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End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration · 6 of 12
End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
Human Flourishing MEDIUM

Multipath Forecasting and Future Scenarios

End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration Peter Turchin
multipath-forecasting radicalization counter-elites scenarios

Problem This Solves

How to think rigorously about the future without fortune-telling. The MPF model explores multiple trajectories under different policy choices, showing that while the 2020s crisis cannot be averted (too much systemic inertia), the choices made now determine whether crises repeat every 50-60 years or are permanently resolved. It replaces point predictions with scenario analysis driven by structural mechanisms.

Key Principle

Multipath Forecasting (MPF) takes various policies or reforms as inputs and forecasts how future trajectories change as a result. It is not prediction of a single future but exploration of multiple possible paths.

The MPF engine has four core components:

  1. Labor supply/demand module -- tracks workers vs. jobs, affected by demography, immigration, women's labor force participation, globalization, and automation.
  2. Wealth pump mechanism -- when relative wages decline, income redistributes from workers to elites, driving both immiseration and elite overproduction.
  3. Social contagion module -- models radicalization using epidemiological dynamics: "naive" individuals (susceptibles) encounter "radicals" (infectious) and may become radicalized; high violence eventually converts radicals into "moderates" (recovered), but with a time delay.
  4. Violence dynamics -- power-law distribution; most sparks produce small fires, but some produce catastrophic conflagrations; threshold effects when radical power exceeds state coercive capacity.

The Political Stress Index (PSI) combines popular immiseration (inverse relative income) and elite overproduction into a single measure that "tunes" the probability of radicalization taking hold. When PSI is high, radical ideas "fall on fertile soil."

The NatCon / New Right represents the most organizationally credible counter-elite movement. The Republican Party is potentially transforming from the party of the 1 percent into a right-wing populist party, driven by counter-elites who experienced elite institutions from the inside and became radicalized against them. The GOP provides an already-existing large-scale organization and a legal, nonviolent route to power.

The ruling class faces a choice: adopt reforms that reverse immiseration and elite overproduction (as it did a century ago), or face overthrow.

Good Examples

  • The Inertial Scenario: If nothing is done to shut down the wealth pump, the model predicts serious violence during the 2020s, followed by a temporary decline (as violence eliminates elite surplus and converts radicals to moderates), then a repeat crisis every 50-60 years. Even catastrophic violence does not solve the underlying problem if the wealth pump continues.
  • The "Sharp Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Gain" Scenario: If the wealth pump is shut down (by driving relative wages up to equilibrium), the 2020s crisis is not prevented and may even be exacerbated short-term by converting elites into counter-elites. But after a painful decade, the system rapidly achieves equilibrium.
  • The Gradual Adjustment: Raising the relative wage over approximately 20 years can avoid the worst short-term pain of drastic elite impoverishment while still shutting down the wealth pump.
  • J.D. Vance as counter-elite archetype: Grew up in the Rust Belt, served in the Marines, graduated from Yale Law School, worked at Peter Thiel's firm -- a "prototypical American counter-elite figure" combining working-class origins with elite credentials and resentment toward the establishment.

Bad Examples

  • Point predictions: "Making precise predictions about events in human societies decades or centuries in the future is pure science fiction." The goal is understanding mechanisms, not precise prediction.
  • Theory-free forecasting (PITF model): Predicted civil war onset with 80% accuracy using 1955-2004 data but failed to predict the Arab Spring. "Ultimately, the hope that big data will somehow yield valid forecasts through theory-free 'brute force' is misplaced in the area of political violence." Deep structural analysis of power is irreplaceable.
  • Treating the MPF model as settled science: The model is a "prototype" and "its predictions should be taken with some degree of skepticism"; the goal is understanding mechanisms, not precise prediction.

Key Quotes

"Perhaps the most important insight from the MPF model is that it is too late to avert our current crisis. But we can avoid the next period of social breakdown in the second half of the twenty-first century, if we act soon to bring the relative wage up to the equilibrium level."

"Is a 10 percent probability of a second American civil war high or low? Put it in personal terms: Would you take a bet that could cause your personal extinction with a probability of 10 percent?"

"The disagreements between the conservatives and the progressives within the ruling class focus almost entirely on cultural issues. The economic elites, who dominate the American polity, can tolerate a great diversity of views on such issues, as long as the consensus on promoting their collective economic interests (keeping their taxes and worker wages low) is strong."

"Happy countries don't elect Donald Trump president. Desperate ones do." -- Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools

Rules of Thumb

  • It is too late to prevent the current crisis, but not the next one. Policy action now determines whether the cycle repeats in the second half of the 21st century.
  • Track the Political Stress Index. Rising PSI (immiseration + elite overproduction) is the leading indicator that radicalization will take hold.
  • Radicalization follows contagion dynamics. The system can appear stable until a threshold is crossed, producing explosive events. Most sparks produce small fires, but some produce catastrophic conflagrations.
  • A revolution requires organization. Neither the radical left nor the radical right can succeed without large-scale organization. Watch for counter-elites capturing existing institutional infrastructure (as NatCon figures are attempting with the GOP).
  • Cultural polarization is tolerable to elites; economic populism is not. The ruling class consensus holds on economic issues even when cultural issues diverge sharply.
  • Gradual reform beats sudden reform. Raising relative wages over 20 years avoids the worst short-term disruption while still shutting down the wealth pump.
  • State surveillance is effective against disorganized radicals. "As soon as there are three people in the plot, one of them is an FBI informant." Organization is the bottleneck for revolutionary action.

Related References