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Join Wall Street. Save the world

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#41

Post by Fishkins »

LowKarmaAccount wrote: post #22

Local governments are also involved in the stock market. High frequency traders make money by acting as an intermediary between buyers and sellers, and thus not creating actual wealth. Instead their supposed value is the "liquidity" they add. That means that the price of "adding liquidity" is a lower return on a stock or bond invested by a local government. Which in turn means that the local government might have to…

This is basically what I was going to say, but more specific. I can't believe they could write such a long article without even mentioning the direct negative impact your job could have on the world. It's still possible working your high-paying job is net improvement over the alternatives, but I don't think this went into enough depth to provide a good argument.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#42

Post by davorak »

tannerc wrote: post #18

One engineer donating $50k is great. One teacher-focused engineer doing a decent job at influencing and educating others to do more with their money is... priceless? It's good that Mr. Trigg is doing what he can, but discounting the ability of an education role to impact even more people is slightly silly.

At least in my life time and durring my education, mid USA, there seemed to be a considerable amount of emphasis placed on doing good with your own hands, even going to the extent of suggesting that getting a high paying job was morally negative or at least undesirable as an intention.

The article and the sentiment behind it is more about this negative stereotype changing and hopeful disappearing rather then devaluing what is already valuable.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#43

Post by xradionut »

rayiner wrote: post #32
greesil wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's just the other activities like the occasional overleveraging that destabilizes the global financial markets and causes depressions. Or, leveraged buy-outs that fuck the rank and file of a company out of their contractually agreed upon pensions.

How much social harm is caused by buggy software? Was Windows 95 a "fuck the world" on the part of Microsoft's programmers?

I actually made good money while using Win95 back in the WWW 1.0 days.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#44

Post by swampthing »

nickpinkston wrote: post #29
swampthing wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether the world is better off if Buffet had taken your advice. Not clear that it would be?

I think it's good that he gave money to something more innovative than the Salvation Army or some such, but generally if you're taking the conservative approach to "world-saving" (working and donating), your donations don't have great leverage or relevance. It's why GM couldn't make Tesla... How many times do they go into it thinking this and just end up with a bunch of cars and naming rights to a building at Harvard…

Well, I think a lot of people end up like that - but then I'd argue they're not really taking any approach (much less a conservative one) to "world-saving". They've switched their goals at that point!

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#45

Post by jacquesm »

UVB-76 wrote: post #12
greesil wrote: post #6

I thought the recruitment pitch was, "Join Wall Street, fuck the world."

A lot of the activities that take place on Wall Street are fairly harmless. Some might even be considered socially productive.

> A lot of the activities that take place on Wall Street are fairly harmless.

Most of those harmless activities do not include trading stocks, bonds, derivatives and commodities.

Wall-Street is like a very powerful diesel engine, it generates enormous amounts of power and it generates enormous amounts of pollution. Hard to get the one without the other.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#46

Post by davorak »

edw519 wrote: post #23

His logic is simple: The more he makes, the more good he can do. It may be his logic, but it's not mine. And it doesn't have to be yours, either. I believe "doing good" is something to be done all the time. If you wait until the time is right or the conditions are right or you have enough money or time or something else, you will probably never get around to doing good. And even if you do, how much good will not get…

> If you wait until the time is right or the conditions are right or you have enough money or time or something else, you will probably never get around to doing good. And even if you do, how much good will not get done while you're on your journey to being able to do good.

Some times this choice is obvious, under feeding myself to feed other would probably reduce the amount of long term good I could do for the world.

Saving my money now so that I can be in a good finical position to take advantage of economic opportunities is not as obvious, but can lead to considerably more good being done.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#48

Post by cmbaus »

nickpinkston wrote: post #16

Join Wall Street. Attempt to save the world through donations. End up unable to recognize what to solve. This is a pattern that all these guys do. Even Warren Buffet just gave his money to Gates. You'd think a guy who spends his life picking out successful businesses would be able to recognize this in non-profit / social ventures, but he's so removed from real problems he can't. If you want to save the world, save th…

It will be interesting to see what the effect of both Gate's and Buffet's donations will be. It certainly is a good that a large chuck of capital and energy is going toward improving society, but putting that much capital to work may also cause significant inflation and negate some of the benefit.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#49

Post by davorak »

rayiner wrote: post #37

Interesting note: Goldman Sachs donated $377m in cash last year. At $2,500 per life saved, that's 150,000 live saved per year.

It would be rather awesome if all or most of that money was going to one of the top three charities at give well. Enough so that would significantly change my understanding of Goldman Sachs and make me revaluate similar companies.

Re: Join Wall Street. Save the world

#50

Post by enraged_camel »

ig1 wrote: post #31
enraged_camel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't bonuses performance-based? From what I hear, that is what provides an incentive for finance-types to fuck over everyone, including their own clients.

You could say that about all incentivized pay, i.e. salespeople, developers rewarded for hitting milestones, etc.

How many developers do you know who can truly and massively fuck up the world economy while pursuing their bonuses?
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