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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ค. 2022
- A language, a flag, a national anthem and shared history-like a heart that has to pump harder to support a heavier body, the bigger a nation gets, the harder to curate an identity. Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks about scale and governance with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Taleb sings the virtues of smaller relative to larger and decentralized as much as possible relative to centralized. Along the way, he provides a framework for Russia's war against Ukraine and explains why the United States has thrived despite its size and scope.
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![[THE DIGITAL FACTORY] Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Antifragile](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/g2LYTUEOn20/mqdefault.jpg)
I call him N. N. TALEB NOW...I LEARN A LOT FROM THIS MAN .
Very refreshing discussion, enjoyed Talebs reframing on issues
this is so thought provoking.
Prof Taleb, thank you for the talk and you are looking quite fit! fantastic!
Thank you so much for doing this Mr. Taleb
As a programmer non-linearity is something one has to wrestle with daily, as it is normal for inefficient code to break down as input size increases, such that an efficient approach is often necessary for many things to be possible in the first place regardless of how powerful the hardware you have access too. Big and complex intuitively is a bad sign. Hence a world full of city states/federations of smaller city states has always been intuitively attractive to me due to their ability to adapt and self-correct (re-invent themselves) as global state inevitably changes over time, characteristics programmers intuitively find attractive when thinking of how to structure their code as requirements get larger. However, I couldn't help but want to write about Taleb's comments about the US model. I feel the importance of the organizational layer atop of 'the federation' is being 'skipped' over - that is, how 'self-correcting' the organizational layer is. After all, if that layer isn't effective, it makes longer term sense to just separate and the federation will never emerge in the first place (and probably be outcompeted by larger more 'inefficient' structures that can benefit from economies of scale). The US organizational layer is clearly doing very poorly at the 'self-correcting' aspect - mainly as they are too busy fighting with each other. Meanwhile, when I look at the Chinese, whenever they have a problem, they actually make moves to 'self-correct' due to the willingness to focus on the problem itself due to lack of internal fighting (of course, who knows how things will be in a few decades). I think what I am trying to say is, while I agree with a lot of what Taleb has said, there are additional dimensions that Taleb hasn't addressed fully (or maybe I just missed it). Regardless, it was an interesting watch. Big
Really interesting post you submitted - thanks. Just adding some thoughts in response to your "organizational layer" in the US model - whether it is effective at providing cohesion, whether it is self correcting. As a programmer you can relate to the notion of a protocol - programs specifically designed to co-ordinate the actions of sub programs. One way to think of the Constitution is just a protocol through which individual states relate to other states. There are many models of this overlaying layer that operate throughout the world - the EU most recently, the Constitutions of other federated systems like Canada, Australia and the UK. Other than the EU, these other federated unions have had a century or more of governance history behind them. They have proven successful. They too have navigated challenges posed by the wider world. While other federated systems learnt a great deal from the US experience in framing their own Constitutions, I don't see much of a feedback loop running the other way - that is, the US does not seek nor ponder information about other similar, successful federation arrangements. The thing about cross country comparisons is that it works like a lens that amplifies certain features not so apparent to those who choose not to question.
Your thoughts about the self correcting nature of China - and your perception that there is no infighting there that derails the clarity of the central planners dictates, is (IMO) fundamentally wrong. There is a broader point here that you are supporting - that centrally planned economies are "more efficient" and that social solutions they provide are better tailored to the circumstances of the problem presented. But the complexities of social life, particularly in a large, diverse country, vastly outweigh the complexity of the problem that an expert has to deal with. And then add in the distortions in centralized decision making because a centrally planned authority is concerned about its own survival. The history of centrally planned economies is a history of huge mistakes and large losses of life - here I draw your attention to Stalin's drive toward agricultural collectivisation in the early 1930s, the politicisation of scientific institutions and scientific investigation at this time in the USSR; the starvation it brought upon the people of the Ukraine; the death of 30 million people in Mao's great leap forward in the 1950s - I could go on. Can I also say - and I don't wish to offend you here - that in the 1930s, it was the technicians, the engineers - ordinary people like yourself - who admired and supported governments like Stalin or Hitler or Mussolini - because they were frustrated by failure of capitalism during the Great Depression, and wanted strong governments to cut through the noise and complaints, to progress industry and the economy.
The best “benefit of doubt” that one can observe is that at the start of the conversation he submitted that he is testing out his theories with Russ/Econtalk
@@dweller6065 China isn't really a "centrally planned economy" anymore, its a highly controlled highly regulated capitalism mixed with market socialism (state owned or publicly owned enterprises). The question here is one of political centralization or centralization of decision making not centralization of everything, in the Chinese system, you have a one party system run by internally elected politicians or decision makers. This reduces all the noise from 2 party system constantly fighting over how to run everything, and having one decision made only to be reversed a few years later. Of course the downside to this, is that while the country is run very "efficiently" , the population doesn't have that much of a say over what happens (they don't in the US either, but you can at least indirectly elect ppl that represent you , at least in theory).
I don't mean to sound like a braggard or like a Stalinist (I'm not btw) , but much of the so called "high death tolls due to collectivization" of the USSR and Mao's China are mythology rooted in cold war propaganda, when the reality is much more complex. Both Russia and China, as well as India, were backward massive high population agrarian societies that routinely experienced famines over the course of hundreds of years, this has as much to do with very large populations, large landmass as well as natural weather patterns, and environmental cycles. Now with that said, rapid collectivization of agriculture DID play a role in exacerbating famines in the early days of the USSR and China, the key word here is "rapid" not "collectivization". Both China and the USSR got rid of famines AFTER that initial period of collevtization and even improved morality rates, poverty ..etc. A quick note about the numbers also, last I checked credible scholarship (including of Chinese scholars in China) gives about 3 million during the great leap forward, that's about one order of magnitude less than what is usually presented. To be fair though, scholars still debate how much natural crop failures played a role versus incompetent and rapid collectivization, since information wasn't easy to come by in those days and in those particular regions, this debate will never really subside.
The so called "technocrats" that oversaw the collectivization were inexperienced novices that had little to no expertise in modern agriculture, you have to remember that these countries during those periods were quasi-feudal agrarian illiterates societies that were desperate to "catch up" to the modern world. In short those highly publicized famines were caused by bad crop yields and bad weather + rapid push for collectivization (key word rapid) + lack of expertise by the ppl managing. India for example had massive famines under British control , some larger than the great leap forward and the Ukranian Holodomor combined but no one blames this on "free markets" or "british control" or anything other than just "shit happens maybe bad weather". That's just to illustrate how ideologically skewed the discourse about these "failures" are.
Now to Hilter and Mussolini, both did not run a centrally planned economy, they ran a market economy with state regulations just like every modern mixed system but obviously for different purposes. Both became war economies which take a more centrally planned nature as war transpired, but that is the case for any country that gets into war. In other words they were state capitalist economies.
There is this myth that I see in western esp American political discourse that anything centralized is bad, and decentralized is always good, when in reality it really all just depends.
silver rule = no colonialism = no exploitation = sovereign choices to trade freely or isolate
I luv Mr. Taleb.💜💜
Right when I was open to reasssess Taleb he starts the podcast proposing etnomicrostates.
Have you ever had someone who's a proponent of modern monetary theory on econ talk? Like Warren Mosler or Stephanie Kelton?
Time stamping the video needed
43:06 I believe Russ misspoke. Mice are not antifragile vis-à-vis elephants. Mice are robust (contextually).
1:00:08 Walk softly and carry a big stick.
We don't live in a free world & untrue that we don't realise it because we are free.
🎉
40:30 best part
👍
I feel like the trade off he mentioned 1000 people 1 time or 1 person 1000 times, where he appears to favor the later than the former, contradicts philosophy that he has mentioned in either Random Walk or Black Swan where optionality produces the best result. People move to cities in party because of the serendipitous connections and I can't cite off the top of my head, but believe Taleb has mentioned this in the past. Most of his other ideas seem consistent, that these large systems hide hidden fragility, but I'm having hard time reconciling this one example. Why is that?
1000 people 1 time is cosmetically efficient in creating large numbers of connections with the risk that those 1000 people are not going to be invested in you(no skin in the game). Examples of this relationship are relationship with large corporate giving a minimal product to customer where they don't have investment in customer service to resolve disputes as they see customer service resources and dispute resolutions as a cost center and focus on shallow short term metrics like number of customer sales. Another good example is votes as metric to measure cost alignment of issues that politicians telegraph to the public. Both examples have a problem where a party doesn't have risk symmetry and they run high probabilities of socializing risk to others & in rare cases help accelerate the effects of black swan-like events.
Compare that with 1 person 1000 times creates strong deep connections in the network and both parties are invested(symmetrical risk) that both people are willing to cooperate to arise each other in succeeding in goals. These connections are the most resilient and usually anti fragile compared to large number of shallow connections. Examples of these are small regional banks, a parent to child relationship and small community with it's own standards for addressing issues of it's members. These examples are where risk symmetry is strong, investment in time to other parties is strong and is bidirectional and ppl take on decisions that are meant to preserve that small ingroup thus can intuitively grasp the concept of surviving volatile events rather than the other system that is typically rampant in bureaucracies(corporate and large nation states) where they indulge in risk transfer and privatization of benefits produced by the populace.
@@georgeokello8620 Thank you. Great comparison. So how do barbell strategies and optionality fit in?
If "a state is a body of laws", then social patterns that thrive under those laws are the organs of that body? Is that what institutions are?
Good discussion. Very surprisingly India which has one sixth of humanity and which has thrived as democracy and remained united for 75 years inspite of huge regional variation in terms of language culture history etc was totally missing in conversation. A very notable lapse
nothing would be wrong with secession or subdividing. in fact, centralized imposition of one’s will over a large minority is not worthwhile or sustainable.
Society doesn't scale. The coincidence of values functionally available to the few are enormously reduced as the population increases; More people>more diversity of values>fewer values that are common to all. There are societies (few enough people so that inter-group conflicts are expected to be handled privately), and then there are 'meta-societies', they are governed by extra social bodies whose purpose is to protect the ability for societies to thrive. When these extra social bodies begin to behave as if they are 'societies' then feedback loops are generated, the meaning of prices becomes opaque, binary, and unreliable.
Here is a podcast we did on NN Taleb recently. Worth checking out: th-cam.com/video/6KiLxIN0rlk/w-d-xo.html
is taleb an anarcho-syndicalist like chomsky? think about it, libertarian at large scale and communist at small scale ... subsidiarity, the way it should be, fully empowered republicanism with local control and large scale peace ... hands off from central, skin-in-the-game local !!
Medina does not mean city
1:01:50 Kosovo works 😂 Man, Taleb knows nothing. I will have to question all his claims throughout history.
@Fabio Eduardo, no, no, it is commonly known that Yugoslavia is destroyed by NATO and US. Plans for that was discovered in 1974. almost 20 years before. Also, England leaders made Yugoslavia by threthened Serbia leaders...long story. But Nassim Talleb use that example as perfect or like he knows history, but he is totaly superficial man.
Man, Nassim has not understand situation in Yugoslavia at all. More often I hear lies from him, and beleived him so much before and read all his books.
Roberts has had a tough time finding decent guests over the last few months. So let me be one more of those guys complaining about Taleb. "Von Myssess" (phonetic spelling), for God's sake!
Anyway, Taleb: self-important fool.
He has some really good ideas, but I agree he's not always right and he does tend to irritate me with his smugness.
@@hansfrankfurter2903 They're using his theories to create a resilient society. You release one little crisis after the next trying to build societies' response capacity for a black swan.