Appendix 4- Shocks To The System

Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Appendix four, shocks to the system. By the time you're hearing this, I will already be on the road for a run of shows in Austin on October 3, San Francisco on October 4, and Seattle on October 5. But if you want, you can still grab a ticket to any of those shows, and I think you should do that because it'll be a great time. I'm also looking forward to Boston, October 26, Washington DC, October 27, and Newark on October 29. Links to tickets for all of those shows are in the notes to this episode. Now unfortunately, since last we spoke, the Chicago date has been postponed due to scheduling issues out of my hands. If you bought tickets to it already, thank you, thank you very much. The venue will be reaching out about what happens next. It's beyond my control and purview, so unfortunately, I'm not gonna be in Chicago, but all other places, I will see you very, very soon. Now over the past few episodes, we have established that revolutions emerge from societies with sovereign regimes that were once successful. And not successful in the distant past, but successful quite recently. And quite recently successful because their political institutions modified and transformed with the times. It's tough for a political apparatus to go even a single century without significant modification. Even something as apparently timeless as the British monarchy has only lasted all these centuries thanks to major changes to the monarchy, like, for example, them not having any real power anymore. Here in The United States, we have this thing called the constitution, which was ratified in 1788. But there have been, at minimum, like, a half dozen major transformations to the prevailing constitutional regime over the past two hundred and thirty odd years. I mean, the constitution that was ratified wasn't even the constitution that was in effect, like, twenty years later. They were already amending the hell out of it. And it's been continually shifting to fit the structure of American society ever since. Now as we've discussed, the stable equilibrium of successful regimes is always dynamic and full of conflict. Political rules, structures, expectations evolve, grow, and shift constantly. No successful regime is successful because they are static. It's always seeing organic replacement of members of its ruling class and resultant changes in methods and objectives of statecraft as the political regime tends to be representative of and align with the prevailing productive forces. As those forces shift and transform, the state has to do the same while always maintaining this little laundry list of things it needs to do, balance the interests inside the ruling class, maintain stable revenue streams to cover expenses, keep up creditworthiness in the eyes of the banking system, and always, always, always keep a preponderance of force over all other potential political challengers. But the various regimes we've been dealing with, the regimes that become ancien regimes, …