71–80 of 291 posts
“I don’t have the brain capacity to think about the system as a whole. All I’m concerned with is how this affects our company.” I wonder how many people really understand the system as whole. From the outside, it looks like a complex natural phenomenon that we don't really understand and don't control.
Yay, more villifying "Wall Street" and fueling the "Wall Street vs. Main Street" fire, and suggesting that it's somehow noble or good to not want to be rich. I think everybody should want to be rich. I've tried poverty and in my opinion - it sucks. It sucks big, steaming donkey balls. The desire to make more money, to improve one's "lot in life" and to succeed, this is a Good Thing. Because a few assholes go too far…
> The desire to make more money, to improve one's "lot in life" and to succeed, this is a Good Thing. One of the key points of this essay is that making more money doesn't necessarily improve one's quality of life. The author clearly talks about at age 25 being financially secure and wealthy, so his pursuit of additional wealth wasn't really about an increase in quality of life. > You can be rich and unhappy, or poor…
Why wouldn't it be? Wealth is created, and if you can create a billion dollars in wealth, then so be it.
Even if so, is it right that you can be a billionaire while there are more empty homes each night in the US than the homeless population?
Depends on what you mean by "right". Is that a troubling, even disturbing situation? Yes, I would find it to be so. But is any particular billionaire (or any other particular individual at all) somehow obligated to fix the homelessness problem? No.
Is it right that you can safely eat anything you like while others have to make sacrifices and choices because of political cuts to SNAP? The answer is clearly no.
I would disagree, again with the caveat that it depends on what you mean by "right". I think I would rank that situation as "unfortunate", and I think we all wish the rich would do more to help the less fortunate. I know when I was dirt-poor, living below the poverty line, I resented the rich a bit, so I get this mindset. But as I've moved through life and seen what hard-work and determination can accomplish, and become more comfortable in my own skin, I find that I no longer cherish the idea of handouts greatly, except for the real edge cases: People who literally cannot fend for themselves - the elderly, children, people who are physically or mentally disabled, etc.
In this way, pursuing money for wealth's sake is unethical.
I guess this also depends on how you define unethical. Is a really rich person who does nothing to help the less fortunate a huge asshole? Arguably, yes. But is that the same thing as behaving unethically? I wouldn't say so. But I expect we have fundamentally differing worldviews on some basic issues, so I'm betting we'll always disagree on this.
Yay, more villifying "Wall Street" and fueling the "Wall Street vs. Main Street" fire, and suggesting that it's somehow noble or good to not want to be rich. I think everybody should want to be rich. I've tried poverty and in my opinion - it sucks. It sucks big, steaming donkey balls. The desire to make more money, to improve one's "lot in life" and to succeed, this is a Good Thing. Because a few assholes go too far…
Yay, more villifying "Wall Street" and fueling the "Wall Street vs. Main Street" fire, and suggesting that it's somehow noble or good to not want to be rich. I think everybody should want to be rich. I've tried poverty and in my opinion - it sucks. It sucks big, steaming donkey balls. The desire to make more money, to improve one's "lot in life" and to succeed, this is a Good Thing. Because a few assholes go too far…
It's also strange that this kind of hate is specifically focused on Wall Street types, much less so than against the Elon Musks, Steve Jobs's and Bill Gates's of the world, which could also easily be described as fanatical and addicted to wealth and success.
Wealth is awesome; no doubt about it. But, as you are accumulating wealth, are you simultaneously creating value? Personal wealth and value creation don't always go hand-in-hand.
Also, as the author (and commenters) pointed out, this isn't a reflection of all of Finance. Stocks, bonds, future, options and other derivatives are essential for growth. We will always need ways to finance investment and tools to manage the accompanying risk. The author was saying that he was getting rich by trading credit default swaps (and probably synthetic CDOs), which -ultimately- played the largest role in destroying massive amounts of value post-2008 because of the sheer volume at which they were being traded (and because the securities that the CDSs were insuring were backed by subprime loans).
Honestly though, you don't have to know much about the 2008 crash to recognize the weakness of your argument. Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates may be (or may have been) addicted to wealth and success. But they accumulated wealth by creating innovative products.
The same could not be said of the typical fixed-income trader circa 2007.
I was a derivatives trader, and it occurred to me the world would hardly change at all if credit derivatives ceased to exist. Not so nurse practitioners. Is this statement (from the article) true? I'm under the impression that financial innovations throughout history have generally spurred capital investment. Innovations like fractional-reserve lending have made bankers&investors wealthy, but also spurred spending on…
They had running water and other complex infrastructure in ancient Rome well before derivatives were invented I really doubt we'd be living in a barren wasteland w/o them. There would certainly be an impact if all that stuff went away but it wouldn't be because of it's absence it would be because of the pain of unwinding it all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The desire to make more money, to improve one's "lot in life" and to succeed, this is a Good Thing. One of the key points of this essay is that making more money doesn't necessarily improve one's quality of life. The author clearly talks about at age 25 being financially secure and wealthy, so his pursuit of additional wealth wasn't really about an increase in quality of life. > You can be rich and unhappy, or poor…
That is an interesting question about being a billionaire without exploiting anyone . I'm genuinely curious about that. Not that I think being a Billionaire automatically makes you an asshole. I'm just curious if that is possible just from a logistical standpoint. Somewhere along the line someone gets screwed right?
Some social science guys would say that this is true for every business - since you're operating in an exploiting system(capitalism) ,someone is bound to get exploited.
i wonder how much time it'll take until we get to a star-trek-like economic system where people do the things they want to do to the extent that their abilities allow and noone can make the excuse, "i'm not interested in money. i'm interested in what money lets me do."
i like that this guy just came out and said, "yeah, i was interested in the money for its own sake." it sounds a lot less noble, but it seems a lot more honest to me than any other justification for having far, far more cash than any one person really needs, except for, "i'm giving it to charity."
I was a derivatives trader, and it occurred to me the world would hardly change at all if credit derivatives ceased to exist. Not so nurse practitioners. Is this statement (from the article) true? I'm under the impression that financial innovations throughout history have generally spurred capital investment. Innovations like fractional-reserve lending have made bankers&investors wealthy, but also spurred spending on…
The point the author was trying to get at was not that finance geeks don't provide any social utility.
Just that in any rational category of needs, the value they provide would have to rank far below the value provide by nurse practitioners (and schoolteachers, police officers, lawyers even... a zillion other working categories, in fact).
If today's financial wizards went away,
It's not just a question of "if." To all intents and purposes, the financial services sector as we know it today (both in its technical prowess, and in sheer size and scope) did not exist 30 years go. True, we didn't have Facebook or iPads then. But people managed to live healthy lives, raise children, have careers, buy houses, fight wars, etc, just the same.
So from one point of view, yes the financial services sector can be seen to grease certain wheels (like IPOs, M&A). But in the larger picture, (in the view of many) it doesn't seem to provide all that much value, in proportion to the resources (and brainpower) devoted to it. It also seems to generate no end of collateral damage (the recent mortgage crisis being just one example).
"I recently got an email from a hedge-fund trader who said that though he was making millions every year, he felt trapped and empty, but couldn’t summon the courage to leave." I don't find it surprising. Many people feel that way about their job. It must take a lot of courage to leave such a lucrative career.