
Speaker 1: sort of fake news and manipulated images, but we didn't
Speaker 1: see it be that instrumental turning factor in an election.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I think it's hard to say. I think that the
Speaker 2: very obvious misinformation sort of AI produced videos and things
Speaker 2: like that didn't happen. But I mean, when you consider
Speaker 2: that the election campaign that different people in America saw
Speaker 2: over the last year was completely different, and we're only
Speaker 2: just beginning to get our heads around how much X
Speaker 2: has changed the way it's feeding things to people. We
Speaker 2: had also quite old school techniques around direct mailings to
Speaker 2: people that were providing quite a lot of misinformation about
Speaker 2: candidates in different places, targeting Jewish voters to say a
Speaker 2: certain thing, and targeting Muslim voters for other things. And
Speaker 2: ironically that's all enabled by technology because you can send
Speaker 2: it to the right person, but it's actually even more
Speaker 2: below the radar because it's not online.
Speaker 3: You could argue the opposite case that this was a
Speaker 3: case of very old style politics that Biden clung on
Speaker 3: to power for too long. It was too arrogance, he
Speaker 3: was too insensitive that he put in a deputy who
Speaker 3: is really not very good, and partly did that deliberately
Speaker 3: because he didn't want to be challenged. And the Democrats
Speaker 3: said enough stupid things that you didn't need lots of
Speaker 3: AI to invent stupid things for them to say.
Speaker 2: Especially if it's selectively quoted. But no, I think you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right, Adrian. I was going to go to a
Speaker 2: last question, which was just the one that I think
Speaker 2: was raised by many people at the beginning of the year,
Speaker 2: which is is it going to be a good year
Speaker 2: for democracy? We have all these elections. Was it a
Speaker 2: good year?
Speaker 3: Broadly yes, I would say broadly yes. There wasn't social breakdown,
Speaker 3: there wasn't a lot of a lot of violence. We
Speaker 3: got a clear result in the United States, which was
Speaker 3: the big thing that we were worried about, and bad
Speaker 3: incumbents were punished, not always good rivals being promoted instead.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think it was a world in which
Speaker 3: democracy did its thing and adjusted to popular sentiment.
Speaker 1: Looking at the UK, I think I'll make two different arguments.
Speaker 1: One is that you saw a level of sophistication in
Speaker 1: how people were voting potentially tactically in various areas, and
Speaker 1: there's some evidence of that in France as well. So
Speaker 1: firstly that, but secondly, I think that our election in
Speaker 1: the UK was sort of marked for what wasn't said
Speaker 1: and how things have sort of since then been gone
Speaker 1: back on, and I think that is something that will
Speaker 1: leave many people on unsettled that you could have an
Speaker 1: election of six weeks fought on particular issues and then
Speaker 1: actually in the months afterwards some of that is gone
Speaker 1: back on. And that is not just a criticism of
Speaker 1: how Labour won the election. Other parties did it too, and.
Speaker 2: The UK maybe has some slight exception to this. But
Speaker 2: I think I agree with Adrian that it was a
Speaker 2: good year for democracy as an instrument, because it has
Speaker 2: expressed the people's will pretty effectively in most countries and
Speaker 2: power has shifted to those who inspired more support. I
Speaker 2: think it's another extremely difficult year for the political center,
Speaker 2: and in France we sort of they've cobbled together a
Speaker 2: center right coalition, but I think it was another year
Speaker 2: in which we see fewer and fewer voices at the
Speaker 2: center of politics, in the middle ground of politics, where
Speaker 2: compromise is possible, actually able to command the support of voters.
Speaker 2: And I think in the US you have both parties
Speaker 2: going to the extremes.
Speaker 3: I think the great challenge your head is for the
Speaker 3: center to reassert itself, rethink its basic principles, and to
Speaker 3: try and produce a program that satisfies and addresses the
Speaker 3: discontent of regular people while addressing the need for orderly
Speaker 3: and sensible government.
Speaker 2: Because otherwise I think you do have to worry about
Speaker 2: the health of democracy long term.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: In twenty ten, Peter Urchin made a prediction that the
Speaker 2: next decade was quote likely to be a period of
Speaker 2: growing instability in the United States and Western Europe. His
Speaker 2: models developed over many years showed instability could well spike
Speaker 2: around the year twenty twenty. Now, if we look back,
Speaker 2: that seems like a pretty good prediction, and an awful
Speaker 2: lot of things have happened since. That seemed to support
Speaker 2: the big themes and cycles that he identified in history
Speaker 2: and that led him to that prediction. Churchin is a
Speaker 2: project leader at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna and
Speaker 2: a research associate at the University of Oxford. Also Professor
Speaker 2: Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. He has written many
Speaker 2: books related to his analysis of history going back centuries,
Speaker 2: and his latest one is End Times, Elites, Counter Elites,
Speaker 2: and the Path of Political Disintegration. Peter, thank you very
Speaker 2: much for being our valedictory guest on voter Nomics. You
Speaker 2: get to be part of our reflections on the past year,
Speaker 2: but you're taking as giving us a much longer perspective
Speaker 2: with this book and the cycles that you identify. There's
Speaker 2: so much to go into, and I know that there's
Speaker 2: far too much to summarize in a fairly short interview,
Speaker 2: but I think your basic point is that there are
Speaker 2: cycles which are set off by equilibrium or disequilibrium between
Speaker 2: the number of ruling elites and the majority. And I
Speaker 2: think particularly, I think for me was very striking is
Speaker 2: the critical role that overproduction of elites plays in triggering
Speaker 2: a period of political disintegration and ultimately crisis. So if
Speaker 2: you're able to summarize just to give us a brief
Speaker 2: sense of how that equilibrium disequilibrium works.
Speaker 5: Well, First of all, I defined elites as simply power holders.
Speaker 5: Social power is ability to influence the behavior of other
Speaker 5: people right, and that takes several routes economic power, political power,
Speaker 5: military power, and so and so forth. Now, my research
Speaker 5: group has been studying literally hundreds of past societies leading
Speaker 5: into crisis in an emergence from them, and we found
Speaker 5: that the common precursor to the crisis is what you
Speaker 5: call elite overproduction. It really should be said overproduction of
Speaker 5: aspirant elits, those pupil elite when avis people who desire
Speaker 5: to feel for our positions. I like it in the
Speaker 5: book to a game of musical chairs, but except like
Speaker 5: an usual game where you keep removing chairs, you keep
Speaker 5: the number of chairs constant, but instead you increase the
Speaker 5: number of players. So it's certainly the original eleven players
Speaker 5: for ten chairs, but then fifteen to twenty authority fority. You
Speaker 5: can imagine the kios that would result as the numbers
Speaker 5: of losers who when you of home become angry increases
Speaker 5: so dramatically, and so the same thing happens in the
Speaker 5: run up to crisis. There's really a universal feature of
Speaker 5: those what do you call structural genographic crisis in our
Speaker 5: technical language.
Speaker 2: You have many examples, and you go back through a
Speaker 2: lot of European history. I think the striking ones that
Speaker 2: you use to crystallize people's thoughts at the beginning of
Speaker 2: the book is that the run up to the American
Speaker 2: Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's election in a similar time
Speaker 2: in the nineteenth century, also the Typing rebellion and the
Speaker 2: threat to the ruling order that happened in China which
Speaker 2: killed potentially tens of millions of people, and used to
Speaker 2: draw comparisons between those two, and also what we're seeing
Speaker 2: now tell us how those two fit the pattern that
Speaker 2: you're discussing, and then also sort of now give us
Speaker 2: an insight into what's happening now.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, as you mentioned, my research group studies the
Speaker 5: dynamics of complex societies organized as states.
Speaker 4: We shall been around for about.
Speaker 5: Five thousand years, and you know that for a while,
Speaker 5: maybe a century or so, they can actually enjoy intermal
Speaker 5: peace and order, and then they get into periods of
Speaker 5: social discombobulation, political disintegration, and the search, which we call
Speaker 5: end times. Right, So, these end times happened on the
Speaker 5: rough diedle of maybe about a couple hundred centuries. Previous
Speaker 5: wave of revolutions and civil wars was is what historians
Speaker 5: called the Age of revolutions which started in seventeen eighties
Speaker 5: and ran into eighteen sixties and seventies. So the American
Speaker 5: Civil War ended typeing rebellion that you mentioned got part
Speaker 5: of this world wide wave of revolutions in civil wars.
Speaker 5: Here in Europe we had revolutions of eighteen forty eight
Speaker 5: that affected most major countries except for a British Empire.
Speaker 5: By the way, we can talk about why it did
Speaker 5: not happen in UK in any case, because this is
Speaker 5: the previous complete wave of revolutions, you know how it ended.
Speaker 5: Now you don't know what's gonna what the future holds
Speaker 5: for us, right because we cannot really predict the future,
Speaker 5: but you know how it all ended in the previous
Speaker 5: wave of revolutions. And that's why, because it's to the
Speaker 5: closest to us in time, and the societies were quite
Speaker 5: similar when you waste That's why it gives us a
Speaker 5: very useful map for understanding where we are now.
Speaker 3: I suppose one of the great analysis of the over
Speaker 3: production of elites is Topville's The French Revolution and the
Speaker 3: regime in which you know that is the ultimate cause.
Speaker 3: I think he puts to the to the breakdown of
Speaker 3: the regime. But I wanted to think a little bit
Speaker 3: about diversity, because what we've seen over the last ten
Speaker 3: to twenty years is a simultaneous development of the overproduction
Speaker 3: of elites, so people are scrabbling for jobs, and an
Speaker 3: enormous emphasis by organizations, particularly in the United States but
Speaker 3: also everywhere else on diversity, on the idea that if
Speaker 3: there are two people for an elite job, but then
Speaker 3: we should put our thumb on the scale of the
Speaker 3: ethnic minority candidate, or the female candidates, or the diverse
Speaker 3: candidate in various ways. And that combination of these two doctrines,
Speaker 3: of this doctrine of diversity plus the over production leads
Speaker 3: seems to have driven the explosion of Trumpism. Would you
Speaker 3: agree with that?
Speaker 5: Let me step back and see that, actually, in more
Speaker 5: general terms, the ideological content of revolutionary parties or sides
Speaker 5: in civil wars, that's various, right, So in the previous
Speaker 5: way of revolutions, it was liberalism.
Speaker 4: Before that, it was.
Speaker 5: The Crisis of the seventeenth century, it was religion. In
Speaker 5: the late medieval crisis, it was like the game of
Speaker 5: thrones essentially, So then content changes depending on circumstances.
Speaker 4: But what is.
Speaker 5: Invariable is that the road to crisis is driven by
Speaker 5: several factors, two of which are the most important ones.
Speaker 4: First of all, popular inveseration.
Speaker 5: It is just what happened in the run up to
Speaker 5: the French Revolution that you mentioned. In fact, the trigger
Speaker 5: was the increasing prices of food, and then riots, urban
Speaker 5: riots and so on and so forth. But by that
Speaker 5: point there was a huge number of elite one abs
Speaker 5: and they are the ones who channeled and organized popular
Speaker 5: discontent to overthrow the uncild regime. And this is a
Speaker 5: very very generale thing. In fact, today when we go
Speaker 5: back to look at the United States, what we see
Speaker 5: we see the revolt of counter elites, right, because I
Speaker 5: consider the elections of this year on November five as
Speaker 5: a successful battle in that ongoing revolutionary wars between the
Speaker 5: ruling class, which was represented by the Democratic Party and
Speaker 5: the country leits which have found their home in the
Speaker 5: Republican Party.
Speaker 3: The reason why I think diversity is so important is
Speaker 3: that diversity is about we're talking about the allocation of
Speaker 3: scarce goods, of goods that getting scarcer, and what diversity
Speaker 3: is is a principle for allocating those scarce goods, which
Speaker 3: has losers as well as winners. And a lot of
Speaker 3: those losers, whether they were poorer people or richer people,
Speaker 3: coalesced around Trump. There were you know, a lot of men,
Speaker 3: a lot of people who didn't have the right credentials,
Speaker 3: a lot of people who felt that they were being
Speaker 3: a bit done down, and amongst ethnic minorities, people who
Speaker 3: were business people rather than members of the credential deletes.
Speaker 3: So I think diversity is a particularly dangerous thing in
Speaker 3: an era of scarce resources, or of a perception of
Speaker 3: scarce resources. But I wonder if you could say something
Speaker 3: a bit more about the counter elites, as it were.
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking, for example, to what extent does Trump
Speaker 3: represent the revolts of family businesses against big public corporations.
Speaker 5: For example?
Speaker 3: What are these counter elites and is what is driving
Speaker 3: their annoyance with the status quo?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, that's historical.
Speaker 5: Examples of counter elits are Lagid religion and the bolshidiits
Speaker 5: in Russia, or Fidel Castro and Los Barbudos in Cuba.
Speaker 5: All right, So what happens is that, remember we talked
Speaker 5: about this game of musical cheers. As a number of
Speaker 5: angry losers increases, some of them accept downward social mediolity
Speaker 5: and don't make trouble. But a certain proportion of them
Speaker 5: are actually they turned into counter It's now their goal
Speaker 5: is that they have not made it in the following
Speaker 5: normal channels.
Speaker 4: That's because there are just too many of.
Speaker 5: Them, right, and so now they start using extra legal
Speaker 5: channels to get into power. Now, Donald Trump is a
Speaker 5: classical count relate because if you think about it, you
Speaker 5: go back to twenty eleven, that famous junior ker for
Speaker 5: reporters at the White House where Obama publicly you.
Speaker 3: Know that was in the White House corresponds dinners that
Speaker 3: were saying that it's extraordary.
Speaker 6: No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter
Speaker 6: to rest than the Donald. And that's because he can
Speaker 6: finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter.
Speaker 6: Why did we fake the moon landing? What really happened
Speaker 6: in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?
Speaker 5: I don't know what happened in his mind, but he
Speaker 5: started plotting revenge for his head.
Speaker 2: And he was not laughing. He was not laughing, and
Speaker 2: everybody else was laughing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. He was very green and you know, well,
Speaker 5: but more recently his counterleit status is proved by ninety
Speaker 5: four ninety six, you know, criminal charges against him. Right Basically,
Speaker 5: the way he is treated in the press, the mainstream
Speaker 5: press always says that he always lies, which he does,
Speaker 5: but the treatment is very different from established politicians. Right now,
Speaker 5: my point is that he is just the tip of
Speaker 5: the iceberg.
Speaker 4: We saw.
Speaker 5: What we saw in the last year or so was
Speaker 5: the coal essons of very diverse group of country elits.
Speaker 5: If you think about it, some of them, like JD. Evans,
Speaker 5: come from a very humble background. But he's got excellent credentials.
Speaker 5: I believe it's Yale Law school, all right. That's that's
Speaker 5: the thing that many of these accountryles who come from below,
Speaker 5: they have excellent credentials. Right, So he rocketed his way
Speaker 5: through the Republican you know, political ranks. But you have
Speaker 5: the factors from the Democratic Party Robert Kennedy Junior, RFK
Speaker 5: Junior or Tussy Gabbard, and then we have people coming
Speaker 5: from the wealth holders will Elan Mascow obviously is the
Speaker 5: most important one, and people coming who are influencers such
Speaker 5: as Tucker Carlson and more recently Joe Rogan. So what
Speaker 5: we see here is you see this very diverse group
Speaker 5: and in fact it's not clear whether they would be
Speaker 5: able to hold these coalitions for very long because they're
Speaker 5: so different. But they have all collapsed with the goal
Speaker 5: of overthrowing the ruling regime.
Speaker 2: It is striking that you have particular professions that end
Speaker 2: up attracting a particularly large number of revolutionaries or counter elites.
Speaker 2: And I guess it's it seems like it's the teachers
Speaker 2: and the lawyers that you have to particularly worry about.
Speaker 2: You point out that the Robes bier lenin Castro they
Speaker 2: were all lawyers. Also Lincoln, but you also and you
Speaker 2: had the leader of the Typing rebellion and Mao were
Speaker 2: both teachers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so China is somewhat different.
Speaker 5: But lawyers are the most dangerous profession, especially in the
Speaker 5: United States. That your routes to political office in the
Speaker 5: United States, the wealth throughout and the credential route. Well
Speaker 5: but actually well noticed that podcasters have not been very
Speaker 5: eager to go into the official positions, or some who
Speaker 5: try it we're not successful.
Speaker 4: But anyway, so lawyers is.
Speaker 5: If you don't have wealth, then you go in the
Speaker 5: United States, you go to law school to play in politics,
Speaker 5: and in particular Jale Law School seems to have produced
Speaker 5: quite a lot of counter eliits.
Speaker 1: Peter It is Alekra here, can I just ask you?
Speaker 1: You talked about Trump right now being the tip of
Speaker 1: the iceberg, and I kind of want to know sort
Speaker 1: of where next. There's many many ways that people simplify
Speaker 1: your analysis of the world, but one of them is
Speaker 1: sort of the apoge of these trends lead leads to collapse.
Speaker 1: What I would like to know is when we are
Speaker 1: looking at the Trump administration right now, are we looking
Speaker 1: at a precursor to collapse or are we potentially looking
Speaker 1: at the sort of aversion the way to head it off,
Speaker 1: Because because as you say, you've got the kind of
Speaker 1: counter elites now looking like they're going to be in
Speaker 1: the extent to which they could potentially bring in policies
Speaker 1: that sort of address this and all become a valve.
Speaker 1: And if you look across the UK, Brexit was the
Speaker 1: apogee of the counter elites getting their way again. How
Speaker 1: much how much did these phenomena did they avert it
Speaker 1: or hasten its likelihood?
Speaker 5: One major point I'm making the book is that the
Speaker 5: road to crisis is actually fairly predictable. Obviously in twenty ten,
Speaker 5: I had no idea, would you don't know Trump, who
Speaker 5: would be the spearhead of this rebellion. But the structural
Speaker 5: forces were gathering scheme, and they continue to do so.
Speaker 5: In fact, they continue to do so even as we speak.
Speaker 1: Your point about in miseration as a kind of the
Speaker 1: stalling of living standards. That's the moment, isn't it.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So actually the key, the key idea here is
Speaker 5: what are called the weal's pump. So the weal's pump
Speaker 5: which basically started taking reaches from the poor and given
Speaker 5: to the reach. It's actually started way back more than
Speaker 5: forty years ago in the United States, and so it
Speaker 5: is actually the deep reason why we both have immiseration
Speaker 5: and why we have a litle production, because we have
Speaker 5: created ten times as many other wealthy in the last
Speaker 5: forty years has existed in nineteen eighty, all right, And
Speaker 5: so some of them, like Trump, have decided to go
Speaker 5: into politics. The second route two counter it leads, is
Speaker 5: that as you increase back in miseration, the more active,
Speaker 5: the more organized and smart members of these inviserated masses
Speaker 5: they want to escape. And that's why there has been
Speaker 5: such a huge demand for credentials. College degree doesn't work
Speaker 5: any more, Stule. That's why people go to professional schools,
Speaker 5: and particularly to the law school.
Speaker 4: All right. So in order for.
Speaker 5: Us to get out of this predicament that you find
Speaker 5: ourselves in, and that's what the previous societies have done,
Speaker 5: the wealth pump needs to be down, which will reverse
Speaker 5: the immiseration and the lid of a production forces. And that,
Speaker 5: after some years and sometimes decames of social and political turbulence,
Speaker 5: leads to the society reconfiguring itself and stepping on the
Speaker 5: road to a lengthy period of internal peace and order.
Speaker 3: If you think of modern America, what would reconfiguration look like?
Speaker 3: Fewer university places, fewer public sector jobs, more dynamic private sector.
Speaker 4: Would that be it?
Speaker 5: Or it would look actually not very different from the
Speaker 5: new geo. Right, So what we need to do We
Speaker 5: need to give more power to workers. I mean that's
Speaker 5: one of the New Deal was rolled back starting in
Speaker 5: late seventies and especially under the Reagan administration. It was
Speaker 5: very clear when the ability of workers to organize and
Speaker 5: to push for their rights was severely curtailed.
Speaker 4: So we need to do that. Remember that famous draft.
Speaker 5: Where see the productivity of American workers keep going up,
Speaker 5: their and their wages, compensation going up until lateeen seventies
Speaker 5: and then becoming flat.
Speaker 4: So all that extra productivity went somewhere.
Speaker 5: It went actually to the wall, to the one percent
Speaker 5: when it came two percent and flip percent in the process. Right,
Speaker 5: So what we need to do we need to get
Speaker 5: back the wages, worker wages and the media, the typical
Speaker 5: wages back on track, so they increased together with the economy.
Speaker 3: G If you look at the coalition that is the
Speaker 3: Trump coalition, there's a new Deal wing of the Trump
Speaker 3: coalition that would agree with everything you've said. But then
Speaker 3: there's also a musk Till wing of the of the
Speaker 3: Trump coalition who believes exactly the opposite that we need more,
Speaker 3: we need more, you know, more billionaires.
Speaker 2: Given that Peter has such a global focus in the book,
Speaker 2: I do want to make sure that we're not just
Speaker 2: I know, we find it hard to look beyond the
Speaker 2: US these days, and certainly that seems to be paving
Speaker 2: the way to a lot of this.
Speaker 5: But Stephanie, let me just finish my thought very very bigly.
Speaker 5: So my major thing that I would like to add
Speaker 5: to the discussion is that once you get to the
Speaker 5: cusp right of the revolution, of civil wars, it's revolutionary situation.
Speaker 5: The future is very unpredictable. It depends very much on
Speaker 5: the actions of leaders. If readers are prosocial and understand
Speaker 5: even into each of you what they are doing, then
Speaker 5: you can escape oblige a civil war and revolution.
Speaker 4: This is a big question.
Speaker 2: Very it's not very encouraging the end of your book,
Speaker 2: when you look at what has how these periods of
Speaker 2: crisis have been resolved, it is not a very encouraging story.
Speaker 2: I think three quarters of the men did in revolutions.
Speaker 2: Also a wars nearly two thirds led to the states
Speaker 2: ceasing to exist altogether. The ruler tends to get knocked
Speaker 2: off or at least quite high chance of being assassinated.
Speaker 2: If you think sort of how these forces are developing globally,
Speaker 2: and we've obviously seen some of these also operating, particularly
Speaker 2: in Europe. What makes these cycles longer or shorter. We've
Speaker 2: talked about the role of COVID and epidemics, for example,
Speaker 2: which is very striking when you look at your history record.
Speaker 2: And then yes, we are of course interested in what
Speaker 2: happens next, but maybe not just in the US, but
Speaker 2: sort of more broadly what you might see.
Speaker 5: Cycles of peace and internal violence. They're not perfectly synchronized
Speaker 5: between different countries. So, for example, in France, you see
Speaker 5: that France is behind because the degree of you know,
Speaker 5: one useful measure is the degree of inequality. And then
Speaker 5: France inequality in wealth and the income has started increasing
Speaker 5: much later than in the United States or r Key,
Speaker 5: all right, and so that means that they have they're
Speaker 5: only in the middle of the degree.
Speaker 2: Of political frustration seems to be catching up pretty fast.
Speaker 2: So were they somehow? So what is it about the
Speaker 2: French society which is translating a relatively into a large
Speaker 2: amount of political upset.
Speaker 3: They're natural protesters.
Speaker 5: The o vest and demonstration did not lead anywhere. They
Speaker 5: did not overthrow the Macron regime. Let's call it is like, right,
Speaker 5: and why because there were no countries and others they
Speaker 5: stayed away, right, They decided not to mount this wave
Speaker 5: of protests, unlike what happened in the population.
Speaker 2: Is vaiting for the for marine le pen now at
Speaker 2: least a third.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, But Macron government managed to stay in power
Speaker 5: despite despite the crushing defeat at the polls. This is
Speaker 5: actually a quite typical behavior for unc and resumes.
Speaker 2: So what makes the I think it's around two hundred years,
Speaker 2: you say, the sort of full cycle, but what makes
Speaker 2: what makes it longer or so, I mean, what are
Speaker 2: the kinds of futures that we could see in different places.
Speaker 5: Epidemics certainly bring in times closer because they increased in
Speaker 5: miseration dramatically. But on the other hand, there's you know,
Speaker 5: let's go you're based in UK, so in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 5: One reason why United Kingdom has escaped the wave of
Speaker 5: revolutions was because it had a huge empire. It shipped
Speaker 5: a lot of im miserated population to places like Australia,
Speaker 5: and it shipped a lot of surplus elites to be
Speaker 5: colonial administrators in India and as such, and that allowed
Speaker 5: them to flatten the curve, so to speak, using the
Speaker 5: coded language. That gave them time to actually adopt the
Speaker 5: necessary reforms. It took them, you know, the charges period
Speaker 5: was like twenty years, and in fact, this whole period
Speaker 5: of reforms took like forty years. It took a long
Speaker 5: time to configure the British society that you could go
Speaker 5: get back into another period of quite high prosperity during
Speaker 5: the Victorian era. All right, So so what I'm trying
Speaker 5: to say, you're as looking for a general answer, and
Speaker 5: I'm trying to tell you that right now we don't
Speaker 5: see a general answer. There is no such thing as
Speaker 5: a typical collapse. Every collapse is you know, like every
Speaker 5: un happy family is happy in their own ways using
Speaker 5: tells toys, uh, you know, an accurrna. So we are
Speaker 5: working very hard trying to understand, to get statistical classification
Speaker 5: and understanding. And that's why we need hundreds of past
Speaker 5: crisis right because you cannot do statistics just a few examples.
Speaker 5: But but we do. My group does not have yet
Speaker 5: good answers. And by the way, it would help if
Speaker 5: you would get funding. Actually, because we apply for grants,
Speaker 5: write proposals and we get you know, I guess it's
Speaker 5: not important.
Speaker 4: So I understand how you get back.
Speaker 5: How to get out of this?
Speaker 2: It's in the name. Maybe End Times just sounds a
Speaker 2: bit kind of bad. Maybe you need a bit more
Speaker 2: of an upbeat title.
Speaker 3: How to fix society.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of those books already.
Speaker 5: That's my next book, which I am pledging right now.
Speaker 1: Pete, can I ask you perhaps something I don't particularly believe,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to posit it just just to see
Speaker 1: what you say, which is that elites are needed if
Speaker 1: you look. If you look in the UK, we have
Speaker 1: a debate here. For instance, the new labor government is
Speaker 1: trying to is trying to give more power to workers,
Speaker 1: and there's been a huge upcry about Hold on a
Speaker 1: second you have in the case, you know, we have big,
Speaker 1: big multinational companies saying you're adding to our wage bill.
Speaker 1: You are, You've there's a number of policies that are
Speaker 1: making things more expensive for them. And firstly you have
Speaker 1: the fact that some elites are mobile, so they can
Speaker 1: go elsewhere. And then you have a different debate around
Speaker 1: oh goodness as a nation where we're not able to
Speaker 1: make as much money as we would like to and
Speaker 1: therefore we can't share as much around. So there isn't
Speaker 1: there there's a kind of there's a complex of course
Speaker 1: your your analysis of complex societies, but there's a there's
Speaker 1: a difficult interplay between A elites can flounce off firstly,
Speaker 1: and B you need some of those kind of drivers
Speaker 1: of hyper wealth in order for wealth to be shared.
Speaker 4: I would disagree with that because worldwide.
Speaker 5: It's not just states, but UK also in particular has
Speaker 5: seen an explosion in the number of uber wealth all right,
Speaker 5: so that wealth came at the expense of the typical workers.
Speaker 5: So I'm sorry, but I just don't buy this thing that,
Speaker 5: you know, why do we need billionaires after all? I mean,
Speaker 5: if you think about that, you know, in order to
Speaker 5: have the most yeah, I know, Bloomberg.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the role.
Speaker 5: Of you know, of these billionaires in creating wealth is
Speaker 5: somewhat overstated. And secondly, I would say that look at
Speaker 5: the historical periods, you know, look at places like the
Speaker 5: Nordic countries that have produced a lot of successful business
Speaker 5: at Axbedien for example, Yeah, the Denbark, Sweden, Norway, all
Speaker 5: those countries have produced a lot of very successful companies.
Speaker 5: Look at the United States during the Great Compression period,
Speaker 5: so from the new Geo antiore roughly speaking, nineteen eighty
Speaker 5: peak rates on even Texes well like over ninety percent
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixties, but the country was doing great. So
Speaker 5: I don't buy this argument that by increasing taxes on
Speaker 5: the wealthy we are going to shut down the economic growth.
Speaker 1: It does seem to me that the fundamental point is
Speaker 1: the elites have to share, and they have to share
Speaker 1: because they have to understand that if they don't share,
Speaker 1: the music stops. To your point about the physical chairs,
Speaker 1: and it stops for them, and it stopped and collapse
Speaker 1: and so on. What are the best examples of the
Speaker 1: elite elite understanding that they have to share.
Speaker 5: Yes, I talked about a number of such examples in
Speaker 5: my book, so I already mentioned the.
Speaker 4: Chartist period in UK.
Speaker 5: Another example that might actually surprise you is the Great
Speaker 5: Reforms in Russia in the Russian Empire in eighteen sixties,
Speaker 5: all right, when the Czar Alexander the Second basically told
Speaker 5: the elites that we either have revolution from below or
Speaker 5: reforms from above and so and the other one is,
Speaker 5: of course the New Deal, which followed on the Progressive era.
Speaker 5: So it took about thirty years to do this, And
Speaker 5: there are a few other examples. As Stephanie mentioned. Unfortunately
Speaker 5: this is only ten or fifteen percent of crisis are
Speaker 5: resolved without a major revolution or civil war. But you
Speaker 5: have plenty of examples where we see this actually happening,
Speaker 5: and we can draw lessons. Maybe it doesn't mean that
Speaker 5: you have to do you have to free the serfs
Speaker 5: as Alexander the second Gid. But the point is is
Speaker 5: that the large segments of the elites have to be
Speaker 5: persuaded that it's either you know those either lose everything
Speaker 5: and you don't believe that your house in New Zealand
Speaker 5: is actually going to save you.
Speaker 4: Right the banker mte. Or you give up give.
Speaker 5: Up some of that you know, of the wealth and
Speaker 5: privilege and power that you have accrued.
Speaker 1: Do you think that things get worse from here in
Speaker 1: terms of violence and uprising And the point of your book,
Speaker 1: which is civil war.
Speaker 5: The chances that you don't get worse and you have
Speaker 5: a had civil war a non zero. I would not
Speaker 5: say there are fifty percent. There's somewhere in zero and
Speaker 5: fifty percent. So those chances are very real and we
Speaker 5: should be really.
Speaker 4: Worried about them. But it's not certain.
Speaker 5: Judging from our analysis of historical societies, we know that
Speaker 5: there is no inevitability about this crisis. So it all
Speaker 5: depends on our collective decisions and of course on our
Speaker 5: leaders that who are the most consequential in resolving which
Speaker 5: trajectory we follow in the future.
Speaker 3: But at least this time around, Viennery's safe well it's.
Speaker 4: Good to be it's good to gain to experience audience
Speaker 4: right here. To be truthful, I'm not a.
Speaker 5: Revolution I'm not revolutionary. I'm not going to fight on
Speaker 5: the very cads right. I don't want this to happen
Speaker 5: around me.
Speaker 4: That's for sure.
Speaker 5: And I hope the American lead's sort of understand that
Speaker 5: they have to give up some of their power, privilege,
Speaker 5: and wealth in order to have a pissel is alution.
Speaker 5: So that's sort of my major message for them.
Speaker 2: Peterterchin, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: That was fascinating.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Voter Nomics from Bloomberg. This
Speaker 2: episode was hosted by me Stephanie Flanders with Adrian Wildridge
Speaker 2: and Allegra Stratton. It was produced, as always by the
Speaker 2: inimitable Summer Sadi, with production support from Moses and sound
Speaker 2: designed from Blake Maples and special thanks.
Speaker 4: To Peter Turchin.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned to this feed for what we do next,
Speaker 2: and thank you again for listening.