"creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants"

O Nuno enviou-me um artigo que me pôs a pensar. Vários tópicos positivos e um sinal de preocupação.

"A TrimNW foi criada em Março de 2015 na sequência do fecho da antiga Ipetex do Cartaxo, que abriu insolvência nesse ano. Vários trabalhadores acreditaram na mais-valia de uma das áreas de negócio – a do sector automóvel – e avançaram por sua conta e risco, sendo bem sucedidos.[Moi ici: Este parágrafo faz-me lembrar Maliranta e Taleb. A empresa fechou e foram os trabalhadores num novo projecto, com skin in the game, que encontraram uma resposta para o aumento da produtividade necessária]

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A empresa produz para nichos de mercado e tem vários clientes importantes, incluindo marcas de automóveis de luxo do Reino Unido, para quem chega a produzir séries limitadas de até 10 mil peças por ano.
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A experiência e conhecimento adquiridos ao longo dos anos, juntamente com a qualidade dos seus produtos e da prática de preços competitivos, fazem da TrimNW um nome forte na Europa na produção daqueles materiais. [Moi ici: Este é o trecho que me deixa alguma preocupação. Se trabalham para nichos e fazem séries limitadas o preço não devia ser um factor crítico]
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Os negócios fazem-se desde que a gente corra atrás deles. Se ficarmos aqui quietos à espera que venham ter connosco eles não vêm. O nosso material é muito específico, temos de procurar os nossos clientes, procurar as oportunidades que eles nos possam dar."[Moi ici: Proactividade, uma postura tão necessária nos tempos que correm]

Nunca esquecer:

"It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."Mas, e como isto é profundo:"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants." Por favor voltar a trás e reler esta última afirmação. Pensem nos teóricos que dizem que a produtividade só cresce com mais educação académica.

Trechos retirados de "TrimNW é uma empresa de Santarém à conquista do mercado europeu"

Vintage Taleb

"Unless consequential decisions are taken by people who pay for the consequences, the world would vulnerable to total systemic collapse. And if you wonder why there is a current riot against a certain class of self-congratulatory “experts”, skin the game will provide a clear answer: the public has viscerally detected that some “educated” but cosmetic experts have no skin in the game and will never learn from their mistakes, whether individually or, more dangerously, collectively.
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Systems don’t learn because people learn individually –that’s the myth of modernity. Systems learn at the collective level by the mechanism of selection: by eliminating those elements that reduce the fitness of the whole, provided these have skin in the game.[Moi ici: Isto é tão Maliranta!!! Foi a Maliranta que roubei a primeira citação na coluna de citações no lado direito deste blogue - 2007!!! Como o tempo voa - ""In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants""]
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And in the absence of the filtering of skin in the game, the mechanisms of evolution fail: if someone else dies in your stead, the built up of asymmetric risks and misfitness will cause the system to eventually blow-up.[Moi ici: Beware de sistemas políticos (todos sem skin in the game) que absorbem cada vez mais capacidade de decisão]
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Yet the social science and the bureaucrato-BSers have missed and keeps missing that skin in the game is an essential filter. Why? Because, outside of hard science, scholars who do not have skin in the game fail to get that while in academia there is no difference between academia and the real world, in the real world, there is."[Moi ici: Eheheheh os media ainda não perceberam isto - 25 exemplos aqui] 

BTW, e políticos que vivem em casa dos papás, ou ligados ao soro da máquina do estado, a debitar sobre o que é que os empresários devem ou não fazer?


Trechos retirados de "What do I mean by Skin in the Game? My Own Version"

skin in the game

"Skin in the Game is about symmetry under random outcomes: just as you should treat others in the way you’d like to be treated, you would like to share the responsibility for random outcomes without unfairness and iniquity. If you inflict risk on others, and they are harmed, you need to pay some price for it.
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to this author, skin in the game is mostly about justice, honor, and sacrifice, as something existential for humans.
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Skin in the game, applied as a rule, reduces the effects of the following divergences that arose from civilization, those between: action and cheap talk (tawk), consequence and intention, practice and theory"

Próximo livro de @nntaleb tem o primeiro capítulo dedicado a Louçã, o avatar do interventionista sem skin in the game

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) May 25, 2017

Retirado do próximo livro de Nassim Taleb sobre o tema Skin in the Game

Mongo será fértil em criatividade focada

Gente com skin-in-the-game, gente com os pés assentes na terra e com um job to be done é capaz de milagres, "Quando os doentes e familiares inventam soluções que a medicina não dá".

Mongo vai ser terreno fértil para esta criatividade focada que não procura o crescimento acima de tudo.

A ilusão das regras (parte I)

Um excelente texto, "The Rule Illusion", a fazer lembrar todos aqueles que sem skin-in-the-game criam leis e mais leis:

"You could safeguard against rules that hinder people doing the right thing while failing to solve the presumed problem by ensuring the rule-makers themselves are subject to the rules they make. At least they would then experience first-hand the benefits and the costs involved.
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In practice, those who make the rules are often insulated from the true consequences. The lack of a good feedback mechanism to adjust the rules would be bad enough if the rules were based on evidence and logic. But it’s often even worse, because rules often originate from received (but dubious) wisdom, unproven ‘common sense’, or reactions to one-off events. Rules that are based on beliefs rather than evidence, and never tested, are unlikely to produce net benefits. Yet such rules are precisely the ones the makers feel most protective of."

Mas voltaremos a este texto por causa das greves de zelo e não só.

"intimate with the cosmetic details, but are clueless about the subject"

Como é que eu não posso gostar de Nassim Taleb?

"I would seek the butcher as a third option if my choice was between two doctors who looked like doctors. Why? Simply the one who doesn’t look the part, conditional of having made a (sort of) successful career in his profession, had to have much to overcome in terms of perception. And if we are lucky enough to have people who do not look the part, it is thanks to the presence of some skin in the game, the contact with reality that filters out incompetence, as reality is blind to looks.
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When the results come from dealing directly with reality rather than through the agency of commentators, image matters less, even if it correlates to skills. But image matters quite a bit when there is hierarchy and standardized “job evaluation”. Consider the chief executive officers of corporations: they not just look the part, but they even look the same. And, worse, when you listen to them talk, they will sound the same, down to the same vocabulary and metaphors. But that’s their jobs: as I keep reminding the reader, counter to the common belief, executives are different from entrepreneurs and are supposed to look like actors.
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Now there may be some correlation between looks and skills; but conditional on having had some success in spite of not looking the part is potent, even crucial, information."

Como não pensar logo na procissão de membros da tríade (recomendo a leitura da série desde o número I) que costumamos sovar aqui periodicamente?

"In any type of activity or business divorced from the direct filter of skin in the game, the great majority of people know the jargon, play the part, are intimate with the cosmetic details, but are clueless about the subject." [Moi ici: Olha lembrei-me de Frasquilho]

O Cortes não vai gostar desta:

"Some rules. People who have always operated without skin in the game (or without their skin in the right game) seek the complicated, centralized, and avoid the simple like the pest. Practitioners on the other hand have opposite instincts, looking for the simplest heuristics.
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People who are bred, selected, and compensated to find complicated solutions do not have an incentive to implement simplified ones
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In other words, Many problems in society come from the interventionism of people who sell complicated solutions because that’s what their position and training invites them to do. There is absolutely no gain for someone in such a position to propose something simple: you are rewarded for perception not results. They pay no price for the side effects that grow nonlinearly with such complications."

Fragilismo e skin in the game

"Simply, my collaborators and I managed to define fragility as sensitivity to disorder
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(More technically, being fragile, it necessarily has a nonlinear reaction to stressors: up until its breaking point, shocks of larger intensity affect it disproportionally more than smaller ones).
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Is fragile what has an asymmetric response to volatility and other stressors, that is, will experience more harm than benefit from it.
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the operation of time is necessarily done through skin in the game. Without skin in the game, via contact with reality, the mechanism of fragility is disrupted: things may survive for no reason for a while, then ultimately collapse causing a lot of side harm.
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Overconfidence: Fiducia pecunias amici “I lost money because of my excessive confidence”, Erasmus citing Theognis, Epicharmus"

Trechos retirados de "An Expert Called Lindy"

Acidente ou torrefacção?

Hoje em dia no mundo do empreendedorismo está em voga a celebração da falha.
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O meu lado liberal (na terminologia norte-americana) percebe a celebração. É claro que reduzir o custo social da falha baixa as barreiras de entrada e de saída para os empreendedores. Assim, mais oportunidades poderão ser iniciadas e mais oportunidades sem futuro poderão ser abortadas poupando recursos para uma nova e futura iteração.
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O meu lado cínico não consegue deixar de relacionar esta celebração do falhanço com aquela cena marada do governo português abrir linha de financiamento para business angels. Assim, sem skin-in-the game, como saber se o falhanço foi um acidente normal na roleta do empreendedorismo ou torrefacção leviana de dinheiro dos contribuintes?
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Tudo isto por causa desta frase:

“We are world champions in making mistakes,” 

Retirada daqui.

"There are no silver bullets"

Como eu aprecio esta abordagem de Spender:

"There are no silver bullets, simple explanations, formulae, or if–then causal models, no acceptance that things are merely what they seem to be. The world, of course, is not a simple place, we have to work hard to engage it with our minds, and reduce its complexity to the point we can think logically about it and commit to action with some confidence. Actually the philosophizing is not complicated, it is an everyday practice. [Moi ici: Como não recordar o texto do Eclesiastes] Doubt is key - we must remain open to the possibility that things are not what they seem, that we have been misinformed, that things will not turn out as expected, that we have to act afresh to keep things headed in the right direction. Behind this is the recognition that the possibility of profit hinges entirely on the interplay of doubt and surprise.
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Value, profit, and growth are the imagination’s artifacts as it engages a framed unknown; they are not the product of rational analysis. Neither are they the product of resources, designs, or logical mechanisms that transform resources into products and services.
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Life (and managing) is a situation of persistent doubt and uncertainty—hence the acronym FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). [Moi ici: Quantos  "funcionários" perceberão o alcance desta afirmação?] Fear may seem excessive when it comes to business affairs, but if I was wholly invested in a single enterprise I might get the jitters too. U and D are essential states of mind for any strategist with something at stake, with skin in the game."

A propósito de ostras e salinicultura

A propósito de "Ostras salvam salinicultura na ria de Aveiro" e da ministra dos subsídios e apoios:

"A salinicultura deixou há muito de ser rentável - uma tonelada, "bem vendida, fica por 80 euros", adiantou Vergílio Rocha, gerente da empresa Canal do Peixe, detentora do projeto da Ilha dos Puxadoiros que, ontem, a ministra da Agricultura, Assunção Cristas, visitou. Conjugando salinicultura, agricultura, aquacultura e turismo de natureza, o projeto é, segundo a ministra, "é um bom exemplo". Daqueles que "o PROMAR apoia e para os quais ainda há dinheiro e, de futuro, mais dinheiro haverá, através do Mar 2020 [400 milhões de euros]", com o objetivo de "ganharmos escala, criarmos riqueza a partir do mar e postos de trabalho"."

Primeiro ponto, por que é que a salinicultura terá de ser um peso morto neste projecto? Recordar gente que fez outro percurso e que vende flor de sal a 100 €/kg, se calhar nem recorreu a subsídios. Não fazia muito mais sentido produzir flor de sal e criar uma marca para aproveitar o canal de venda das ostras?
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Segundo ponto, quantas gerações vão ser precisas para que até uma ministra perceba que o ganhar escala não é a única estratégia de crescimento, recordar a série: "Qual é o verdadeiro produto que a nossa agricultura pode oferecer?"
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Terceiro ponto... merece um postal só por si.
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E skin-in-the-game há?

E, entretanto,

Gente que constrói um amanhã:

• "Chocolates Imperial expandem-se e entram nas lojas Walmart no Brasil"
• "Fábrica da Mitsubishi arranca com exportação para Marrocos"
• "Porto de Faro exporta cimento para o Norte de África"
• "Empresário investe três milhões em fábrica de atum no Faial"
• "Bfruit já exporta 150 t para Holanda, Bélgica e Brasil"
• "Porminho investe dois milhões para ganhar mercados"

Não são divagadores que sentados num café, ou em frente a um ecrã, lançam postas de pescada sobre como acham que o mundo deve funcionar, são gente com skin-in-the-game, gente que em Maio espalha bosta nos terrenos.

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Verdadeiros heróis anónimos...

"Worry about..."

"Worry about skin in the game, not inequality. Worry about equality in opportunity not outcome. Worry about the powerful corporations taking over the system via lobbyists and blocking artisans. Worry about the class of privileged mandarins-WNSITG (with no skin in the game) taking over the system via "grandes ecoles"..."

Trecho retirado de "Opacity: What We Do Not See  -  A Philosophical Notebook, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb"

Não se assustem!

Não fiquem assustados com coisas como esta "Why Family Businesses Come Roaring out of Recessions":

"The family business is still widely regarded as an ineffective organizational form, especially in the US, even though recent evidence challenges this perception.  Some studies have shown that during periods of economic growth, family-managed companies in the US actually perform better than professionally managed businesses. [Moi ici: Artigo contém as hiperligações para os estudos que defendem cada uma das versões]
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However, a rising tide lifts all boats; it’s the ebbing tide that reveals the truth.  Just how do family businesses perform during recessions, when only the strong survive?
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To answer that question, we compared the performance of 148 publicly listed family-owned companies between 2000 and 2009 with that of 127 non-family businesses using Standard & Poor’s Compustat database.  Of course, the National Bureau of Economic Research classified two (2001 and 2008) of those 10 years as recession years.
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We found that family businesses handily outperformed non-family companies during both the 2001 and 2008 recessions in terms of a key metric, Tobin’s q."

 Reler o último parágrafo deste postal de Julho de 2012, "Acerca dos vinhos do Douro", depois, enquadrar:

"1. Family-owned businesses did not hold back on new product launches during the recessions.
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2. Family businesses maintained almost the same levels of ad-spend during the recession years as they did during normal times, helping them do better than the professionally managed companies, which reduced ad-spend when the times got tough.
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3. Family businesses maintained their emphasis on corporate social responsibility regardless of the state of the economy."

Lembram-se da gente que espalha bosta nos campos?

"Family businesses’ proactive actions and long-term perspective during recessions are driven partly by a unique concern for future generations and an emphasis on preserving the family name,"

Campus BS should stay on campus

"sair da Zona Euro – teria custos muito elevados no curto prazo, mas poderia resultar numa recuperação da economia no espaço de um ou dois anos."

"Os efeitos da saída seriam muito duros no curto prazo, mas o economista considera que a recuperação chegaria num ou dois anos." 

Apetece logo pensar, qual é a "skin in the game" dele?

"If it's incorrect I should be harmed by it. So, if I make a forecast, if someone asks me for my opinion, it is immoral for me to say, well, the market is going up or the market is going down or this will happen, unless I stand to lose on that advice. Because people take risks based on other people's advice. This is where it's immoral. This is why skin in the game is very generalized to daily life. I cannot tell you, well, this is good, unless I've tasted it. If there is risk. If there is no harm, then who cares?
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Exactly. The point is, we need to lower the dependence on people who don't have skin in the game.
Russ: Yeah, or ignore them.
Guest: But you cannot ignore them. You have to build a system. Because people can take over, prestige, a lot of pathologies can control in that way. The best way to do it is build a society in which mistakes made by economists stay on campus. That's the idea. The idea is that if Larry Summers wants to make mistakes, more mistakes, let him make them at Harvard where we are insulated from it. It's like the ivory tower; it's because we are protected from them, not because they have to protect themselves from us. Which works both ways, you see.
Russ: It's a great slogan: What happens on campus, stays on campus.
Guest: That's exactly it. So it should keep the mistakes local on campus. And that way everybody will be happy."

Skin in the game

A propósito de "Oliveira Martins: Gestores devem ser responsabilizados no âmbito dos swaps" e do comentário do João Pinto ontem:

"ainda no domingo passei pela IP4 (e depois pela estrada nacional, que vai dar a Amarante), na zona do Marão, e vi as obras do túnel do Marão que agora estão suspensas.
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Não percebo a razão da construção do túnel e daqueles viadutos todos. Portugal é mesmo um país rico. Quando estiver construída a nova estrada (a do túnel), haverá três alternativas ao trânsito (IP4, nacional e nova estrada), numa estrada onde não há engarrafamentos nem condutores para as 3 vias.
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Triste, muito triste..."

A leitura deste artigo "Skin in the Game as a Required Heuristic for Acting Under Uncertainty" de Constantine Sandis e Nassim Nicholas Taleb, onde se pode ler:

"The idea of skin in the game is crucial for the well-functioning of a complex world. In an opaque system there is, alas, an incentive for operators to hide risk: to benefit from the upside when things go well without ever paying for the downside when one's luck runs out. There is no possible risk management method that can replace skin in the game —particularly when informational opacity is compounded by informational asymmetry viz. the principal-agent problem that arises when those who gain the upside resulting from actions performed under some degree of uncertainty are not the same as those who incur the downside of those same acts.
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First, consider policy makers and politicians. In a decentralized system, say municipalities, these people are typically kept in check by feelings of shame upon harming others with their mistakes. In a large centralized system, the sources of error are not so visible. Spreadsheets do not make people feel shame. The penalty of shame is a factor that counts in favour of governments (and businesses) that are small, local, personal, and decentralized versus ones that are large, national or multi-national, anonymous, and centralised. When the latter fail, everybody except the culprit ends up paying the cost, leading to national and international 'austerity'.
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We believe Skin in the game is the heuristics of a safe and just society. Opposed to this is the unethical practice of taking all the praise and benefits of good fortune whilst disassociating oneself from the results of bad luck or miscalculation.
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We are not only responsible for known characterizations of our actions and their effects but also for those that we ought to be aware of (even if we are not). Our ignorance does not always relieve us of responsibility for things we have done, because others can claim that, as rational beings we should have known what we were doing even if we did not. Such is the knowledge involved in putting other people's lives at risk with no skin (of our own) in the game."