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A crash course in changing the world.
"Mr Black Swan" has a radical view on money and finance - but it does not go down so well with the World Bank :-)
Nassim Taleb is a quantitative analyst with a long experience in finance. He is the author of a very successful book, The Black Swan, where he contends that most of the variability in the money world is concentrated in very few, very large events. They can't be predicted, or mitigated.
In 2009 he gave an iconoclastic talk at a World Bank conference on Markets and Crises: What Next and How? Former World Bank Senior Manager John Nellis (now principal at his own consultancy company) reports on the talk in a very funny, very exasperated post on the World Bank's own Private Sector Development Blog - which by the way I strongly recommend following. Here's an excerpt:
Well, the post is funny, but I think Mr. Nellis is not being completely fair here. "Abolish debt" is actually a proposal. It is very radical, but worth considering. Of course, it would wipe out 99% of the financial sector, but some people are seriously wondering what those guys are contributing to the common good anyway.
After all we are being asked to think outside the box here. Mr Taleb's proposal is WAY outside the box, so why is he not taken seriously? And this question hides another one, more momentous to EVOKE agents. Just how far outside the box are we supposed to think to make valuable contributions towards saving the world? Does Alchemy agree or disagree with Mr. Nellis?
Maybe Mr. Taleb should be playing EVOKE. :-)
In 2009 he gave an iconoclastic talk at a World Bank conference on Markets and Crises: What Next and How? Former World Bank Senior Manager John Nellis (now principal at his own consultancy company) reports on the talk in a very funny, very exasperated post on the World Bank's own Private Sector Development Blog - which by the way I strongly recommend following. Here's an excerpt:
Questions included "How should we go about reforming the regulatory system?" Answer: Don't try to reform it; scrap it. "But what should we do?” Answer: Abolish debt. All of the world's great religions agree; there should be no interest. "Did regulators make the crisis worse by their incompetence?" Not an area of interest to him; he is not concerned with minor tinkering with the system. Good-bye.
Well, the post is funny, but I think Mr. Nellis is not being completely fair here. "Abolish debt" is actually a proposal. It is very radical, but worth considering. Of course, it would wipe out 99% of the financial sector, but some people are seriously wondering what those guys are contributing to the common good anyway.
After all we are being asked to think outside the box here. Mr Taleb's proposal is WAY outside the box, so why is he not taken seriously? And this question hides another one, more momentous to EVOKE agents. Just how far outside the box are we supposed to think to make valuable contributions towards saving the world? Does Alchemy agree or disagree with Mr. Nellis?
Maybe Mr. Taleb should be playing EVOKE. :-)
Views: 64
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Comment by Alberto Cottica on April 24, 2010 at 11:14pm
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Well, I guess Taleb would argue if you eliminate interest you kill the incentive to lend, so you eliminate debt as well. :-)
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