Debt makes the world fragile

Efficiency in corporate enterprise goes against robustness, and the lack of robustness comes at the expense of accountability in the future. The loss of robustness in the guise of efficiency appears as a form of debt. Debt feels like a contradiction to market processes. Market transactions belong to strangers whereas debt transactions belong to familiars.

Turbulence increases when the positive and negative effects of rare events go up. It is not that there is an increase in rare events; it is that the effect of the rare event has increased. Fragility is what is really going on, not turbulence; and fragility goes up with leverage, and leverage goes up through the use of debt. Debt makes the world fragile, where small perturbations can have catastrophic consequences.