Inequality, Historical Cycles, Greed and Human Stupidity

from Wickersham's Conscience blog.
Since at least Aristotle, historians and more recently sociologists have claimed to see cycles in human affairs. The difficulties are that they have never agreed on what those cycles are and where simple collective amnesia crosses the line into a bona fide historical cycle. The human brain evolved to see patterns, and discerns them even when they aren’t there. Is a significant part of the whole wacko conspiracy theory tendency.
One of the more recent claims to proof of historical cycles comes from Peter Turchin, who writes for Bloomberg and blogs at Social Evolution. Turchin  infers peaks of civil violence at 50-60 year intervals:


https://wickershamsconscience.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/inequality-historic-cycles-greed-and-human-stupidity/