Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an intellectual brawler, a philosophical pugilist. His new book, Skin in the Game, put me in mind of the final scene of The Godfather or Reservoir Dogs: everybody gets whacked. Bankers and bureaucrats, warmongers and wonks – all are targeted by Taleb.
For the Lebanese-American thinker, their shared sin is that (with some exceptions) they lack “skin in the game”. By this, Taleb means they are insulated from the consequences of their actions: they do not have “a share of the harm” or “pay a penalty if something goes wrong”. This “asymmetry in risk bearing”, he warns, leads to “imbalances”, “black swans” (the rare but high-impact events described in his 2007 mega-seller) and “potentially, to systemic ruin”.
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