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Comment by rocha | Hacker News Reader

Nassim Taleb wrote a whole book (Skin in the Game) under a similar premise: “Never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them.”

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Sounds like an interesting book. I will check it out. I am wondering if in it, he addresses voting rights? Please don't mistake my retelling of history for bias when I say that before 150 years ago, voting in the United States was limited to white male property owners. The race and sex restrictions are not relevant to my point, but restricting voting to property owners was a prime example of ensuring "skin in the game".

Well, those who live under a modern government have skin in the game in the sense of paying taxes and relying on infrastructure, services, and regulation that make day to day civilization a thing.

True, but property owners pay property tax, which is a big part of where city revenue comes from. Allowing renters to vote on how the money is spent creates the same issue described in the grandparent post.

Money is fungible. Renters have skin in the game, because they paid tax (and because they live in the general society that those tax dollars are being used on). That they paid no property tax is not relevant, because it ceases to become "property tax" as soon as it's paid, and just enters a larger general pool.

People may have differing levels of skin in the game, but it's no more sensible to say that property tax should only be spent on things property owners want than it is to say that property tax paid by people named Dave should only be spent on things that The Council of The Daves want it to be spent on.

It's relevant for the same reason that it's relevant who pays a hospital bill. The person actually making the payment will be sensitive in ways that a pure beneficiary will not be.

They pay it, just not directly. The percent borne by them vs the landlord will depend on how elastic the supply of housing is in that market.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-microeconomics/chap...

You had a reasonable point, till you veered off into fantasy land that renters aren't just as much in the game if not more so. If anything landowners are generally the problem and renters are the majority population.

You're defining skin in the game as everyone "in the game", making the term rather unnecessary.

Skin in the game means a risk of losing some investment you brought to the table, not just losing the ongoing benefits and downsides the game itself provides.

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