Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quote
To see how transfer of antifragility works, consider two scenarios, in which the market does the same thing on average but following different paths. Path 1: market goes up 50 percent, then goes back down to erase all gains. Path 2: market does not move at all. Visibly Path 1, the more volatile, is more profitable to the managers, who can cash in their stock options. So the more jagged the route, the better it is for them. And of course society—here the retirees—has the exact opposite payoff since they finance bankers and chief executives. Retirees get less upside than downside. Society pays for the losses of the bankers, but gets no bonuses from them. If you don’t see this transfer of antifragility as theft, you certainly have a problem. What is worse, this system is called incentive-based and supposed to correspond to capitalism. Supposedly managers’ interests are aligned with those of the shareholders. What incentive? There is upside and no downside, no disincentive at all.
To see how transfer of antifragility works, consider two scenarios, in which the market does the same thing on average but following different paths. Path 1: market goes up 50 percent, then goes back down to erase all gains. Path 2: market does not move at all. Visibly Path 1, the more volatile, is more profitable to the managers, who can cash in their stock options. So the more jagged the route, the better it is for them. And of course society—here the retirees—has the exact opposite payoff since they finance bankers and chief executives. Retirees get less upside than downside. Society pays for the losses of the bankers, but gets no bonuses from them. If you don’t see this transfer of antifragility as theft, you certainly have a problem. What is worse, this system is called incentive-based and supposed to correspond to capitalism. Supposedly managers’ interests are aligned with those of the shareholders. What incentive? There is upside and no downside, no disincentive at all.
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