Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
I had previously read Antifragile and was amazed; it absolutely lived up to its reputation. But this final book in the Incerto series, Skin in the Game, feels less full of new knowledge and less surprising. Many times I read it in a muddled state. Perhaps the author had exhausted his talent. After all, he has been retired from the world for so long, and his core views have more or less already been output. The translation is also barely satisfactory, especially the Chinese title. The original Skin in the Game is much better.
Robert Rubin’s dealings. Some may think that overthrowing the aristocrats above us means civilization and progress, but that may not be the case.
In a system dominated by bureaucrats rather than aristocrats, a person’s actions are easily separated from the consequences he should have borne for them.
A centralized bureaucracy naturally creates bureaucrats who do not need to be responsible for the consequences of their actions. What should be done?
We have no choice but to decentralize power. To put it euphemistically, localize it, so as to reduce the number of decision-makers who are exempt from the consequences of the harm their mistakes cause others. Let those who do not bear the consequences of their own decisions make only small-impact decisions, rather than allowing them to make high-impact ones.
Recently I have been reading Zhou Xueguang’s The Institutional Logic of Governance in China, and this has made the feeling even deeper. For a place like China, where the institutional gene of great unity is deeply rooted, unity and governance efficiency have always been contradictory and in conflict with each other. In real history, things often swing back and forth and can never be completely resolved.
Among modern states, China is probably one of the most centralized. The centrally planned economy of the former Soviet Union, which has already collapsed, is probably one of the few even more centralized examples in past history.
The most intolerant wins. This can also explain why the Bolsheviks, not the Mensheviks, came to power; and why the Communist Party, not the Kuomintang, won.
Taleb really does like mocking economists. In addition, he also hates bureaucrats and politicians. Like me, he respects merchants.
Sure enough, Korean tourists are everywhere. Taleb noticed this too.
There is a very obvious blog or Twitter feel. It was probably organized into a complete book from things he had previously published online.
Being alive is stronger than anything else. Survival is the premise of everything.
Against Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, and in support of Hayek.