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The Math That Predicted the Revolutions Sweeping the Globe Right Now
The Math That Predicted the Revolutions Sweeping the Globe Right Now
It's happening in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, and beyond. Revolutions, unrest, and riots are sweeping the globe. The near-simultaneous eruption of violent protest can seem random and chaotic; inevitable symptoms of an unstable world. But there's at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices.
Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price indexa measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over timeand found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.
Bar-Yam built a model with the data, which then predicted that something like the Arab Spring would ensue just weeks before it did. Four days before Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation helped ignite the revolution that would spread across the region, NECSI submitted a government report that highlighted the risk that rising food prices posed to global stability. Now, the model has once again proven prescient2013 saw the third-highest food prices on record, and that's when the seeds for the conflicts across the world were sewn.
It's happening in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, and beyond. Revolutions, unrest, and riots are sweeping the globe. The near-simultaneous eruption of violent protest can seem random and chaotic; inevitable symptoms of an unstable world. But there's at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices.
Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we're seeing them now. The paper's author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price indexa measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over timeand found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.
Bar-Yam built a model with the data, which then predicted that something like the Arab Spring would ensue just weeks before it did. Four days before Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation helped ignite the revolution that would spread across the region, NECSI submitted a government report that highlighted the risk that rising food prices posed to global stability. Now, the model has once again proven prescient2013 saw the third-highest food prices on record, and that's when the seeds for the conflicts across the world were sewn.
Fascinating read, and I posit, as my friend GG suggests, that it is tied to energy, and in the future it will be tied to climate change.
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The Math That Predicted the Revolutions Sweeping the Globe Right Now (Original Post)
joshcryer
Feb 2014
OP
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)1. Interesting assessment
Thanks for posting. One wonders what effect the California drought will have on food production here in the US and on net exports. It certainly will not be a positive one.
pansypoo53219
(21,004 posts)2. famine=the french revolution.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)3. Yes. Happening now. nt
4dsc
(5,787 posts)4. peak oil has consequences.
Some day people will take notice of peak oil production.