Earlier quoted context omitted.
The young men -> instability theory is one I've heard several times. It makes sense, but is there evidence or some sort of seminal article about it?
In GP's context, no. The basics of the theory is a lack of incentives for young men to play the game, which leads to either proactive destruction or passive destruction. War usually leads to a surplus of women and a lack of male competition in any other area (jobs, land, wealth, opportunity), incentivizing men to play according to the social contract rather than being violent or giving up. In fact, some would say sta…
But I think the same type of question could be asked about your post. For example, the idea of "surplus men": I've heard this before, but is there some statistical "systems theory" view of history that can give us plots/data from which this will jump out?
Some parts of this are obviously true:
> War usually leads to a surplus of women
There are certainly many stories after the American Civil War about this -- about women who were unable to find husbands after the war.
> and a lack of male competition in any other area (jobs, land, wealth, opportunity)
This makes some sense (jobs, mates in particular), but I'm not sure about land, wealth; that could easily remain in the hands of elites.
> starting a war is seen as a society killing off its surplus men in hopes of getting something out of it (every war is a rich man's war)
I absolutely see this -- elites gain some geostrategic prize, at the expense of other mens' lives -- but, to clarify, I don't think the mechanism by which this helps elites is reduced domestic competition among men, since they're already elites; they've already won the domestic competition.
> incentivizing men to play according to the social contract rather than being violent or giving up.
It feels like the examples of ISIS, Hikikomori, and monasticism (Western and Eastern) are all relevant here. But it would help if a clear line of evidence could be assembled for one of those examples.
I sense that your argument comes from a conservative direction, but I'm aware of queer/feminist writing to the same effect, e.g.:
https://www.amazon.com/Loser-Sons-Authority-Avital-Ronell/dp...
I haven't read this beyond the summary, and don't know if its evidence is actually any good. But it's sometimes worth noticing when opposing political orientations agree on some underlying assumption.
Actually the same idea appears in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, in which part of her fantasy is that men's value has been reduced to peeing in a circle around the village to mark the territory. She does recognize that this "utopia" cannot last though (which she deals with by having a man invent the utopia in the first place -- "of course it's flawed").
So, plenty of people on the other side of the aisle do seem to agree with you about the "facts".