What Taleb is saying is still true. If I have a 400k market salary and I give up 200k of it for the right to 1% of the profits I generate, then I still maximize the expected value of my compensation that year by maximizing the size of my bets. I could bet a billion dollars on a coin flip, get 9.8 million (after recouping foregone salary) on heads and lose 200k on tails. Moreover, there is a well established history of traders that lost large amounts of money finding gainful employment regardless. See Boaz Weinstein, for example.