Five tips from Mr Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s new book, arguing we should all have more skin in the game .

If you are a scientist, civil servant, consultant or corporate executive, then I’m sorry but Mr Nassim Nicholas Taleb does not think highly of you. In fact, the controversial thinker and author ranks you alongside the very lowest of the low in modern life, with the politicians, the bankers and journalists (hi there).

It might be considered perilous to admonish much of the potential readership in the introduction to your new book, but Mr Taleb is not one for playing it safe. Risk is the subject of his new book Skin In The Game, a wide-ranging treatise on why having a personal stake in the decisions we make – and paying for the losses incurred – is necessary for social justice and personal success. Having skin in the game will make you better at business, and a fairer person.

Mr Taleb’s own life has not been lacking on that front. A former successful trader, he turned into a publishing sensation with his book The Black Swan, which predicted that a shock event would upend the financial system. Which, months after publication in 2007, is exactly what happened. The book sold three million copies and Mr Taleb was declared an oracle.

Mr Taleb’s latest book expands on The Black Swan’s themes; that modern life is needlessly complex, that “fools and crooks” dominate because the rest of us don’t have skin in the game. In other words, if we have no stake in the decisions we make and if risk is not shared, the consequences cannot be good.

Deliciously provocative – apparently, those with “skin in the game” include speculators, entrepreneurs, saints, knights and Jesus – Mr Taleb’s lengthy, idiosyncratic essay is never less than entertaining. Here are five takeaways that we can all learn from.

A frequent target of Mr Taleb’s amusingly deployed wrath is the philosopher, who he depicts as someone who muses on life without living it. The point, says the Lebanese academic (and whisper it, philosopher), is that all the thinking in the world is no match for action. Furthermore, he cites Messrs Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump as men with skin in the game in this way, whether you agree with their actions or not. “Life is sacrifice and risk taking,” he writes. “If you do not undertake a risk of real harm, reparable or even potentially irreparable, from an adventure, it is not an adventure.”

“Businessmen as risk takers are not subjected to the judgement of other businessmen,” Mr Taleb declares, “only to that of their personal accountant.” To wit, not only should you not seek peer approval, you should actively look for disapproval. When the dust settles, only time will tell if you have done right or wrong. Which, as Mr Taleb wryly points out, is also a handy way of batting off bad book reviews on publication.

In a prime example of Mr Taleb’s out-of-the-box thinking, he decides that presentation is not key. If you have a choice between two heart surgeons – one who looks as you might expect, the other like a butcher – you should opt for the latter to wield the knife. Here’s why: “The one who doesn’t look the part, conditional on having made a successful career in his profession, had to have overcome so much in terms of perception,” says Mr Taleb. If someone makes it in our image driven world, it’s because they have some skin in the game and are, in Mr Taleb’s eyes, the best kind of person.

Mr Taleb started out in banking, eventually finding his tribe on the trading-room floor. He describes these as wolves among dogs; traders and salespeople who were not really manageable, but whose unruliness was essential to their success. It is better to be wolf than dog, decides Mr Taleb, whatever your job title. To be otherwise simply gives you a false stability, when life does not work like that. “A dog’s life may appear smooth and secure,” Mr Taleb concludes, “but in the absence of an owner, a dog does not survive. A wolf is trained to survive.”

Banks and corporations make profits and transfer the risks to others. They have no skin in the game, argues Mr Taleb, an imbalance which no amount of laws and regulations can rectify. In a financial crash, others pay the penalty. Mr Taleb’s solution is to force everyone to have a proper stake in decisions – for which they are then personally accountable – so that social justice can prevail. This is not to say you shouldn’t seek to do well for yourself; Mr Taleb is, after all, a former city trader rather than a modern-day saint. “Stay human, take as much as you can,” he concludes, “under the condition that you give more than you take.”

Skin In The Game (Random House) is out 27 February