
Skin in the Game
Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
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Narrated by:
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Joe Ochman
Number-one New York Times best seller
A bold work from the author of The Black Swan that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility.
In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one's own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life.
As always both accessible and iconoclastic, Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military interventions, make financial investments, and propagate religious faiths. Among his insights:
- For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing. You cannot make profits and transfer the risks to others, as bankers and large corporations do. You cannot get rich without owning your own risk and paying for your own losses. Forcing skin in the game corrects this asymmetry better than thousands of laws and regulations.
- Ethical rules aren't universal. You're part of a group larger than you, but it's still smaller than humanity in general.
- Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities asymmetrically imposing their tastes and ethics on others.
- You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. "Educated philistines" have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low carb diets.
- Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). A simple barbell can build muscle better than expensive new machines.
- True religion is commitment, not just faith. How much you believe in something is manifested only by what you’re willing to risk for it.
The phrase "skin in the game" is one we have often heard but have rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it's also an astonishingly rich worldview that, as Taleb shows in this book, applies to all aspects of our lives. As Taleb says, "The symmetry of skin in the game is a simple rule that's necessary for fairness and justice and the ultimate BS-buster," and "Never trust anyone who doesn't have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them."
©2018 Nassim Nicholas Taleb (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















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Better off read than heard
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I am not sure why there are so many negative comments, other than perhaps a modern aversion, bordering on cowardice, to strongly argued points. Calling out Thomas Friedman by name for being wrong about almost every major trend in his career - including support for the war in Iraq that ended the lives of the 10000s and helped plunge the middle east into chaos? Heaven forbid we should be so impolite as to suggest that someone of his repute literally has blood on his hands and still parades around in his hubris and ignorance? Meanwhile principled detractors and critics like Chris Hedges are forced out of their jobs and utterly marginalized for speaking the truth from a position of first-hand knowledge and experience.
Nassim Taleb has a particularly salient understanding of the world and does not pull punches. We need more people like him in order to break through the self-serving complacency of our supposed "intellectual" class, which has been leading the U.S. into one military, political and economic disaster after another.
Turn off CNN, put down the NYT and go outside and look around you.
Excellent Work. Not sure why so many detractors.
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Another brilliant book by Taleb!
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Excellent description on what's going on now
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More about Agency issues than Investing
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Listening to a bully....
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Great addition to your worldview
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Perspective Changing Book
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interesting insights
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probably better to read
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