Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
By this measure, the U.S. scores very poorly: 4 out of a possible 5 on the Fragility Index.
There is a certain logic to the idea that stability is a good predictor for future stability: if a nation’s economy and governance are stable and devoid of disorder, this trajectory of stability will be durable, right?
Well, actually, no. Nassim Nicholas Taleb and co-author Gregory F. Treverton argue in their essay The Calm Before the Storm: Why Volatility Signals Stability and Vice Versathat “the best indicator of a country’s future stability is not past stability but moderate volatility in the relatively recent past.”
Taleb and Treverton list five sources of systemic fragility:
“For countries, fragility has five principal sources: a centralized governing system, an undiversified economy, excessive debt and leverage, a lack of political variability, and no history of surviving past shocks. Applying these criteria, the world map looks a lot different. Disorderly regimes come out as safer bets than commonly thought, and seemingly placid states turn out to be ticking time bombs.”
These principles are drawn from Taleb’s work on fragility and anti-fragility as described in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.
These five factors function as a rough rating system to measure a nation’s fragility.Nations with near-zero scores in all five factors are anti-fragile (i.e. durable and able to weather crises) and nations with high scores in all five are fragile, i.e. prone to instability and failure when faced with crisis.
Let’s list all five sources of fragility:
1. centralized governing system
2. undiversified economy
3. excessive debt and leverage
4. lack of political variability
5. no history of surviving recent systemic shocks
How does the U.S. stack up? Let’s go through the list.
