I must confess, since having read Secular Cycles by Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut, it seems like I’m seeing its predictions playing out right here in the United States, even if we’re not the agrarian society on which it is based. Case in point: Turchin notes that when things are falling apart, the commoners begin abandoning the farmlands as the elite gain control of more and more farmland and demand a larger and larger share of the produce – there’s a lot more to it, but I’ll just leave it at that.
So what’s been happening? The American family farmer has been under attack for many years, and now we have the latest bump in the road:
Agriculture has been a weapon of choice in the escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
With China officially pulling out of buying U.S. agricultural products, American farmers are losing one of their biggest customers. It could be a devastating blow in an already tough year for crops and commodity prices. It may also dent U.S. gross domestic product and hurt companies like Deere, whose business is directly tied to farming in the Heartland.
“Sales have already been lower this crop year because of the existing tariffs. If we went all the way to no China exports whatsoever, that would of course result in even larger market and price impacts,” said Pat Westhoff, director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri. “Cutting China completely out of the market would be a very big deal.” [CNBC]
This is the sort of thing that, if it goes on to long, will shake out anyone without capital reserves, and that means many of the small farmers will go under, selling their land out to the survivors. The survivors will be the Big Ag companies that should easily survive a period of falling profits or even losses, and then we’ll see the farmlands become even more deserted as Big Ag consolidates.
Another aspect of the decline of a society, only hinted at in Secular Cycles, is the deepening of societal divisions, principally between the commoners and the elite. The elite preoccupies itself with internal competition, as everyone competes for a position on the summit. Recent statements from CEOs concerning the importance of the advancement of profits at the expense of workers and customers sounds suspiciously as if the elite in control of corporate entities doesn’t much care for the common worker, doesn’t it, nor even for the customers. Just think of the once cheap drugs whose prices have gone through the roof – not due to manufacturing or material costs, but lack of competition.
The Republican political elites fall into the same category as they dance to the tunes of corporations, as they use the speaker of ALEC, and of special interest groups such as the NRA, notorious for demanding absolute gun rights on behalf of the guns & ammo industry. The resultant behavior of “Moscow Mitch” and now “Leningrad Lindsey” (Senator Graham (R-SC)) has been mind-boggling in its callous disregard for anyone not in the elite group.
Of course, at some point the burgeoning population, both of commoners and elite, along with falling profitability in absolute terms, leads to conflict within the elite group. What will it look like this time? Will it happen at all, or does Turchin’s theories not apply to corparatist states masculating as democracies?
The future is not clear, but the hints are troubling.
