Cycles of Change

Complex societies operate through multi-party transactions that require trust to function. When trust degrades, these systems do not fail linearly. They collapse multiplicatively. Understanding this mechanism explains why institutional decay accelerates during periods of social upheaval and why [...]

The architects of the American constitutional system expressed recurring concerns about the concentration of power in financial and governmental institutions. These concerns emerged from direct observation of how centralized authority functioned in European monarchies and colonial administration. [...]