Too Many Laywers Correlates to Societal Collapse

Probably in the Jared-Diamond-ist/’just too pat’ department: “Past waves of political instability, such as the civil wars of the late Roman Republic, the French Wars of Religion, and the American Civil War, had many interlinking causes and circumstances unique to their age. But a common thread in the eras we studied was elite overproduction. The other two important elements were stagnating and declining living standards of the general population and increasing indebtedness of the state. Elite overproduction generally leads to more intra-elite competition that gradually undermines the spirit of cooperation, which is followed by ideological polarization and fragmentation of the political class. This happens because the more contenders there are, the more of them end up on the losing side.”

via Will Too Many Lawyers Destroy American Society? Ask Peter Turchin – Businessweek.


Posted

in

by

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *