Rogues of Wall Street

CHAPTER 24 The Risk Management Society and Its Friends

As we have just seen, every kind of society needs to manage its risks effectively, whether it is a small or large firm, a city, a state, or a country. I have also made the case that risk management is ideally not a separate function but is sewn into the very fabric of society such that ordinary employees or citizens become managers of risk. Fighting terrorism on the home front, for example, can only be effective when citizens are aware of the dangers and are educated to identify the potential threat behind, for example, an ownerless bag left on a train. For a society to function effectively in this way, several attributes need to be present. Here, we will look at these attributes and discuss several exemplars with and without these attributes.

Attribute 1: A Shared Passion

If society's members share a passion and commitment to continued prosperity and existence, they will do what it takes to ensure that result. The evidence of this can be seen in twentieth‐ and twenty‐first‐century startup nations and companies. Israel is one example amongst modern nations as evidence of the importance and shared passion, commitment, and goals.¹ There are other significant examples in earlier Western history, including the United Provinces that became the Dutch Republic (today, the Netherlands) and the United States. The United Provinces, the young Dutch nation in Europe's north, rebelled against the all‐powerful Spanish branch ...