> Turchin noted that a person can be part of an ideological elite rather than an economic one. (He doesn’t view himself as a member of either. A professor reaches at most a few hundred students, he told me. “You reach hundreds of thousands.”)
His theories are interesting, but the fact that he claims not to be part of the elite himself indicates he's got some serious intellectual blindspots. Modern academia is one the most perfect examples of "elite overproduction" there is. Hundreds of thousands of doctoral students investing huge amounts of time and money to chase a relatively tiny pool of prestigious teaching and research positions.
His theories are interesting, but the fact that he claims not to be part of the elite himself indicates he's got some serious intellectual blindspots. Modern academia is one the most perfect examples of "elite overproduction" there is. Hundreds of thousands of doctoral students investing huge amounts of time and money to chase a relatively tiny pool of prestigious teaching and research positions.