"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."