My prediction: "The version number finally equals Pi. No more changes to the software are possible, because it's now perfect."
Wrong thread.
One of the pitfalls of tabbed browsing.
The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
51–60 of 215 posts
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are completely incorrect, the free market is a moral system because it does not rely on coercion or force to compel others to interact. All interactions in a free market system are voluntary and beneficial to all participants in the transaction. No other economic system can make those claims.
It can be beneficial to all "participants" but disastrous to society as a whole, can it not? Look at the current rage against free market instruments like CDOs and other complex unregulated derivatives. Are you really claiming we dont need "coercion or force" from regulators like the SEC or FTC?
Are you really claiming we dont need "coercion or force" from regulators like the SEC or FTC?
It is naive to think any one human agents or regulatory agency is able to prevent those "complex unregulated derivatives" or not be corrupted by unethical firms/special interests/etc.
The free market system already have a "fail-safe" or "regulatory" function through the bankruptcy of entrepreneurs and rewarding prudent entrepreneurs with the leftover possessions of the bankrupt one. Failure is at the heart of the free market enterprise system. It is a feature, not a bug.
It is those who wishes to prevent these failures at all and any costs that keep our society stagnated or hurling down to its destruction as they keep funding economic activities that is out of reality with human needs and desire.
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#53"At my salary level, and with my expected advancement path, I could comfortably retire in my thirties." I've heard this or statements like it in quite a few articles over the years, but I've never actually met a retired thirties business consultant. Do they exist and am I just missing them? The only ones I know are well into their thirties, working 70+ hours a week, and looking forward to making even larger boatloads…
That actually undermines his main point -- that he stuck to his "morals" and forgone the "large" hush money check at the end. If he was making enough to retire by his 30s then $16k wasn't that significant of an amount. That means the didn't really lose a lot so his "moral" stance is more symbolic, and not the tough financial decision that article might imply.
Eh, maybe. Numerologically, I think you're right, but you do have to keep in mind that a $16,000 lump sum has a lot more subjective value going out the door to an uncertain future and a zero income - at least, temporarily - than it does in the course of making six figures at a stable job.
I'm not saying he had any reason to suspect he wouldn't be able to find another job, and even quickly, but it probably wouldn't pay nearly as much and there was no guarantee of that. It's just the depressive state accompanying the sensation of having been fired, even if it's from something you hate in concrete terms.
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#54"I wasn’t sure at the time, but having had enough free time of late to ponder such questions, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that having a father who can pay for a top-notch education outweighs the disadvantage of being raised by a hypocrite. Sticking with the job for the sake of a paycheck passes the children test." I wonder how many children get sent to college by dads like that.
I think it shows closed-mindedness on his part. They taught him analysis at MIT, but they didn't teach him to think properly. You're a guy with a degree from the top technical school in the world and you've got one of the world's most prestigious consultancies on your resume: you don't think you could go on to find a job in which you could afford your kids' education AND not be a hypocrite? I respect him for standing…
Well he was taking a double course-load and working, so that may count as being buried in sand.
But still, even if he didn't know beforehand, he figured it out very quickly upon arrival and then stayed for a long time for the money, so I agree with most of your point.
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#55"At my salary level, and with my expected advancement path, I could comfortably retire in my thirties." I've heard this or statements like it in quite a few articles over the years, but I've never actually met a retired thirties business consultant. Do they exist and am I just missing them? The only ones I know are well into their thirties, working 70+ hours a week, and looking forward to making even larger boatloads…
They think they will retire in their thirties, but they never have enough. "At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, "Yes, but I have something he will never have... Enough." http://ww…
Their fixed costs keep rising. When you are 22, you think that $100,000 a year (rising with inflation) is heaps. But by 30, you buy your first yacht, and it takes $50,000 a year just to keep it in the dock.
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#56Something that leaped out at me: "I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system". Voluntary exchange is not a moral system. A free market doesn't have morals.
You are completely incorrect, the free market is a moral system because it does not rely on coercion or force to compel others to interact. All interactions in a free market system are voluntary and beneficial to all participants in the transaction. No other economic system can make those claims.
People can be coerced by their circumstances; but that's beside the point.
You can hire someone to murder someone else. Nothing wrong with that transaction in a free market. Similarly, you can be a credit card processor for child pornography - you take your cut, but since you don't do the deed, it's not your problem.
Do you see the problem?
(Hint: morality isn't emerging here. It comes from somewhere else.)
And I have no idea why you mentioned some "other economic system". I didn't. Why? Because I wasn't contrasting economic systems. I was contrasting moral systems.
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#57Something that leaped out at me: "I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system". Voluntary exchange is not a moral system. A free market doesn't have morals.
The author of the submitted article may have more sense of history than most Americans. It is a historical fact that Adam Smith first wrote a book The Theory of Moral Sentiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments in 1759, pondering the issue of why people behave morally when they could simply guard their own self-interest. As Smith pondered the issue more, he wrote An Inquiry into the Nature…
You have completely missed the point. Contrasting economic systems is completely irrelevant.
The choice here is not between different economic systems, but between different moral systems.
You cannot make a free market your moral system because markets are amoral. That is, it is not that they are not immoral and so should be replaced with something else; rather, they have no moral content - morality comes from somewhere else.
You can pay someone to punch a third party in the nose. You get the value of knowing that someone is going to get hurt. The other guy gets your money. The transaction, in the free market, by itself has no moral content, though. A free market just means exchanging value for mutual gain. It doesn't say that those values have positive or negative moral worth.
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#58This story is written with a wonderful naivete. Consultants like BCG exist only to lend credentials and competent temporary labor. The companies who hire these consultants are looking for affirmation and peace of mind -- most of them too mired in bureaucracy or incompetence to draw even the most basic conclusions by themselves.
Still, it's hard to believe that peace of mind is worth paying 5 kids graduated 6 weeks ago in Political Science from Stanford to come give Powerpoints on meaningless, vapid crapola billed to you each at $300/hr, even where such figures don't make much of a blip on the bottom line.
They don't want anyone that has a clue and might therefore threaten them! (sadly seen this in my work)
Edit: many of the other cynical explanations further down in the thread are quite valid too (scapegoat theory et al)
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#59I'm so sorry for pointing this out, I loved the article, but was surprised that no one else raised issue with:
"Like downloading MP3s, it was a victimless crime."
After all these years we know better than to say this carelessly. Is stealing code from a hardworking programmer a victimless crime?
Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell
#60i have the feeling, children or not, that we wouldn't have been hearing this story if the $16,000 offer had been a bit larger.
As Calvin and Hobbes put it, the disturbing thing is not that everyone can be bought, but that the price is often so low.
Exactly.
He even said that he decided that he would rather have a "hypothetical children" have a rich morally bankrupt father that could pay for college than one with integrity.
edit: oops this is pointed out above.