Regional differences as global advantages

This past Friday we had big thinker Nassim Taleb on SqueezePlay for an exclusive interview to ruminate the future of the global economy. Nassim was in Montreal for a speech that I had helped organize through my Salon Speakers Series. Both on air and at 357c - the old city Montreal private club founded by entrepreneur Daniel Langlois - Nassim was exceedingly complimentary of Canada, especially our regionalized politics, institutions and values.

As a staunch nationalist, I am usually the first to decry our lack of standardization and national coordination of everything from immigration policy to internal trade. That said, Nassim makes a lot of sense insofar as some of the biggest knock-on effects of the 2008 financial crisis were the result of governments and large corporations stripping out institutional safety barriers that insulated against Black Swan type events – all in the name of gaining supposed "efficiencies of scale" for taxpayers and investors alike.

Maybe our typical Canadian way of making everything about our country too complicated by half is in fact a national asset in a world where “too big to fail” remains unaddressed, and debt levels continue to soar. Time will tell if Nassim Taleb is right.

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