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We’re going to conclude our exploration of those areas of life that suffer from a lack of skin in the game by discussing the role skin in the game plays in war and peace.
Taleb argues that populations with skin in the game tend to fight shorter, relatively non-destructive wars, and that all the bloodiest conflicts in history were driven by third parties without skin in the game.
In this section, we’ll start by showing why Taleb sees peace as the dominant status of civilization and how, when left to their own devices, people tend to resolve conflict and collaborate. Then, we’ll explain how institutions without skin in the game perpetuate war, even when they intend to create peace. Finally, we’ll explore why so many people falsely assume that the natural state of civilization is ceaseless, destructive conflict, which leads them to believe that institutions without skin in the game need to intervene.
Typically, over time, people find ways to coexist peacefully. Conflict is an inescapable consequence of human interaction, but Taleb frames war as a stepping-stone toward longer eras of peace and collaboration.
War puts mass skin in the game, not only for the people doing the fighting, but everyone who bears the risks of war—all civilians who suffer domestic turmoil and a stressed economy. The mutual drain of resources required by war puts constant pressure for peace on both sides.
According to Taleb, conflict is much more the exception than the rule. In most cases, both sides decide relatively quickly what trades or concessions they are willing to make, and peace is restored. In this way, people with skin in the game tend toward peace and collaboration.
The War of Peace
Taleb has engaged in a lengthy feud with psychologist Steven Pinker on the topic of whether or not violence has declined over the course of history. Taleb’s chapter on war is partially a response to Pinker’s 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he argues that the world is safer and more peaceful than ever before.
Pinker credits this in part to powerful democratic human institutions such as the United Nations that Taleb disdains. Taleb argues that the seventy or so years of overwhelming peace we’ve had since World War II could simply be a statistically predictable gap between massive wars, and that centralized institutions intended to create peace often cause more conflict than they resolve, as we’ll see next.
There is an exception, however. All the longest and most intense conflicts are driven by institutions without skin in the game of the war. If the ones ordering the war aren’t personally suffering its dire consequences, it’s more likely to continue.
For Taleb, this is another reason why decentralized states are better than a large unified nation—centralized governments are more likely to participate in deadlier wars because the decision-makers are farther away from the people making the sacrifices.
This idea can be illustrated by the widespread disillusionment of Americans regarding the Vietnam War. In 1970, two-thirds of Americans believed the war was a mistake, yet it continued until 1975. Since the central decision-makers had power over the entire US population, many people were drafted and suffered as a result of someone else’s beliefs—a skin in the game asymmetry which prolonged the conflict.