Antifragile banking and monetary systems
'Fragility' is the well-known property of being easily breakable, of failing under moderate stress. The opposite property is 'antifragility,' a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb defines antifragility as the property exhibited by things that gain strength from stressors...
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| Published in: | The Cato journal 2013-10, Vol.33 (3), p.471-484 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | 'Fragility' is the well-known property of being easily breakable, of failing under moderate stress. The opposite property is 'antifragility,' a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Taleb defines antifragility as the property exhibited by things that gain strength from stressors and get stronger from failure, like evolution. An antifragile thing or system is stress-loving. What doesn't kill it makes it stronger. In this article the author considers how one might achieve antifragile banking and monetary systems. Much has been written about the theory and history of free banking systems that need not be repeated here. But it bears emphasizing that there is a beneficial logic of institutional evolution in monetary arrangements, which is most evident historically where governments have interfered least. The latest episode of banking and monetary fragility in an artificially centralized system, in stark contrast to the antifragility of a decentralized and evolutionarily grown system, gives you good reason to revisit the arguments for separation of money and state. Adapted from the source document. |
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| ISSN: | 0273-3072 1943-3468 |