David Cameron is "extraordinary", he is "the best thing we have left on this planet" according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The celebrated Lebanese philosopher even boasts about his informal visits to Downing Street to meet Dave in his t-shirt and jeans. Taleb is the acclaimed author of The Black Swan; hailed by The Sunday Times as one of the twelve most influential books since the Second World War. The respect it seems is mutual, Cameron is a big fan of Taleb and his work, which is even said to have lent credibility to key aspects of the government's domestic economic policy.
The idea behind the Black Swan is as follows. For centuries it was believed that every swan in the world was white, this was the seemingly unshakable consensus among Europeans prior to the discovery of Australia and the black swan in the late eighteenth century. This is cited by Taleb as an example of how little we really know, how history is defined by the unpredictable and how we should be certain nothings certain.
To Taleb the ascent of Google was a black swan because it was unexpected and massively significant. The same can be said for the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001 - another surprising black swan that has defined the last decade. This is why Taleb advocates robustness, by having small government debt and small national institutions governments can be as prepared as it is possible to respond to black swans.
What Taleb calls "black swan thinking" might as well be a bible for the traditional conservative advocating cautionary spending and small government. Not only does black swan thinking vindicate Cameron's austerity measures but it also compliments his NHS and education policies because by devolving and localising power the public will supposedly become less reliant on single public sector policies. When a national government idea to improve education is rendered a failure by an unforeseen black swan the entire nation education system suffers but if a local idea fails then few suffer while others learn. It is a perfect antidote to the big government bureaucracy loathed by so many on the right.
There are, however, contradictions within this policy, for one thing it has to be implemented by Westminster. Throughout 2011 David Cameron and Andrew Lansley repeatedly told the country that the governments NHS reform was 'all about choice' because it would empower GP's, doctors and patients. The problem was that GP's, doctors and patients hated it and had no choice but to accept it. An idea designed to devolve power from the government had turned into a state directed top-down reorganisation carried out despite of the public's overwhelming disapproval, hardly the image the conservatives had wanted.
The year following the publication of Taleb's book a devastating black swan sent the world economy into turmoil, it was the collapse of Lehmann Brothers. In both Europe and America governments have spent the last four years managing damage limitation while attempting to assist a steady recovery. Since taking office Cameron has dogmatically stuck to a program of budget cuts in the name of defect reduction despite political and economic warnings to the contrary. This is textbook 'black swan thinking', because not only does Taleb promote government austerity, he also questions the confidence of experts, arguing that when it comes to predicting the unknown an experts guess is as good as anybodies. Cameron's Keynesian critics would, according to Taleb, be likely to simply assume that history will be consistent and predictable; what he would call "black swan blindness".
Of course we are all prone to 'black swan blindness', by their very definition Taleb's black swans are unforeseeable. However once a black swan has emerged we can and should learn from it and the economic crisis of the late 2000's was a black swan that we now know a lot about. It was caused by excess and an optimistic detachment from perceived consequences within the financial communities that western economies had become over reliant, or in some cases totally dependent on. I have since feared that, like in many other areas of life, if this brand of reckless behaviour continues unaltered and unchecked that it will simply be repeated.
Recently in a New York Times op-ed former Goldman Sachs investment banker Greg Smith warned that the bank was "toxic and destructive" and of a "decline in the firms moral fibre". If his testimony is accurate it means that Goldman Sachs will seek a profit at just about anybodies expense and it's hard to imagine much of a contrast throughout the rest of the financial service industry. The problem is that David Cameron and George Osborne continue to cater to the interests of the City of London as if it is our only feasible hope for a recovery. Not only have protected them from European taxes and regulation but they are also doing very little to reform or regulate their dangerous behaviour. This is a black swan that has taken money from the state only to continue indulging in the same old greedy patterns that may very well bring it right back to the doorstep of 11 Downing Street.
It was Albert Einstein who is famously said to have defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" and a failure to even attempt to change the way our economy works will inevitably result in the same problems over and over again. At present the British economy is effectively flatlining, 'growing' at around half the rate of its stagnate American counterpart. None of the measures in George Osborne's 2010 "budget for growth" have shown any signs of success. All we can do now is hope that the next black swan changes everything for the better.