From the article:
In this chapter I will propose that effectively what people resent –or should resent –is the person at the top who has no skin in the game, that is, because he doesn’t bear his allotted risk, is immune to the possibility of falling from his pedestal, exiting the income or wealth bracket, and getting to the soup kitchen. Again, on that account, the detractors of Donald Trump, when he was a candidate, failed to realize that, by advertising his episode of bankruptcy and his personal losses of close to a billion dollars, they removed the resentment (the second type of inequality) one may have towards him.
There is something respectable in losing a billion dollars, provided it is your own money.
In addition, someone without skin in the game –say a corporate executive with upside and no financial downside (the type to speak clearly in meetings) –is paid according to some metrics that do not necessarily reflect the health of the company; these (as we saw in Chapter x) he can manipulate, hide risks, get the bonus, then retire (or go to another company) and blame his successor for the subsequent results.
We will also, in the process, redefine inequality and put the notion on more rigorous grounds. But we first need to introduce the difference between two types of approaches, the static and the dynamic, as skin in the game can transform one type of inequality into another.
Take also the two following remarks:
True equality is equality in probability
and
Skin in the game prevents systems from rotting
bfl
“Skin in the game” is the reason the founding fathers limited voting to property owners; anyone else could simply move on if things didn’t work out. I support a similar system, though not linked to property ownership (since there are many more ways for someone to contribute tax revenue that 200 years ago); while I own a home, people who are net contributors through any combination of taxes should be able to vote - while those who are net takers should not. This could be a cumulative measure (so retirees or people on disability who have paid for years or decades aren’t disenfranchised); I don’t have specifics, but allowing people who contribute nothing and never intend to contribute anything to have a voice in how the net contributors’ money is spent inevitably involves the net takers (gibsmedats) steering other peoples’ money to themselves.
This issue is coming to a head in many urban areas (soon to be whole states) where services are rapidly disappearing because there are no current revenues. Importing foreigners to keep housing and classrooms occupied while keeping the public employee caste on the gravy train worsens the matter; those fleeing these areas are usually the net contributors, while those remaining as well as those trafficked in from abroad are usually net takers. I have no sympathy for those trapped in violent, decaying areas because 99% of the time they are of the net taker population; if they can’t afford goods and services on their own (including police protection), then they simply don’t get them.