Risk Culture during the Last 2000 Years?￠????From an Aleatory Society to the Illusion of Risk Control

摘要

The culture of risk is 2000 years old, although the term ?￠????risk?￠???? developed much later. The culture of merchants making decisions under uncertainty and taking the individual responsibility for the uncertain future started with the Roman ?￠????Aleatory Society?￠????, continued with medieval sea merchants, who made business ?￠????ad risicum et fortunam?￠????, and sustained to the culture of entrepreneurs in times of industrialisation and dynamic economic changes in the 18th and 19th century. For all long-term commercial relationships, the culture of honourable merchants with personal decision-making and individual responsibility worked well. The successful development of sciences, statistics and engineering within the last 100 years led to the conjecture that men can ?￠????construct?￠???? an economical system with a pre-defined ?￠????clockwork?￠???? behaviour. Since probability distributions could be calculated ex-post, an illusion to control risk ex-ante became a pattern in business and banking. Based on the recent experiences with the financial crisis, a ?￠????risk culture?￠???? should understand that human ?￠????Strength of Knowledge?￠???? is limited and the ?￠????unknown unknown?￠???? can materialise. As all decisions and all commercial agreements are made under uncertainty, the culture of honourable merchants is key to achieve trust in long-term economic relations with individual responsibility, flexibility to adapt and resilience against the unknown.