FUTURE: THE CYCLES OF HISTORY AND ECONOMICS:
The happy 1850s---------70 years---------The happy 1920s----------70 years------The happy 1990s..
"Future", is an on-line magazine dedicated to the prediction of the cycles of History and Economics.
You will find in this web, the development of the laws that regulate those cycles of History and Economics, and several models that describe the economic ecosystem and the historic societies of mankind as socio-biological organisms that follow those laws. Future is also a predictive magazine, as all sciences do have to be able to forecast the future of its species, to prove themselves real sciences. So we have published 3 numbers, dedicated to explain the future of mankind and machines, in the XXI century.
The first number, "past", explains how those predictions are made by comparing the previous cycle of history that ended in the great Crack of 29 and World War II. The second number "present" applies those cycles to the study of the future of human societies. The Third Number "future" uses the same models, to analyze the future of the Economic Ecosystem caused by the Industrial Evolution of machines.
"Future" uses to that aim several disciplines, which are put together into an interdisciplinary model that explains the future of mankind and the machines that share our planetary ecosystem. It departs from the idea that any real science, can only be considered as such when it is able to predict the cycles and future position and behavior of the species it studies. So we considered Astronomy a science only after Kepler determined with exatitude the rhythms and cycles of planets. In that sense the usual theories and models of History and Economics are not scientific, as they have never been able to predict the Future of their studied species (Human beings in the case of history and machines in the case of economics). Future is born in that sense, as the first magazine of 2 new, interrelated experimental sciences, Bio-History and Bio-Economics, that try to predict the future of mankind and machines.
All new sciences are born as a process of improvement on model and theories established by previous masters. In that sense we would like to quote here the main influences that gave birth to Bio-History and Bio-Economics, as well as the improvements that were made upon their theories to make of Bio-History no longer a "Ptolemaic" confuse science of multiple cycles, but a simple and accurate analysis of the cycles of History and Economics under a few simple laws and repetitive periods.
There have been attempts to create a biological 'Science of History' based in Natural Laws, and recurrent cycles, since the age of Vico, who realized of the repeating process of creation and destruction of human civilizations by weapons. Vico was in fact right, as there is a periodicity in the great Global ages of War determined by the recurrent discovery of new types of weapons, that destroy civilizations word wide. Accordingly since the cycle is produced by advances in technology, the cycle has two clear phases, the old cycle of creation and destruction of civilizations, with a periodicity in the interval of 700 to 800 years:
...and the modern cycle of global wars, in the Industrial age of the machine which is parallel to the cycle of evolution of those machines, with a periodicity in the interval of 80 years.
In History of Art it was hint already by Arnold Hauser and other German theoreticians, that those constructive and destructive ages, which determine the life and death of civilizations, coincided with styles which were similar in time. In that sense it was proved that at the end of civilizations, those artistic styles enter into "baroque, decadent eras", with simmilar eclectic, extremely creative but highly cynical styles, and so the existence of artistic cycles, and recurrent fashions were also a noted fact of history. In fact we can widen that concept also to the other two main styles of art, the epic, lineal style, which happens in the youth of civilizations, and the classic, realist style which takes place in the mature age of a culture. Those 3 styles are therefore consecutive, and we talk of the 3 ages of a culture, its youth, its maturity and its baroque age or age of extinction. For example, if we consider the parallel Iron Hoplite Greek empire, that spans from Homer to the Hellenistic period, in which Greece is conquered by Rome (also around 800 years), the 3 ages of art are self-evident:
But if there are cycles in history, even more obvious have been the cycles and phases of economics. Already in the XIX c. Karl Marx, working on the field open by Ricardo, noticed that the processes of reproduccion of machines were cyclical. Schumpeter, an Austrian economist, noticed that there were also cycles of innovation and discovery of new machines, that acted as the engine of economic activity. Finally Kondratiev a Russian Economist found a period of around 40-50 years as the basic cycle of economical booms and depressions, which became the standard period of analysis among all modern Economists. Their analysis of those cycles however is too abstract, as they cannot relate those periods with clear recurrent processes in the economical world. This task is now possible, as those cycles are determined by the great ages of evolution of machines, which in fact last a little bit more than a century, and so can be easily divided in two Kondratiev periods of around 50 years, or 3 Kondratiev periods of around 40 years. Yet as we know the origins of those cycles to be the evolution, reproduction and decadence of machines as the main engine of economic societies, we will use more often, 3 periods of around 36 years that correspond to the evolutionary, reproductive and mutational age of machines. Machines have evolved in 4 clear phases related to the type of energy they use: the age of physical machines based in vapor, the age of chemical machines based in oil, the age of electric machines based in electricity and the age of light machines based in electronic solar cells that now starts. Each of those ages gave birth to an entire new type of machines, and we can divided those ages in 3 simple periods of around 36 years: discovery and evolution, reproduction and crisis of over-production, and finally after those crisis of over-production the main machines of a period are mutated and used as weapons, since weapons can easily be mass-produced and destroyed in battle fields- So we find for all the machines of history those 3 x 36 ages that structure the evolution of machines in 4 clear ages:
In the graph we can see the main dates of those cycles in the past, present and future. We are closer now to a nodal point, or turning point of electro-machines that will become used in wars with the new century. How can we predict that turning point? Merely considering the other great cycle of economics, which comes every 72 years, the cycle of "Kondratiev Cracks" a term I have coined upon the name of the discovery of those cycles. As you can see on the graph, the 3 periods of machines as fixed, mobile and arms, have a periodicity of around 36 years, but the age of armed use of a machine coincides with the age of discovery of the new machine, as the old age of a grand-father coincides wit the first age of his grand son. Thus on those periods, what happens is that the old machine is over produced, and its companies enter in crisis. At the same time the new machines absorb most of the new investment but still do give little profits, as they have not found a mature market. The result is that there is both a crisis of overproduction and a lack of returns for investments, and the market looses confidence, and suffers a tremendous economical crack. Thus we forecast that in a few years the present growing buble that has taken the Dow over 10.000 and Nasdaq on the 4000 range, will crash, provoking the III greatest panic on the history of stock-markets:
What will happen then is obvious: Companies that manufacture those machines and control through lobbyism our governments will switch production from peaceful machines to war machines, and an age of global wars will start. If after the railroad panic, Lincoln then a lobbyist for Illinois railroads declared war to the South and the Indians, and established with the Railroad act a new age of bonanza for railroads based in its military use, if Hitler after the 1929 crash, switched production from cars to tanks and established a new age of war, we predict that after the future crash of 2001, the American president, probably a Republican candidate, which at the writing of this page is not determined (Collin Powell, Grinitch, Bush Jr.?), will start an age of lobbyism and war, based in computerized weapons, already essayed in Desert Storm I:
The violent 1860s, the violent 1930s, the violent 2000s?
Those are therefore the fundamental cycles of History and Economics, which explain the recurrent ages of civilizations, in art, politics, economics, and war. The periodicity of those cycles can only be explained departing from socio-biological analysis. Indeed, as in the world of Keplerian astronomy what truly matters to understand those cycles, is the biological cycles of human beings, which determine so far the cycles. That cycle is the generational cycle known to different socio-biologists with a duration of around 72 years, which coincides exactly with the period of Great Kondratiev Cracks (though the economical cycles of machines are becoming today standarized, as a process of mechanical research and evolution which forecasts maybe in the age of robotics, and computarized design a regularity beyond human control). We conclude that the cycles of modern life are determined by the captain of the new industries of machines, which go also through 3 generations in the process, the generation of tough, puritan founders and researchers of the machine (a Ford, a Benz, a Watt), the generation of established engineers and capitalists that expand the companies and make them global concerns that reproduce those machines, and finally the generation of politicians, and decadent rentists, which to keep profits follow the easiest solution of war..
It is then easy to forecast due to the obvious fact that we live in the American cycle of Evolution of machines, mainly "metal-minds" (computers and Tvs), and that all the attitudes of our age coincide in art, economics, politics and cultures, with the end of the reproductive, happy, consumist period, that were will enter after the future III Crack of Kondratiev around 2001, in the American Baroque age, determined by neofascism in politics, cynicism in literature, gore and violence in film, crisis and unemployment (as the robots of the next generation are reproduced as fixed-tool machines throwing workers out of factories), in the economical world, and war in International Affairs. Though those predictions were done first in 1994, and copyrighted at the Library of Congress, now I made them public in this web, for all those who enter here, and can rationally understand and believe, to know what the future will be. Do take seriously the cycles of History because the Future is where we will spend the rest of our lives. If you have invested heavily in the stock-market my advice is to abandon it and invest in real state... preferently in a secluded, remote place, filled with basic goods, for the incoming period. If you are a professional of the media, or the political and economical world, however yo do have the moral duty of making those cycles public, because only if the cycles of history, as in any other science are known, those who rule us, and now are mere pawns of the cycles of history, could as scientists of history manipulate them for the advantage of man. It was the old dream of Sci-Fi writer Asimov, that now becomes real with the accurate determination of those cycles. What is the solution ot the negative effects of them? Obviously to eliminate the two fundamental causes: the competence among nations for political supremacy that could be easily solved if we empower UNO, and the speculative markets in currencies and stocks, that we could easily solved with a single global currency (based in the fixed parity between Euros and Dollars), the Tobin Tax, and the implementation of public deficits to invest in human goods (food, housing, education), that could act as the engine of a global state of welfare, prosperity based in the basic goods of mankind, and peace.
Of course those decisions are well beyond the capacity this anonymous writer has to modify reality. But if those who read these pages work for a human future, and are able to influence people within the systems of power of the Western world, man can expect a better future, and design those cycles to its advantage, as a scientist knowing the cycles and reactions between chemical compounds can establish some basic measures that correct those reactions to its likeness.
All what I can do is giving you the keys to undesrstand them.
On the other hand as we said all sciences do have cycles and regularities, which are well known to astrological and bio-logical sciences. In that respect two main branches of biology, can be applied to the understanding of the cycles and evolution of history and Economics. What we might call Darwinian biology (the study of the competence between species for limited resources), and its opposite phenomenon, Organic Biology (the study of cooperation between individuals of the same species, and the main laws of biological sciences that regulate such Social Organisms.)
A notable contribution to those sciences was made by Butler, who applied the laws of Darwin to the study of machines and their competence with human beings. While the development of Organic Theory has reached enormous sophistication during this century.
Putting together those elements into a bio-logic model able to predict the future of mankind (a biological social organism), was first attempted by Herbert Spencer in the XIX C. However, only recently several discoveries done respect to the regularities of those cycles, have made possible to "forecast" in a rational manner the future of mankind, and the "economic ecosystem" of machines that abstract economists call "the free market". In that sense the R=evolution that this web and its contents means for History and Economics, that now can be studied together under very simple laws and periods of cyclical behavior, might be compared to the Keplerian R=evolution that reduced the multiple epicyles of Ptolomeus to a single, simple rational explanation and drawing of the movements of the Universe...
Though I presume as it happenned then such a jump of understanding of societies will take a long time to be apreciated. In any case those discoveries are the origin of Future, which projects the present trends of both sciences into the future, by analyzing and comparing the past cycles of history and the present.
As it is obvious that the pretension of a real science of economics and history should meet enormous resistance, from all those people that subjectively believe self-serving myths on the "natural freedom", "God-like nature" and "differences" between men and all other beings of the Universe, or even between different kind of men, Future is born merely as a testimony for that "Future" it forecasts. than an attempt to change the scholar world.
In as much as Evolution is the only theory that predicts with certain accuracy, the life and death of all kind of organisms, "Future" uses mainly biological laws in all its attempts to predict the life of societies, and civilizations, humans, machines, and economic ecosystems. Of course the existence of an individual particle is impossible, but the study of groups and masses it is however feasible, in the same manner that we cannot understand the movement of a simple atom, or particle which has a minimal degree of chaos and freedom, but we do know the laws of aggregates in all sciences. For example we cannot predict the movement of a molecule but we do have laws for masses of molecules and gases. In history it happens the same.While the individual is free, the mass is not because it depends for its survival of external networks of energy and information that act upon groups and masses equalling their behavior. In that sense the key to understand our models able to predict The Future, is an Organic Theory of the Universe, developped in the earlier 90s by the webmaster of this magazine, which unifies our understanding of the systems of the Universe, under very simple laws of organization. The application of those evolutionary models to History and Economics gave birth to a Theory of Unification, of both sciences, based in a few but solid set of laws able to describe the cycles, rhythms and facts of history and economics, given the simmilarities we can establish between humans societies and cellular organisms, on one side, and ecosystems and markets on the other. I do hope that if you have the intellectual freedom of mind to understand them, you do have also the minimal ethics required to use that knowledge not only for your personal progress but for the common good.