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Online Jobs from Home: Online Juror

Working as an online juror is one of those online jobs from home that seems too good to be true. It's actually a legitimate way to make money. As the name suggests, you'll act as a juror on a case. The difference between real jury duty and online jury duty is that the trial isn't real, and you'll get paid for offering feedback to attorneys. The pay that you would receive for your time is a lot more than a full day's work as juror in a real trial.

Online Juror Job Description

The gist of working as an online juror is to review legal cases, provide feedback and get paid. It's one of those straight forward online jobs from home that doesn't involve a profit sharing scheme or payments based on a commission. Your duties would involve:

Reviewing a case summary

Filling out a questionnaire about the case you review

Deliberating with other online jurors for some cases, depending on the website

You don't need any special training or a certain level of education to work as an online juror. The purpose of this type of work is for attorneys to get a feel for how ordinary people in your area might decide a case. With that said, you probably can't work as an online juror if you're an attorney or have any legal training.

Salary for Online Jurors

Many online juror services pay you for your time to review each case. The service will estimate how long it should take you to review and evaluate a case, and offer compensation based on the time it takes. The salary range is $10 to $60 per case, which can amount to as much as $60 per hour. The number of cases that are pending in the venue where you reside determines how much money you can make as online juror. For example, if the attorneys who request online jurors have few trials pending in your area, then you may not get enough invitations to review a case to make a significant amount. It doesn't benefit lawyers to seek the opinions of jurors who don't reside in the same community where the case will be tried. How close you are to the community affected by the case shapes your attitude and opinion about the case. You may have to work for multiple online juror services or supplement the work with other online jobs from home.

Where to Land an Online Juror Job

The best way to land an online juror job is to enroll as a juror with one of the companies that offer it as a service to attorneys. Some of the popular websites include:

Onlineverdict.com

Ejury.com

JuryTest.net

TrialJuries.com

You have to enroll with each of these, and if you meet the criteria, you'll receive cases to review. You can accept or deny invitations and even change your mind in the middle of a case for some of these websites. You'll only get paid for actually completing your review of a case.

Add online juror to your list of possible online jobs from home. It can supplement your income and provide you with intellectual stimulation.

Home-Based Jobs for Technical Moms

When exploring your options for home-based jobs, don't forget jobs that require a technical background if you've got those skills. Technical moms are in a great position to land higher paying home-based jobs, because of the high demand and fewer workers available, when compared to other industries. Some of the jobs you could be doing today to make a living working at home are:

Technical Support

When you call a toll-free number for technical assistance, you may have been transferred to a work-at-home mom to help your resolve your issues. You'd never know it, because you dialed the company's number and it sounds like you're dealing with someone working in the office. There's special equipment that the employer will send to you to do your job and make your telephone line sound as if you're working in an office cubicle. You'll also get software to connect directly to supervisors and other technical support staff in case you cannot resolve an issue on your own. It's a great home-based job for moms who have relevant skills. The one drawback is you don't have much flexibility in the hours you can work. It's like any call-center job, where you have to be available during a block of time assigned to you. At least you get to choose your hours up front.

Web Designer

Little knowledge of HTML coding is required to build a website, with all of the user friendly publishing tools available. You can download many great web builder tools for free, which means you can apply for jobs without any initial investment. The technical skills are important for customization purposes. You can learn the "quirks" of a program you choose easily, as there are so many tutorials and forums for most software programs. Home-based jobs for web designers are posted on any job board that lists work-at-home opportunities, unless the job board specializes in certain types of jobs.

Technical Writer

Merge your writing and technical skills by applying for freelance writing jobs. Some writing jobs require the writer to have technical skills in order to apply. Many writers do not have those skills, making these great home-based jobs to help your carve out a niche in the freelance writing arena. Some assignments might include:

Writing user manuals

White papers on technical issues

Blog posts on tech trends and news

Check freelance writing jobs websites for technical writing positions. Have at least two writing samples ready to submit to prospective employers.

Technology Consultant

There are some home-based jobs in consulting, and some of them are technology consulting jobs. You're already a problem-solver if you work with technology , so why not leverage those skills as a consultant. Make recommendations to companies to help them resolve the technical problems that keep their businesses from running well. Employers are willing to pay for the advice and offer short-term as well as long-term projects.

Pick at least five technical home-based jobs boards to visit daily, and apply for everything that match your interests and skills until you have more work than you can handle.

Home-Based Jobs for Creative Moms

Home based jobs allow moms to work from home while caring for their children and residence. Recently, more and more companies have been seeking freelance or telecommute workers to fill open positions, and more and more moms have been setting up at-home businesses to sell their skills and abilities. For the creative mom, finding a home-based job can be quite simple if she knows where to look and how to sell herself.

Sewing

With a little advertising and planning, simple, basic sewing skills can be used to make a huge income. Children's clothing, baby gifts and other easy designs are customizable in fabrics and trim that can make each piece unique. Often, a single pattern for a dress or bag can create hundreds of different designs. If you can sew, consider what you sew best and purchase an inexpensive, basic pattern. At first, choose five or six different fabrics and trims to offer customers, but also be open to finding other fabrics should a customer dislike your selection. Advertise your "unique goods" in schools, daycares and exercise classes, and you will soon have more customers than you can handle.

Writing

Writing is a talent, not a skill. Many people in professional, academic and business positions are able to formulate ideas, but not properly translate their ideas and explanations to paper. If you are able to write technical or creative documents, letters or papers, it is extremely easy to sell your skill. Work-at-home job websites often contain dozens if not hundreds of editing and writing jobs that are looking for temporary, contract or permanent employees. At first, search for and accept the lower paying, smaller jobs to build up a resume. After just a little experience, you may be surprised at the demand for your services.

Graphic Designers

Individuals trained and experienced in graphic design can pretty much choose from hundreds of online temporary, contract or permanent jobs. These jobs are always in demand and can build up to quite a nice yearly income. Again, searching work-at-home websites can generate many leads that, in just a short time, will equal a full-time position.

Childcare and Crafts

Only a mom understands how desperate parents can be to have free time. If you are an artsy person, consider having a bi-monthly class or parents night out events, where you can entertain the children with arts and crafts. Charging an hourly or per-child fee, plus the cost of the art supplies, will add up to a nice paycheck and fully cover your costs for supplies. If you find demand to be so high, you may invite younger teenagers to work as your assistants. You can pay these assistants a small fee or you can create a list of their names to hand out to the parents when they pick up their children, making your referral for babysitting jobs their payment.

Interior Design

Many women would love help with the interior design in their homes, but are unable to pay the fees normally charged by interior designers. If you have any experience with home decorating, even if that experience consists of constant compliments on your decorating, try offering yourself as a decorating consultant. Your fees as a consultant would be substantially lower than interior designers because you would not be searching for furniture, but instead only recommending what to look for to best outfit the space.

Games

Uphill Rush Race

Game Information

Drive in 1 of the 12 vehicles and perform spectacular stunts in the air!

Instructions

· Movements = Use Arrow Keys
· Jump = Use Space Bar

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM: It is 60 years since Belgium last defeated Sweden in a Davis Cup by BNP Paribas tie, but they will fancy their chances of ending that sorry run at the Royal Primerose Club in Brussels this weekend.

Without Robin Soderling, the Swedish threat is severely blunted and they risk playing outside of the World Group for the first time since 2000.

Sweden's hopes of holding on to their proud record appear slim. Even without former world No. 4 Soderling, who has been sidelined for more than a year with illness, Sweden were considered outsiders for this tie.

They must now also face Belgium minus their leading doubles player Robert Lindstedt.

Enqvist said: "We did a last test this morning. He's been having a real hectic schedule and his body is just saying 'no'.

"He was eager to play this tie. He has a big heart for Davis Cup but this time, unfortunately, we had to pull him out of the team."

Belgium's bid to bounce straight back to the World Group will begin with Steve Darcis facing Michael Ryderstedt, to be followed by David Goffin against Lindstedt's replacement, Andreas Vinciguerra. Vinciguerra, who recently became a father for the first time, has not played a match since last December.

Belgium's No. 2, Darcis, is finishing the year strongly. Notable recent scalps include Tomas Berdych at the Olympic Games, as well as Andy Roddick at last month's ATP event in Winston-Salem.

Goffin, meanwhile, has enjoyed an incredible year. He came to international prominence during Roland Garros, when he reached the round of 16 as a lucky loser and proceeded to take the first set off Roger Federer, before losing in four.

The 21-year-old made his Davis Cup debut in April, defeating Josh Goodall of Great Britain in what proved the decisive fourth rubber. He now enters only his second-ever tie as Belgium's No. 1.

Goffin said: "Steve starts on Friday and I hope it will be one-love for us to make it more comfortable for me."

Enqvist has placed much on the shoulders of Ryderstedt, who is due to play singles and doubles.

The world ranked No. 457 said: "They are big favourites in every match but we've just got to go out there and believe - that's the only way."

Belgium's previous Davis Cup victory over Sweden came at the Royal Leopold Club in Brussels, in June 1952. Since then, the two nations have met just four times, with Sweden successful on each occasion.

Not since February 1996 have the paths of Belgium and Sweden crossed in Davis Cup. Sweden won that tie 4-1, with Belgium's solitary success coming from current team captain, Johan van Herck. Indeed, he overcame his opposite number 16 years on, Thomas Enqvist, in straight sets.

Van Herck said: "It was 3-zero already but it was nice because he was a top 10 player.

"But this is a total different story. They have some players who are not here. We are in a stronger position and will try to change the score around."

A great orator he is not, but Ray Sefo, newly minted president of the upstart World Series of Fighting promotion, has only the most noble of intentions.

“We look to put the fans and fighters first and to promote the best events,” Sefo said during a press conference last week.

Make that “event,” in the singular form, at least for now. Sefo’s first gaffe as head of the fledgling organization was to announce that the WSOF had signed a one-year contract with NBC Sports, with plans to hold eight to 10 events over the duration of that deal. Not so fast, replied the network.

A day after the press conference, an NBC representative told MMAFighting.com that its current agreement with the promotion is for one night only. After the Nov. 3 debut, everything will be evaluated and examined to determine how to best move forward. In theory, if NBC Sports is not happy with the product, WSOF could be a one-hit wonder. As it turns out, Sefo’s declaration was rooted more in cautious optimism than plain fact. However, the former K-1 standout stands by his announcement that WSOF has a one-year deal with NBC Sports.

Despite the mix-up, Sefo has reason to feel good. Even if it is just on a trial basis, it is a big deal for a brand new MMA promotion to be linked with such an established network. Although NBC Sports is not new to the fight game -- it previously broadcast World Extreme Cagefighting events when it was known as Versus -- the NBC name tends to resonate more with the masses.

File Photo

Torres is one of the WSOF centerpieces.

In hopes of making a splash with its initial event, WSOF has put together a solid lineup of recognizable names: Miguel Torres, Gerald Harris, Gesias “JZ” Cavalcante, Josh Burkman, Ronys Torres and Bobby Lashley, to name a few. This by itself is not unique.

Organizations such as One Fighting Championship, ProElite, Shark Fights and Super Fight League have assembled their own collections of notables for various events. None of the aforementioned promotions had or have anything resembling a major television contract, however, which is why the stakes will be so high for WSOF in November.

Rumor has it that the promotion has been quite generous with its contracts, and it had to be in order to acquire the type of name value necessary to please the network suits. Following the Bellator Fighting Championships model of building relatively unknown prospects through tournaments would have been ideal -- and probably cheaper -- but the presence of NBC is a game changer.

“For me, it’s a new future, it’s a bright future. Being on NBC Sports is a huge thing for me and a big deal for all of us,” Torres said. “It was the best decision for me to come here. I’m happy with the way things worked out.”

It has to feel like a new lease on life for Torres, who was knocked out by the fast-rising Michael McDonald in his last UFC appearance. Torres is a few years removed from a 17-fight winning streak that brought him the WEC bantamweight title and inserted him into discussions regarding the world’s best pound-for-pound talents. He has declined since then, posting a 3-4 record and attracting more attention for his Twitter feed than his feats in the cage.

Still, the WSOF is counting on Torres to carry his weight as a headliner. It is counting on the likes of Harris, Burkman and Cavalcante to reach greater heights than they did with their previous, more well-known employers. It is counting on Lashley to be more than just an imposing physical specimen with a sports entertainment background.

To keep those guys coming back and to attract more talent for future shows, Sefo hopes to maintain a good relationship with his athletes. If offers start to pour in from other promotions or other contractual issues arise, he will allow his fighters to explore their options. Sefo, a longtime professional kickboxer with some MMA experience, is well aware of the hardships one must endure to survive in this profession, so it is not surprising that being fair to the fighters is among his foremost goals. How realistic that is remains to be seen.

“I understand the goal for every fighter out there is to get to the UFC. And so they should, as it’s the beast of the MMA world right now,” Sefo said. “But we’re not focusing on that. We’re focusing on what we bring to the table, which is creating more opportunities for fighters.”

For those opportunities to remain plentiful, Sefo and the WSOF must impress NBC Sports and a legion of fickle MMA fans on Nov. 3. It will not be easy, especially considering that it will be going up against a Strikeforce card featuring the likes of Daniel Cormier, Frank Mir and Luke Rockhold. Sefo is confident that enough fans will choose his product. It is on free TV, after all. Where the WSOF goes from there is anybody’s guess.

A TV deal with a big-time network, a recognizable cast of fighters and a passionate president is not a bad start. Mistakes are inevitable in a new organization, as Sefo himself has already demonstrated. Let us just hope the WSOF does not crash and burn before it truly gets off the ground. It is only fair to the fighters and fans that it gets a chance to succeed.

A great orator he is not, but Ray Sefo, newly minted president of the upstart World Series of Fighting promotion, has only the most noble of intentions.

“We look to put the fans and fighters first and to promote the best events,” Sefo said during a press conference last week.

File Photo

Torres is one of the WSOF centerpieces.

Nature

Nature

Sometimes, history really does seem to repeat itself. After the US Civil War, for example, a wave of urban violence fuelled by ethnic and class resentment swept across the country, peaking in about 1870. Internal strife spiked again in around 1920, when race riots, workers' strikes and a surge of anti-Communist feeling led many people to think that revolution was imminent. And in around 1970, unrest crested once more, with violent student demonstrations, political assassinations, riots and terrorism (see 'Cycles of violence').

To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the appearance of three peaks of political instability at roughly 50-year intervals is not a coincidence. For the past 15 years, Turchin has been taking the mathematical techniques that once allowed him to track predator–prey cycles in forest ecosystems, and applying them to human history. He has analysed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way1. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. “I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,” he adds.

Turchin's approach — which he calls cliodynamics after Clio, the ancient Greek muse of history — is part of a groundswell of efforts to apply scientific methods to history by identifying and modelling the broad social forces that Turchin and his colleagues say shape all human societies. It is an attempt to show that “history is not 'just one damn thing after another'”, says Turchin, paraphrasing a saying often attributed to the late British historian Arnold Toynbee.

More related stories

Cliodynamics is viewed with deep scepticism by most academic historians, who tend to see history as a complex stew of chance, individual foibles and one-of-a-kind situations that no broad-brush 'science of history' will ever capture. “After a century of grand theory, from Marxism and social Darwinism to structuralism and postmodernism, most historians have abandoned the belief in general laws,” said Robert Darnton, a cultural historian at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a column written in 1999.

Most think that phenomena such as political instability should be understood by constructing detailed narratives of what actually happened — always looking for patterns and regularities, but never forgetting that each outbreak emerged from a particular time and place. “We're doing what can be done, as opposed to aspiring after what can't,” says Daniel Szechi, who studies early-modern history at the University of Manchester, UK. “We're just too ignorant” to identify meaningful cycles, he adds.

But Turchin and his allies contend that the time is ripe to revisit general laws, thanks to tools such as nonlinear mathematics, simulations that can model the interactions of thousands or millions of individuals at once, and informatics technologies for gathering and analysing huge databases of historical information. And for some academics, at least, cliodynamics can't come a moment too soon. “Historians need to abandon the habit of thinking that it's enough to informally point to a sample of cases and to claim that observations generalize,” says Joseph Bulbulia, who studies the evolution of religion at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

From ecology to history

Turchin conceived cliodynamics during what he jokingly calls a midlife crisis: it was 1997, he was 40 years old, and he had come to feel that all the major ecological questions about population dynamics had been answered. History seemed to be the next frontier — perhaps because his father, the Russian computer scientist Valentin Turchin, had also wondered about the existence of general laws governing societies. (The elder Turchin's dissident writings about the origins of totalitarianism were among the reasons that the Soviet Union exiled him in 1977, after which he moved his family to the United States.)

What is new about cliodynamics isn't the search for patterns, Turchin explains. Historians have done valuable work correlating phenomena such as political instability with political, economic and demographic variables. What is different is the scale — Turchin and his colleagues are systematically collecting historical data that span centuries or even millennia — and the mathematical analysis of how the variables interact.

Periods of rioting and upheaval have recurred roughly every 50 years in US history.

BetTmann/Corbis (top); Topical Press Agency/Getty (middle); N. BOENZI/NEW YORK TIMES CO./GETTY (bottom)

In their analysis of long-term social trends, advocates of cliodynamics focus on four main variables: population numbers, social structure, state strength and political instability. Each variable is measured in several ways. Social structure, for example, relies on factors such as health inequality — measured using proxies including quantitative data on life expectancies — and wealth inequality, measured by the ratio of the largest fortune to the median wage. Choosing appropriate proxies can be a challenge, because relevant data are often hard to find. No proxy is perfect, the researchers concede. But they try to minimize the problem by choosing at least two proxies for each variable.

Then, drawing on all the sources they can find — historical databases, newspaper archives, ethnographic studies — Turchin and his colleagues plot these proxies over time and look for trends, hoping to identify historical patterns and markers of future events. For example, it seems that indicators of corruption increase and political cooperation unravels when a period of instability or violence is imminent. Such analysis also allows the researchers to track the order in which the changes occur, so that they can tease out useful correlations that might lead to cause–effect explanations.

Endless cycles

When Turchin refined the concept of cliodynamics with two colleagues — Sergey Nefedov of the Institute of History and Archaeology in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and Andrey Korotayev of the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow — the researchers found that two trends dominate the data on political instability. The first, which they call the secular cycle, extends over two to three centuries. It starts with a relatively egalitarian society, in which supply and demand for labour roughly balance out. In time, the population grows, labour supply outstrips demand, elites form and the living standards of the poorest fall. At a certain point, the society becomes top-heavy with elites, who start fighting for power. Political instability ensues and leads to collapse, and the cycle begins again.

Superimposed on that secular trend, the researchers observe a shorter cycle that spans 50 years — roughly two generations. Turchin calls this the fathers-and-sons cycle: the father responds violently to a perceived social injustice; the son lives with the miserable legacy of the resulting conflict and abstains; the third generation begins again. Turchin likens this cycle to a forest fire that ignites and burns out, until a sufficient amount of underbrush accumulates and the cycle recommences.

These two interacting cycles, he says, fit patterns of instability across Europe and Asia from the fifth century BC onwards. Together, they describe the bumpy transition of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire in the first century BC. He sees the same patterns in ancient Egypt, China and Russia, and says that they explain the timing of last year's Egyptian uprising, which took the regime of then-president Hosni Mubarak by surprise. At the time, the Egyptian economy was growing and poverty levels were among the lowest in the developing world, so the regime could reasonably have expected stability. In the decade leading up to the revolution, however, the country saw a quadrupling of graduates with no prospects — a marker of elite overproduction and hence, Turchin argues, trouble.

“Most historians have abandoned the belief in general laws.”

Turchin has also applied this approach to other historical puzzles, such as how religions grow. Several models have been proposed. One is that they grow in a linear fashion as nonbelievers spontaneously 'see the light'. Another model holds that the number of converts increases exponentially, like infections with a contagious disease, as outsiders come into contact with growing numbers of converts. Using several independent proxies, Turchin has mapped conversions to Islam in medieval Iran and Spain, and found that the data fit the contagion model most closely2. Using the same techniques, he has also shown that the model describes the expansion of Christianity in the first century AD, and of Mormonism since the Second World War.

Claudio Cioffi-Revilla, a computer social scientist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, welcomes cliodynamics as a natural complement to his own field: doing simulations using 'agent-based' computer models. Cioffi-Revilla and his team are developing one such model to capture the effects of modern-day climate change on the Rift Valley region in East Africa, a populous area that is in the grip of a drought. The model starts with a series of digital agents representing households and allows them to interact, following rules such as seasonal migration patterns and ethnic alliances. The researchers have already seen labour specialization and vulnerability to drought emerge spontaneously, and they hope eventually to be able to predict flows of refugees and identify potential conflict hotspots. Cioffi-Revilla says that cliodynamics could strengthen the model by providing the agents with rules extracted from historical data.

Global trends

Cliodynamics has another ally in Jack Goldstone, director of the Center for Global Policy at George Mason University and a member of the Political Instability Task Force, which is funded by the US Central Intelligence Agency to forecast events outside the United States. Goldstone has searched for cliodynamic patterns in past revolutions, and predicts that Egypt will face a few more years of struggle between radicals and moderates and 5–10 years of institution-building before it can regain stability. “It is possible but rare for revolutions to resolve rapidly,” he says. “Average time to build a new state is around a dozen years, and many take longer.”

But Goldstone cautions that cliodynamics is useful only for looking at broad trends. “For some aspects of history, a scientific or cliodynamic approach is suitable, natural and fruitful,” he says. For example, “when we map the frequency versus magnitude of an event — deaths in various battles in a war, casualties in natural disasters, years to rebuild a state — we find that there is a consistent pattern of higher frequencies at low magnitudes, and lower frequencies at high magnitudes, that follows a precise mathematical formula.” But when it comes to predicting unique events such as the Industrial Revolution, or the biography of a specific individual such as Benjamin Franklin, he says, the conventional historian's approach of assembling a narrative based on evidence is still best.

Herbert Gintis, a retired economist who is still actively researching the evolution of social complexity at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, also doubts that cliodynamics can predict specific historical events. But he thinks that the patterns and causal connections that it reveals can teach policy-makers valuable lessons about pitfalls to avoid, and actions that might forestall trouble. He offers the analogy of aviation: “You certainly can't predict when a plane is going to crash, but engineers recover the black box. They study it carefully, they find out why the plane crashed, and that's why so many fewer planes crash today than used to.”

None of these arguments, however, has done much to soften scepticism among historians in general. The essential weakness of any attempt to make predictions based on trends, says Szechi, is the appalling patchiness of historical information. Records can be preserved or destroyed by chance: in 1922, for example, fighting in the Four Courts area of Dublin during the Irish Civil War led to a fire that destroyed the country's entire medieval archive. More generally, says Szechi, knowledge tends to pool around narrow subject areas. “We can tell you in great detail what the grain prices were in a few towns in southern England in the Middle Ages,” he says. “But we can't tell you how most ordinary people lived their lives.”

Concerted efforts are now under way to fill those holes. Harvey Whitehouse, an anthropologist at the University of Oxford, UK, is overseeing the construction of a database of information about rituals, social structure and conflict around the globe since records began. It is a huge undertaking, involving historians, archaeologists, religious scholars, social scientists and even neuroscientists, and it will take decades to complete — assuming that funding can be found beyond the UK government's current 5-year commitment. But Whitehouse believes that the research that is feeding the database will complement Turchin's approach by throwing light on the immediate triggers of political violence. He argues3, for example, that for such violence to happen, individuals must begin to identify strongly with a political group. One powerful way for groups to cement that identification is through rituals, especially frightening, painful or otherwise emotional ones that create a body of vivid, shared memories.

“People form the impression that the most profound insights they have into their own personal history are shared by other people,” says Whitehouse, who explored this fusion of identities in an as-yet unpublished survey of revolutionary brigades in Misrata, Libya, last December, along with his colleague Brian McQuinn, an anthropologist at Oxford who studies civil wars. Only once such fusion has occurred do people become willing to fight and die for the group, he says. Therefore, if Turchin's prediction of unrest in the United States around 2020 is correct, Whitehouse would expect the next few years to see an increase in tightly knit US groups whose rituals have a threatening quality but promise great rewards.

Turchin can't say who those groups might be, what cause they will be fighting for or what form the violence will take. Previous bouts of turbulence were not dominated by any one issue, he says. But he already sees the warning signs of social strife, including a surplus of graduates and increasing inequality. “Inequality is almost always a bad thing for societies,” he says.

That said, Turchin insists that the violence is no more inevitable than an outbreak of measles. Just as an epidemic can be averted by an effective vaccine, violence can be prevented if society is prepared to learn from history — if the US government creates more jobs for graduates, say, or acts decisively to reduce inequality.

But perhaps revolution is the best, if not the only, remedy for severe social stresses. Gintis points out that he is old enough to have taken part in the most recent period of turbulence in the United States, which helped to secure civil rights for women and black people. Elites have been known to give power back to the majority, he says, but only under duress, to help restore order after a period of turmoil. “I'm not afraid of uprisings,” he says. “That's why we are where we are.”

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