5 ms·
Probably true. But I'm reminded that when Michael Lewis wrote his first book, 'Liar's Poker', he viewed it as a cautionary tale and a polemic against the behavi
by pjmorris 8y ago
Probably true. But I'm reminded that when Michael Lewis wrote his first book, 'Liar's Poker', he viewed it as a cautionary tale and a polemic against the behaviors he saw on Wall Street. He was surprised that its readers took it more as an instruction manual and an invitation to participate.
EDIT: Found the link to the interview I'm misquoting. Here's the original passage:
"I had no great agenda, apart from telling what I took to be a remarkable tale, but if you got a few drinks in me and then asked what effect I thought my book would have on the world, I might have said something like, “I hope that college students trying to figure out what to do with their lives will read it and decide that it’s silly to phony it up and abandon their passions to become financiers.” I hoped that some bright kid at, say, Ohio State University who really wanted to be an oceanographer would read my book, spurn the offer from Morgan Stanley, and set out to sea.
Somehow that message failed to come across. Six months after Liar’s Poker was published, I was knee-deep in letters from students at Ohio State who wanted to know if I had any other secrets to share about Wall Street. They’d read my book as a how-to manual."
https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/12/11/michael-lewis-big-short-conde-nast-portfolio.html https://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/12/11/michael-...
- eecc 8y agoIt's not the students that are hopelessly greedy I'm afraid. It's just that they're conditioned - living in such a competitive, second is first of the losers kind of society - to go with whatever provides them the safest path away from poverty and destitution.
- pjmorris 8y agoI don't think it's restricted to students. To go back only a little bit in the history of things, I think Maslow was on to something with his hierarchy of needs. When you're safe and fed, and cared about, you have some room to work on self-actualization. Not so much when you're scared and hungry. Money's not safety or food, but a steady stream of it is a good proxy in these days. To go back a little further, I'm thinking of John Adams quote "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
- eecc 8y agoYup, pretty much so. That’s why I feel this “winner takes all” feature of modern life is a very damaging one
- meko 8y agoErgo, the natural consequences of capitalism.
- hermitdev 8y agoI worked for a prominent hedge fund (20B USD AUM at the time) for 9 years and never first hand witnessed any excesses. There was always the third hand accounts of something happening. I did work in backoffice IT and not for one of the desks, so not odd I wouldn't have seen anything firsthand. Probably closest I saw to show of wealth would be the rare occasions I drove in and parked in the building. You'd see a few Ferraris parked even in the middle of winter in Chicago, and that's not counting the CEOs cars that were kept behind a keycarded garage within the garage.
- redshield666 8y agohttps://www.finma.ch/en/news/2018/07/20180720-mm-rothschild/ https://www.finma.ch/en/news/2018/07/20180720-mm-rothschild/
- kopo 8y agoAnd he wrote the "Undoing Project" to explain why this happens. Not his best book but a decent laymen intro for those interested in Behavioral Psychology.