This is one of the things I find exceedingly irritating about Peter Turchin. As a general concept the asabiya story sounds plausible to me. But to arbitrarily narrow it to specifically a story about inequality of aboveboard *wealth*, as opposed to privilege? That seems like dishonest and stupid sleight of hand, fashionable nonsense that only survives because it’s so delicious to the post-1875 left alliance. My experience of human nature is that while inequality of wealth certainly creates important frictions, lying and self-dealing and oathbreaking and other kinds of corruption create qualitatively more. Modern history seems consistent with this: admittedly leftists can earnestly claim that unproductive states are suffering from inequality of wealth, but corruption sure looks more important to me. Modern anecdotal sociology also seems consistent with this: cultures where extended families have a heavy duty to share wealth overlap considerably with cultures where extended families have a heavy duty to do corrupt favors for each other at outsiders’ expense. And old stories seem consistent with this as well: consider David and Bathsheba; or the Spartan (recent victor in the Peloponnesian War, IIRC) ribbing the Athenian about government corruption shortly after the first big battle in _Anabasis_; or “when Adam delved and Eve span…”

Feminist? Sell female empowerment.

Communist? Imbue your product with the essence of the proletariat.

American communism learned from Soviet communism — they know they need people to sell and manage communism — so they subvert the business world.

Look at the mortgage mess. Huge amounts of brain power dedicated to doing something stupid and communist in aim — giving houses to NAMs. The amount of brain power involved in that scheme was staggering — pricing derivatives that most people don’t even understand, securitizing them, writing computer code to move all the data point A to point B. The Soviets could only dream of one of their schemes being implemented in such a well executed manner. Why? Because we let “hot babes, rich guys, super salesmen, cunning financiers, telegenic self-promoters and charismatic politicians” whet their beaks under the condition that they never question the underlying scheme.