Peter Turchin (the Cliodynamics guy) has a piece in Bloomberg today:

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. A large class of disgruntled elite-wannabes, often well-educated and highly capable, has been denied access to elite positions. Consider the Antebellum U.S.

Full Story: Bloomberg: Blame Rich, Overeducated Elites as Our Society Frays

While I can understand how intra-elite conflict destabalize society and lead to ever more disaparity between the elites and everyone else, I still don’t quite understand how elite overproduction causes this. If most of these wannabes are locked out of the elite positions, how is it that they’re causing trouble?

See also:

Turchin: Bimodal Lawyers: How Extreme Competition Breeds Extreme Inequality

Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past

Data Geeks Say War, Not Agriculture, Spawned Complex Societies