I am reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable”. I read his two follow up books previously. He introduces the concept that people live in one of two worlds: Mediocristan or Extremistan. One lives in a scalable world and the other does not. Imagine lining up 100 people you know, note their weight and arrive at an average. Then add one person, the heaviest person in the world. The average barely nudges. Then take the same group and average their annual income. Next, add Bill Gates to the mix. Suddenly the average has moved up considerably. Unlike dentists and plumbers, Gates lives in Extremistan where there are only dwarfs and giants. All opera singers lived in Mediocristan in 1850. Like dentists and plumbers, they were geographically based and no one could take their business away and they could not take away the business of another — or at least not many others. Then came the gramophone and everyone was either a dwarf or a giant (and all could become what they weren’t). The old world had few people living in Extremistan and most living in Mediocristan, but the modern world has exploded with scalable opportunities. The success of the US is largely the result of scaling up: restaurant franchises, junk bonds, writers like J.K. Rowling and Stephen King. It’s a winner take all world with either huge success or no success at all for those in scalable arenas. Most games are winner take all (Extremistan), but the best games keep the subsequent losers engaged for a considerable period. For instance: Monopoly is a lousy game; a little bad luck at the beginning and the player languishes for a long period with little to no chance of winning.