The book, The Fourth Turning, has been coming up in a lot of podcasts that I’ve been listening to during the past several years, and more recently has come up in some personal conversations that I’ve had.

In the book, William Strauss and Neil Howe propose that Anglo-American history follows a recurring cycle of four “turnings,” each lasting about 20–25 years and corresponding to generational archetypes and societal moods. A full cycle, or saeculum, spans roughly 80–100 years — the length of a long human life. They argue that:

• Each generation plays a role in shaping and responding to the turning they come of age in.
• A new Fourth Turning would begin in the mid-2000s and climax sometime in the 2020s, potentially involving a major political or economic crisis.
• While crisis is inevitable, the outcome is not — societies can emerge stronger or fall apart, depending on leadership and choices.

In essence, the book combines history, sociology, and generational theory to suggest that we’re in a predictable historical rhythm — and that a major societal transformation is due.

That all sounds interesting and reasonable, but overall, I found the book to be very unsatisfying and unconvincing.  There are a lot of things that sound very sophisticated and scientific about their theory, but I couldn’t help but feel like they vastly overstate its merits.  My own thinking has been greatly influenced by the great thinkers in Austrian economics, and I found the fourth turning framework to be completely incompatible with many of the key insights that were developed by thinkers such as Ludwig Von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray Rothbard.  In this post I’m hoping to contrast the ideas of the Austrians and how they clash not only with The Fourth Turning (TFT) theory, but also many other popular ideas taken for granted by mainstream sociologists and historians.

I’d like to begin with the underlying premise from TFT.  The underlying premise is that human action is somewhat deterministic, meaning that beginning with certain known facts, the outcome can be predetermined or at least accurately forecasted.  Otherwise, it would be impossible to make sweeping predictions about entire generational behavior. This is epistemologically completely contrary to Austrian economics, which is rooted in methodological individualism and the axiom of human action — that individuals act purposefully to achieve chosen ends. From this standpoint, The Fourth Turning’s core assumption — that history unfolds in predictable, cyclical patterns tied to generational archetypes — represents a form of historical determinism that Austrians strongly reject.

Strauss and Howe’s theory suggests that large, impersonal forces drive history forward in semi-mechanical cycles, reducing individual agency. In contrast, Mises emphasizes that history is the result of individual choices, not external inevitabilities. To Austrians, history is contingent, not cyclically predetermined.

As Mises writes in Theory and History, historical events “do not follow fixed patterns,” and any attempt to discern scientific laws or cycles in history is a misapplication of natural science methods to the social sciences — a form of scientism, which Hayek criticized heavily in The Counter-Revolution of Science.

At its core, this is the same mistaken idea that collectivists and central planners all assume; the idea that society is somehow mechanistic, and that they have the knowledge to tweak society and somehow improve it.

Strauss and Howe’s methodology is also flawed, in that it relies on broad historical narratives, generational labeling (e.g., “Prophets,” “Nomads,” “Heroes,” “Artists”), and post hoc pattern recognition. Many of their assertions are so vague and general that it is more reminiscent of astrology or palm reading than a scientific theory. This stands in opposition to Austrian methodology, which insists on:

• A priori theory derived from logical reasoning about human action (praxeology),
• Deep respect for subjective value and radical uncertainty, and
• Rejection of aggregate historical patterns as predictive tools.

To Austrians, attempting to make empirical, cyclical forecasts of social change — such as predicting a major societal upheaval every 80–100 years — lacks scientific rigor and ignores the complexity and unpredictability of human decision-making.

Just as Keynesians attempt to predict market outcomes using flawed empirical models, Strauss and Howe attempt to predict societal outcomes using broad, data-deficient generational patterns. This is one of the core disagreements that Austrians have had with mainstream Keynesian economists for decades.  Keynesians have tried to use mathematical models and empirical data, thinking that somehow this will lead to predictable outcomes. This is why they’re so obsessed with using government data on everything from the unemployment rate to inflation statistics, to things like the “Phillips Curve, etc., etc.  This methodology is completely flawed. They have what Austrians have called “science envy” and are trying to apply the same methods that scientists in the hard sciences of physics and chemistry have used successfully, but which fail miserably when used in the study of human action.

Hayek’s concept of the knowledge problem — the idea that knowledge is dispersed among individuals and cannot be centrally aggregated or predicted — undermines the confidence Strauss and Howe have in macro-historical forecasting. If it is impossible for central planners to anticipate market outcomes, it is equally impossible for historians to scientifically forecast social upheavals decades in advance based on generational patterns.

This critique extends to the authors’ implicit suggestion that we can “prepare” for a Fourth Turning once it is identified — an idea reminiscent of the top-down planning mindset Austrians argue against.

Austrians also caution against psychologizing economic and historical behavior without rigorous theory. Assigning fixed personality traits to entire generations and claiming they “shape history” smacks of collectivism and essentialism, which Austrians reject. Individuals may share experiences, but how they interpret and respond to them varies greatly.

From an Austrian economics perspective, The Fourth Turning is an intriguing narrative, but ultimately methodologically flawed. Its deterministic, cyclical view of history conflicts with the Austrian emphasis on individual agency, subjectivity, and the unpredictability of human action. Austrians would view its forecasts as speculative storytelling rather than science — a modern mythology masquerading as social theory.

It’s understandable why many find the Fourth Turning framework compelling — it offers clarity and coherence about something that everyone senses to be true. But it’s precisely that seductive simplicity that makes it dangerous from an Austrian point of view. Central planning always sounds seductive. That’s why the masses clamor for government to fix every problem that comes along. While TFT doesn’t argue for some government program to avoid the fourth turning, the theory implies that maybe that would be possible.

There are other gaping holes in their theory.  Does this fourth turning theory only pertain to Anglo-Americans? If so, why?  If not, why not?  The cycles that they describe seem very arbitrary. They seem to cherry-pick things from history and ignore other equally important things. For example, if you were alive during the Cuban missile crisis, or the Kennedy assassination, or Watergate, or the abandonment of the gold standard, or the Vietnam war…why are those considered less relevant to a fourth turning than anything that we’re facing now? It all seems completely arbitrary.  Plus, it’s unfalsifiable.

My suspicion is that Mises and Hayek would both be extremely skeptical and critical of the ideas in TFT.  But don’t take my word for it. Here are some quotes that I found that seem like they would be relevant to the claims made in TFT:

“There is no such thing as a ‘law of history’ which would enable us to predict the future course of events.”
— Ludwig Von Mises – Theory and History

“The fundamental deficiency implied in all attempts to construct a science of history is that they disregard the fact that history deals with human action.”
— Ludwig Von Mises – Theory and History

“It is largely because the naive mind can conceive of social processes only in terms of conscious direction that the belief in inevitable historical development has proved so attractive.”
—F. A. Hayek – The Counter-Revolution of Science

“There are no constants in human behavior… and you cannot interpret social phenomena as you do natural ones.”
— Paraphrased from Hayek’s Nobel Prize Lecture

Finally, Austrians are wary of any theory that reifies collectives—be they classes, races, or generations—and assigns them essential characteristics. TFT is guilty of this essentialism in its treatment of generational cohorts as fixed entities with consistent behavioral traits. Austrians reject this as both ethically dubious and intellectually lazy.

From an Austrian perspective, The Fourth Turning may offer a compelling narrative, but it is methodologically unsound and epistemologically dangerous. It denies individual agency, embraces deterministic cycles, and applies the flawed logic of the physical sciences to the domain of human action. While its appeal is understandable in times of uncertainty, Austrians would urge caution: true understanding comes not from grand narratives, but from rigorous attention to individual choices, subjective values, and institutional incentives—one action at a time.