Flattening the curve on societal crisis
What drove past societies into crisis? How did some of them manage to ‘flatten the curve’ and navigate their way out of periods of crisis? And, how can we learn from this to mitigate the impacts of our own looming social unrest?
SoDy Directors Dan Hoyer and Jim Bennett answer these questions and more on their recent Policy Brief for The European Money and Finance Forum (SUERF) written in collaboration with our Seshat: Global History Databank colleges.
Their analysis of societies who managed to avert crises reveals three vital policy recommendations, highly relevant today: 1) reverse growing inequality and restore balance in material and social well-being; 2) expand state capacity by building strong fiscal and bureaucratic institutions to manage the demands of collective bargaining, welfare, and regulation; and 3) the most wealthy and powerful citizens must eschew the logic of short-term gain and maintaining status-quo privileges in favour of longer-term public stability.
