Taleb is difficult to pigeon-hole. He was a financier and made a lot of money. His books are strong on math/statistics and deeply philosophical. He doesn’t have much patience for economists and considers them largely phoney. He is about practical, real world implementation of ideas to see if they work.
He likes feedback loops which lead to good risk management and resilience. That’s “skin in the game”. Capitalism is very good at making sure bad ideas fail. Capitalism has a genius for that kind of failure. Which is why Capitalism leads to resilient systems that lift millions of people out of poverty — because bad ideas don’t stick around, but good ideas do.
One of Taleb’s pet peeves is the Power Elite who profit when they get things right, and make YOU pay for everything they get wrong. That is the opposite of “skin in the game” and he would argue that this is largely what is wrong with the world today.
Ah! NOW I see what he means...failures are necessary for a healthy system, a way of culling the sick from the herd. I have long believed that. I misunderstood the heart of that statement “genius for failure”...:)
Good! Not that I am looking for validation of what I think, but I am beyond listening to people who say Capitalism doesn’t work (It ain’t perfect, but is better than everything else out there!)