That may sound simple-minded, but the implications are important. For instance, this rule of thumb would eliminate endlessly complicated regulation like the Dodd-Frank Act which may eventually sprawl to 30,000 pages of rules—creating loopholes ripe for cronyism, but it would leave open the possibility for simple, market-wide regulations like breaking up the banks, or banning credit-default swaps.

In other words, an antifragile economy is one that implements only regulations that aren’t needlessly complex, don’t pick winners and losers, and never add hosts of bureaucrats. By this token an antifragile economy also favors diverse, simple, small and medium-sized governments over the concentrated hive of bureaucrats that Washington has become. Taleb’s uses early America and Switzerland as models to follow, and I agree.

via jonblogden: Why We Should Be Using Nassim Taleb’s Neologism, Antifragile.