Which is the least fragile: a mouse or an elephant? You know there's a trick somewhere and that I'll argue that it's the mouse. And you’d be right. 

It's obviously the mouse. The elephant is in trouble if it breaks a leg. On the other hand, you can't grab a mouse from its tail, toss it across the room and it would probably just run away.

Antifragility is a term coined by Nassim Taleb to describe the inverse of fragility. In this article I argue that the current political turmoil is possibly a good thing, from a quantitative perspective analysing antifragility.

When I think of a fragile thing or being, many things come to mind: a baby, a chandelier, my ex's bank account (hey, I didn't say which one), the Nationalist Party...

How can we deal with the fragility of each? If we were handling a chandelier, we’d carry it in robust boxes clearly marked ‘fragile’. We'd also take good care of the baby and ensure it is sheltered from bacteria, without overdoing it and preventing it from developing a resilient immune system. Similarly, babying kids until their teens isn't of much help, either. As for the PN's fragility, that deserves a whole book of its own.

We tend to think that the controls for fragility are robustness, that is, layers of safety; and resilience, which can be mathematically described as reducing the exposure to variability. This creates the elephant: strong, big, robust, resilient. It is very hard to get injured but essentially useless when it is. This can be also a career decision. Being a drydock worker and specialising in shipbuilding was the most robust and resilient career to choose 50 years ago. We know how that ended.

But resilience and robustness provide a false sense of security, making the whole system susceptible to collapse due to unexpected extreme events. Taleb has famously described these events as black swans

So should we start living in mud huts rather than brick and mortar buildings? Huts, after all, are less likely to crush us to death in the event of an earthquake. Well, no. Antifragility is about keeping exposure to possible upsides by not overdoing it with reducing variability.

Malta has been quite nimble in adapting - from gaming laws to the recent push towards Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain technology legislation. In that respect, Malta has been building an antifragile economic system. However, we have been building a robust and resilient party in power. A party which just two months ago could aim towards getting a two-thirds majority in the next general election.

We have also been over-optimising the economy, at the expense of leaving us not nimble enough for future upsides (most firms cannot find enough good job candidates) and with infrastructure not coping.

The Black Swan that has shocked the system was Daphne Caruana Galizia's brutal killing, independent of who killed her or why. Black Swans have a knack taking a while before their effect is felt. This current mayhem in Castille put a stop to having a robust and resilient government.

There is some upside to this, though. We now have the chance to continue building an antifragile Malta.

Now that the system is in shock, we have the opportunity to start guarding against having an overly resilient country that can be brought to its knees by one event. We need to strive for an antifragile Malta in all aspects. The first and most obvious way is by providing space and time room for our infrastructure to catch up with the nation.

There is also work to do in reforming the political sphere. Let's not create a Phoenix, and end up with two parties that are reborn even stronger, but rather a Hydra that grows two heads once you cut one.

Dominic Cortis is an actuary. He recently read that the most enticing articles start with a question and conclude with a grand mission.

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