How do social and economic cycles about?
There are quite a few cycles studied in the social sciences, e.g.
- KondratievWave (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave)
- BusinessCycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle)
An analytic models explanation this by the dynamics of supply and demand (see (German) http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplikator-Akzelerator-Modell).
I wonder if an explanation of this based on psychology could be as follows:
Let p (n) be the number of positive (negative) ideas/memes in circulation. With positive I mean constructive, based on cooperation, synergistic. With negative I mean destructive, exploitive, parasitic. Please note, that I do not want to value these, but characterize there mode of operation.
If you assume that
- The more positive memes there are, the more new positive and negative memes develop (constructive ideas give rise to further ideas, but also to ideas to exploit their effects).
- The more negative memes there are, the more new negative memes develop (destructive ideas give rise to new variants of the scheme).
- The more negative memes there are, the fewer new positive memes develop (because they have a less likely chance to work in a negative environment).
Mathematically:
p' = a11*p - a12*n
n' = a21*p + a22*n
This is a simple differential equation, that has cyclic [do you mean periodic?] solutions dependent on the aij.
Most variants on this scheme (e.g. non-linear) should be cyclic.
Does this sound plausible?
See also CategoryMemes, MemePool
CategoryEconomics CategoryMath