Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the Nations, States, and Scale

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2022

⏱️ 65 minutes

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Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics
0:07.0	and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:13.0	Institution.
0:14.0	Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links down
0:18.6	the information related to today's conversation.
0:21.6	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.3	We'd love to hear from you.
0:37.8	Today is June 20th, 2022 and my guest is Nasim Nicholas Talab.
0:42.7	This is Nasim's 10th appearance on econtalk.
0:45.8	He was last here in July of 2020 talking about the pandemic.
0:50.4	Nasim, welcome back to econtalk.
0:52.4	Thank you for inviting me again.
0:54.4	And thanks for allowing me to test my ideas on you before completing my books.
1:04.4	I also have to admit that a lot of my economic education comes from econtalk, the reason
1:10.6	for the economic reason because you read stuff in books, you learn it's a school, it
1:15.6	doesn't work in a podcast form because you have a conversation between two people.
1:21.7	Somehow it helps ideas again and stay there.
1:26.0	Well, I said it's a huge sacrifice to have you on again.
1:30.7	Like a few other guests, you're one of my most popular guests.
1:34.8	You're also a guest that occasionally there might be two or three people who ask me,
	...

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