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The World in Which We Live Now. Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the… | by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Medium

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F riends, I have seven points. Why seven? Because I’ve been reading too much Babylonian history recently. T he first one is about concentration, a distinctive feature of the modern world, often tied to what I called the Black Swan problem. We now see winner-take-all effects everywhere, owing to connectivity. Imagine an island with many species but a high density per square meter. Compare that to a continent, where opening up space leads to fewer species per meter because some will eventually dominate. This mirrors cultural and economic life today. Take books, for instance. Everyone reads the same ones — think Harry Potter or, for music, The Beatles. In publishing, a few authors prevail. You either sell 20 million copies or you’re working at Starbucks (unless you boycott the firm, as I do personally). This concentration applies to opera singers too. In the past, they could make a living locally because there were no audiovisual recordings. Now, a few stars capture most of the income. Th

The World in Which We Live Now Nassim Nicholas Taleb 10 min read · Sep 15, 2025 -- Listen Share Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Ron Paul Institute, 2025 F riends, I have seven points. Why seven? Because I’ve been reading too much Babylonian history recently. FROM CONNECTIVITY TO TECHNOFEUDALISM T he first one is about concentration, a distinctive feature of the modern world, often tied to what I called the Black Swan problem. We now see winner-take-all effects everywhere, owing to connectivity. Imagine an island with many species but a high density per square meter. Compare that to a cont

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