The Economist really misrepresents Turchin's theory by framing it as an issue of there being too many "brainy" people. Turchin's theory has more to do with overproduction of university degree holders, not with overproduction of smart people. Those are two different things. As far as I know, Turchin is not advocating for maintaining some sort of exploited underclass. More than 30% of U.S. adults have at least a bachelor's degree - about double the fraction that had one 40 years ago - which means that a bachelor's degree has limited value as a badge for gaining entrance to the higher strata of society. Note that this is independent of the question of whether it is good or bad for university degrees to be badges for entrance to the higher strata of society. In any case, the relative social value of a university education has massively dropped over the years.
