Overall, the book is a bit dense, a lot of percentages thrown around to prove some facts vs fallacies.
However, there’s 1 important reaffirmation and 1 learning:
Government/Bureaucrats interference is never good
It makes the case that governments make decisions by committee, and these decisions end up hurting more than helping, if they help at all.
Also people making these decisions, as Taleb would say, have no skin in the game: if something goes wrong nothing happens to them, if things are going bad, they prefer to stay the course, rather than being tarnished by the consequences
Governments should really be as small as possible and very localized.
US Academia
I didn’t know exactly what tenure meant for a professor at a top US university, how powerful they are and how the system works at all. This also showcases a Talebian vibe: his disdain for academia figures.
Excerpt
The book itself showed that many current urban issues are not new, nor are the new proposals for government interventions likely to make things better, rather than worse