The River, the Village, and the Fort: Nate Silver's New Book, "On the Edge"

Also ... how confident are you that there isn't just as much benefit-from-collateral-damage among people who thrive on certainty and stability? E.g., you might have noticed that The Rent Is Too Damn High, and that governments don't tend to pursue policies that would change that, and that plausibly one important reason is that they need the votes of property-owners who see their property as a stable, reliable source of income. That's not, on the whole, a risk-seeking group, but there's a good argument that they're making money off immiserating all the non-property-owners, which is "thriving on collateral damage" if anything is.

(Which is not to say that all property-owners, or all landlords, are bad people or anything. Nor are all tech investors, or all professional poker players. That's rather my point.)

The risk-tolerant VC has done this rodeo before, the risk-ignorant founders are discorded in droves by the wayside until the unicorn is found.