Antifragile Systems

[Brentb]

I'm new to this forum, and relatively new to anarchism. I just recently read Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy by Stefan Molyneux. One of the other critical facets on my intellectual journey from minarchism to anarchism was a book that I read over a year ago called Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don't Understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I did a search of the forum and found that this topic hasn't yet been discussed, but I've found it to be a powerful distinction or framework when thinking about complex systems.

 

Antifragile is a description for systems that gain from disorder or volatility. This is distinct from other descriptors such as "strong" or "robust" which describe systems that are merely indifferent to disorder or volatility.

 

For example a single restaurant is a very fragile system, their failure rate is very high, but the system of all restaurants in a given region is antifragile since the failure of each restaurant gives valuable information to the rest of the restaurants about what doesn't work. Another example is evolution where the failures individuals in a species often prevents those individuals from reproducing, and thus causing subsequent generations in the species to lack those qualities that caused failure.

 

So how does this relate to Anarchy? Governments appear to be antifragile since any time there is disorder or volatility in society they pass more laws or dictates which allow them grow and take "control" over a larger portion of human interaction. However, they cannot control human interaction, they can only set up barriers. Each barrier is supposed to be to prevent some failure from occurring. If it succeeds in preventing a specific type of failure from occurring, then that whole system becomes more fragile. If it fails (typically the case) to prevent that failure from occurring, then it still makes the overall system more fragile because barriers have two sides and consequently prevent others from entering or succeeding. For example "Too Big to Fail" policies give an unfair advantage to large banks over small ones, and a high minimum wage prevents lower skilled workers from entering the labor force.

 

This is only meant to be an introduction to the topic. There are many fascinating applications of this concept discussed in the book. I'll post a video that goes through some of that.

 

 

I found the first 3 minutes of this video incomprehensible, so you may want to skip ahead.

 

http://youtu.be/iEnmjMgP_Jo?t=3m

[Wuzzums]

An antifragile system is a system in which that which does not work does not get repeated. I was skeptical when you said the government is such a system, I think the society as a whole is antifragile and the state is just one of those things that doesn't work yet it gets repeated over and over again. But if I look at the government not as part of society but as an entity all on its own I can see your point. If the government's purpose is to oppress for its own benefit then the antifragility traits seem obvious.

At first it used slaves, then when that wasn't in its interest it abolished slavery, then it took freedoms little by little and whenever the livestock noticed it uses propaganda to hide the fact, against gay rights then for gay rights, against feminism then for feminism, and so on. If this is true it means it becomes more and more efficient. I read Taleb's book, and the implication of his theory is that antifragile systems can go on ad infinitum. Very gloom.