Notes from: Peter Turchin: Why Societies Fall Apart - Jolly Swagman Podcast
Turchin says three factors contribute to societal collapse: elite overproduction, government debt, and declining living standards.

He explains elite overproduction with a game he calls "modified musical chairs," where instead of removing chairs, you add multiple people to the game in every round. Eventually, people will start breaking the rules and violence will break out.  

In the United States, the ruling class is a coalition between the wealth holders and the credential holders.

Cancel culture: Elites used to have duels, now it's character assassination.

Lawyers are the most common profession among revolutionaries. Examples: Lenin, Castro, Robespierre, Lincoln, & Ghandi. If you want to get into political office, you get a prestigious law degree, like from Yale. Yale law school produces both elites and counter-elites; the distribution of Yale law grads' incomes is Bi modal, 200k vs 50to75k, creating an underclass of frustrated Yale law grads such as Stewart Rhodes, founder of the oath keepers.