I might be mistaken, but I thought it wasn’t writing books that made him really rich. He actually traded using the principles he promoted.
I mean, sure? But he also started life on the last quarter on the Monopoly board of life so it’s not quite as big a feat to end up rich in the field he was in for a 20 year bull run with a whole two significant downturns.
I tried reading Black Swan once and I couldn’t make it past the intro. Just the most insufferable thing I’ve ever come across anywhere.
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You’re making him sound like Trump. My understanding (and I might be wrong) is that his wealth is way above expectation accounting for the above factors. He made his money on the downturns, didn’t he?
Taleb is a pompous twat, but his argument that artificially constraining volatility just leads to greater eventual volatility seems pretty reasonable.
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I don’t think Taleb succeeded in spite of himself. I’m sure he made a lot of bets on himself and his theories and won but the only reason you or any of us know him and not other authors of woo-woo theory papers is because of the books.
Id be very shocked if he made stupid amounts of money and THEN wrote the books. Maybe be a straight academic going for insider cred OR accumulate more stupid amounts of money privately, but trying to be a commercial author in the middle of things (and telling everyone your secrets!) would be an awfully strange career bend.
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How long do we have to wait for it to blow up, tho? The Federal Reserve has been doing MONEY GO BRR for over a hundred years and been extremely successful at reducing volatility. If they can keep the shell game going a few more decades, I’ll be solid.
Once again I’m not 100% sure on this, but I think that his first big score was during the 9/11 plunge. Most of his stuff was written after that.
Compared to before? Yes. There’s like a reason we decided to have a central bank.
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I think you have a point. The banking in the US in the 1800s was lol insanity.
That’s why I don’t put dampers on my screen doors. Someday that thing’s going to slam shut with the force of a ton of TNT and destroy the whole house. Just basic common sense. Don’t mess with mother nature.
there’s your problem. it’s very difficult to reason about consumption in a vacuum like what you are suggesting. for example, the entire entertainment industry, from books to movies, and music to theaters is a “consumption” economy. it’s literally all about how many times you and me consume someone’s content, and most of the time it’s transient and temporary, but it itself drives a lot of cool stuff.
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Consumption is the end of production
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Yootooobs on economics lol.
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Yeah, but “consumption” has become loaded with connotations because it brings to mind “consumer culture”, which is a catch all for “bad” consumption. So depending on who you’re talking to it can be better to speak of improving quality of life through economic activity instead of producing and consuming stuff. When many people hear production and consumption they think of big machines with $ signs on the side that suck in forests and puppies and sunshine and spit out coal and plastic.
uh, in monopoly the last quarter are the least valuable properties to try to win with.
It changes if they just hand you the green properties right when the game starts though.
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Why are the greens bad? Placement of go to jail space?
That and they’re expensive to build up. There is one good thing about the greens but they’re the worst of the colors–though % of landing on a green actually isn’t too bad