A reply to Taleb's comments on Piketty and C21C and political economy. 

Taleb: "Within population wealth creation is a series of small probability bets. So it is natural that the pool of wealth (measured in years of spending, as Piketty does) increases with wealth".
--- No Mr. Taleb, it is not natural, it is a cultural proximate variable, and politically decided. Within population, wealth creation is a series of anthropogenic decisions.

Taleb: "Inequality of outcome is not the problem, inequality of opportunity is". --- Taleb hinting that some type of economic inequality is a problem, which is a surprise. 

Taleb: "A wealth tax meaning to punish the wealth generator is absurd: since the payoff is severely clipped on the upside, it would be a lunacy to be a risk taker with small probability bets, with wins of 20 (after tax) rather than 100, then disburse all savings progressively in wealth tax."
--- It would be productive&constructive for the >90%'s if the risk was smaller because of higher minimum level and higher general equality of outcome.
What is a wealth generator apart from being a tautology and/or circular reasoning, or is a "wealth generator" just a finance capital extractor as in a "finance capital anthropogenic harvester"?

Taleb: "Compare someone with lumpy payoffs say an entrepreneur who makes $4.5 million every 20 years to a professor like Krugman who earns the same total over the period ($225K in taxpayer-funded income)."
--- Anecdotal examples, how many professors are there in the US and how many entrepreneurs makes >$4 million every 20 year? 0,1%, 0,01% or 0,001%?

Taleb: "The entrepreneur over the VERY SAME income ends up paying 75% in taxes, plus wealth tax on the rest while the rent-seeking tenured academic who doesn't contribute to wealth formation pays, say 30%.)".
--- What kind of wealth formation theory (WFT) would Taleb suggest?
What is Taleb's theory on wealth formation? And what is Taleb's definition/theory of a wealth generator?
Taleb: "Sorry, if you don't like it but that is purely mathematical". --- Sorry if you don't get it, but it is (almost) purely [anthropogenic] political economy...! Mr. Taleb, do you need to read a wikipedia entry on what a political assembly as the US Congress does and what it does not decide?? And state governments, what is their range of power compared to the federal government/congress entity in the system? Or are you an epistemological anarchist??

Taleb: "Worry about skin in the game, not inequality." --- With what payoff probability? Do you see the mismatch between the Nordic countries vs the US in payoff probability per capita?
Taleb: "Worry about equality in opportunity not outcome". ---  Did you know that there is a strong statistical correlation and causality relation between opportunity equality and equality of outcome??

Taleb: "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"..."
--- In other words, worry about the current plutocratic neo-feudalism that rules the US for some years now? Did you know Taleb, that if the US had equality of outcome levels close to current Germany or France, we would perhaps not be having this debate?? And especially not if the distribution statistics were closer to the Nordic countries?

Taleb: "The top in the US is not the same in 2014 as it was in 1984, and it is a healthy system. In places with cronyism (Europe), the top is sticky."
--- Compared to the Nordic countries + Switzerland, Lichtenstein and Luxembourg? Shall we call the Nordic countries for utopian or semi-utopian countries if you define current US percentage(share) asymmetrical payoff as healthy? And how bout the bottom 10% or bottom 20% in the US vs Europe, is it sticky or is it elastic?

Taleb: " And this is largely the aim and result of low-interest rate policies by central banks since 1987, in the aftermath of Black Monday." --- If the US had only slightly higher interest rate from FED this would do very little, substantial higher FED rate would curb and slow the GDP growth, would that be a good thing mr. Taleb?

Taleb: "the ratio Kapital/NonKapital exploded right there... And had Piketty looked at his "inequality" and Debt-to-GDP he would have perhaps seen the real evil: asset inflation with-stop-from-Central-banks"
--- And 46 million food stampers is not the real evil? Unemployment rates in the US from 2010 is not a real evil? Accumulation of finance capital and real economy assets which buys political power is not the evil? Not taxing the 1%'s substantially more than current level is a real evil, yes?

Taleb: "Rethinking about Piketty's book, and his "data", one wonders whether pages and pages of correlation-implies-causation can sway economists when the message fits their agenda (dispossess the risk-taking money by nonrisktakers is something that dissgusts me) but more rigorous work can leave them indifferent".
--- The correlation data does not imply causality, rather, it tells a story of political economy through decades and generations. Mr. Taleb, do you doubt that the data that Piketty has published is caused by the anthropogenic economy?

Taleb: "One reason I left data out of The Black Swan (except for illustrative purposes) is that it seems to me that people flood their story with data in the absence of logical argument."
--- The empirical data in Piketty's book is what caused it's success, apart from that the empirical data is a result of the politically wielded economy. And there is no absence of logical argument in Piketty's book, nor is there any absence of political argument. Mr. Taleb, would you say that the empirical data in "Capital..." is too close for comfort? Or too asymmetrical for comfort?

Question to Taleb: If you lost everything tomorrow, what would you do?

"This is the ethos of Antifragile: thinking about such an event every day so you reduce fragility to adverse events. I've lived in preparation for that possibility. Plan B is to move to college dorms. But nothing would be more devastating than reduced access to a technical library".

---This answer by Taleb is clearly showing the profitability of a high level of the welfare state. The answer is implicitly implying a social democracy where you can and should make bold attempts for success, if you fail, then the Nordic model, the Rhineland capitalism will pick you up so you have a decent level of material living standards. And then you can make another try to climb up the ladders again, if that is your game. There is also much more social mobility in the Nordic countries, which means that the meritocracy is on a much higher level than in the US. This is adaptive for more than the 51%'s. You could take a look at the Norwegian payoff probability statistics and see for yourself Mr. Taleb. But that would render useless most of what you have said earlier about the macro economic policies that you would support. If you like statistics and comparative advantages, then compare your "healthy" US system against Norway, especially the last 20 years...!

Taleb's theorizing on the airplane industry vs the finance industry; Taleb implies here that he is an epistemological anarchist. Taleb: "Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we're building bigger and bigger ships. So these people died, but we have effectively improved the safety of the system, and nothing failed in vain." 

--- Mr. Taleb, did you know that it is in the interest of all parties that it is safe to fly? Whether it is the flight attendant, or me, or you, or the pilot, completely regardless of what amount of income or wealth we happen to experience? We have a common and genuine, bona fide self-serving interest that it shall be safe to fly..!!! 
When this is the case, or rather, *that* this is the case to a large extent in the airplane business, the fact that some pilots make more money, that some passengers are poor, has no effect because of the power mechanisms (feedback mechanisms) that is the deciding essential factor in this.
 

If a business executive sits beside an employee, and the executive is en-route to a meeting to get rid of a lot of employees, this doesn't alter the fact that both the employee and the executive has a genuine common interest that the plane lands safely on the ground, even if it is the exact employee that is sitting beside the very executive, that will be fired in the name of cost cutting. 

They are in the same "boat" or "ship", or even better, as the prospect of a rich peoples 

life-boat-project happened on Titanic is impossible on an airplane. 

Parachutes for business class seats, but not for the rest, is not a probable scenario. But what would happen if it was profitable that airplanes crashed much more prevalent than is the case today? And that this practice is well within the law? What would happen to safety and security in the aviation industry?
 

Perhaps a morbid thought experiment, but you get the picture.
But on a macro level, there is a struggle of resources, no? We're competing over money, Mr. Taleb, did you know that? Have you taken financial/economic positions earlier in your life, in the hope of, and within the mechanism of, that you would profit more than your opponents, Mr. Taleb? That kind of "games" is a competitive conflict of interest game.
 

You shouted "fraud" or rather "moral hazard" Mr. Taleb, but you did not address the cause of the moral hazard, and that is power asymmetry. you did not shout "fallacious democracy", or "political power asymmetrical imbalance", nor did you criticize the 51% democracy in the US that is caused by
mathematical dysfunctional election laws, first-past-the-post electoral laws.
Mr. Taleb, you are guilty in severe sins of omission.