Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Incerto, #5)

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The vulnerability of heads of households has been remarkably exploited in history. The samurai had to leave their families in Edo as hostages, thus guaranteeing to the authorities that they would not take positions against the rulers. The Romans and Huns partook of the practice of exchanging permanent “visitors,” the children of rulers on both sides, who grew up at the courts of the foreign nation in a form of gilded captivity. The Ottomans relied on janissaries, who were extracted as babies from Christian families and never married. Having no family (or no contact with their family), they were entirely devoted to the sultan. It is no secret that large corporations prefer people with families; those with downside risk are easier to own, particularly when they are choking under a large mortgage. And of course most fictional heroes such as Sherlock Holmes or James Bond don’t have the encumbrance of a family that can become a target of, say, evil professor Moriarty.