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If you know a disgusting secret on a Harvard MBA alumnus (which is not that hard, because as unethical people become increasingly arrogant, they get worse at hi

If you know a disgusting secret on a Harvard MBA alumnus (which is not that hard, because as unethical people become increasingly arrogant, they get worse at hiding it) you can use it to get a powerful recommendation, get in to Harvard Business School, and make influential friends. [citation needed] No doubt this is true in an abstract sense, but is there any recorded data on this (reports of scandals, etc) or is this just speculation.

ims 13y ago
Right. While not impossible (it's possible for almost anyone, no?), this type of blackmail is probably extremely uncommon. In the real world, it's so much more likely to be "he's a cool guy, we went to the same prep school, why not?" Which renders the same result, but in less of a movie-script dramatic way.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  While not impossible (it's possible for almost anyone, no?), this type of blackmail is probably extremely uncommon. Wrong. It's extremely common, but it's also subtle. It's best if the target doesn't know what you have on him. That's the beauty of business school. You were out drinking with him 25 times and he doesn't remember half of them, so you don't have to mention "the dirt". (Also: you shouldn't. Explicit extortion will put you in jail.) He has no memory of what specific episodes you have on him, and there might not even be any. He just knows that if you say, "introduce me to <Y>" or "invite me to your winter party" that he has no choice.
  - jerrya 13y ago
    Sigh. I clearly went to the wrong business school, and I bet being married and having a kid didn't help me either on this score. :( (I was there in that capstone project where you had a bug in the excel spreadsheet and we just pasted value over it!)
michaelochurch 13y ago
What you need to do is come to New York, meet some very rich people, learn how they think and operate, and observe what they do to keep and grow their levels of power. It's not as hard as it sounds. It is expensive, but it's not difficult. There are apartments selling for $100 million. Who lives in those? How did they get there? What are their stories? The answers are not what middle-class Americans think (hard work! pure luck!) but you don't exactly have to become one of them (almost impossible) to learn how they do things. They don't even bother to hide it anymore. After about 5 years, you'll realize that most of the "effortless" rises are cases of people who learn something damning about a powerful person and leverage it into all kinds of social currencies. Stupid extortion: "Give me $10 million or I'll reveal <X>." That's far too direct and really dumb. You go to jail for that. Smarter (if still evil) extortion: "Hi. You may not remember me but I was with you on January 24, 2007 in New York when <X>. Those were fun times, no? I heard that a lot of venture capitalists attend your winter party in Aspen. I'd like to attend, because I'm looking to start my own company." That's how 90+ percent of the most successful people got where they are.
- theorique 13y ago
  That makes a lot of sense. I'm not in NY but I do see this among the very wealthiest people I know. In a lot of ways, frats and university clubs do similar things, formally and informally. When people do embarrassing, dangerous, illegal, or immature things together, it bonds them in interesting and tight ways. One can imagine that if it was 1999 and you had been one of GWB's close Yale or MBA buddies who had blown a snowstorm of cocaine together, and you called him up for a little favor or consideration, that such a thing might come through rather quickly and discreetly.
tankenmate 13y ago
The problem with finding this sort of data is that it is self unselecting; i.e. it suffers from survivour bias. So you would need to asses base level corruption in organisations over their histories collectively and severally. Look for the quiet spots and compare the relative successfulness of under capitalised students, i.e. do students from poorer backgrounds do better during years where there is less scandal? You might also want to compare to low level scandal to form a relative comparison; how many research papers are non reproducible, had to be withdrawn, etc. Then you need to figure if there is a causal link; this is left as an exercise for the reader.

ims 13y ago

Right. While not impossible (it's possible for almost anyone, no?), this type of blackmail is probably extremely uncommon. In the real world, it's so much more likely to be "he's a cool guy, we went to the same prep school, why not?" Which renders the same result, but in less of a movie-script dramatic way.

michaelochurch 13y ago
While not impossible (it's possible for almost anyone, no?), this type of blackmail is probably extremely uncommon. Wrong. It's extremely common, but it's also subtle. It's best if the target doesn't know what you have on him. That's the beauty of business school. You were out drinking with him 25 times and he doesn't remember half of them, so you don't have to mention "the dirt". (Also: you shouldn't. Explicit extortion will put you in jail.) He has no memory of what specific episodes you have on him, and there might not even be any. He just knows that if you say, "introduce me to <Y>" or "invite me to your winter party" that he has no choice.
- jerrya 13y ago
  Sigh. I clearly went to the wrong business school, and I bet being married and having a kid didn't help me either on this score. :( (I was there in that capstone project where you had a bug in the excel spreadsheet and we just pasted value over it!)

michaelochurch 13y ago

What you need to do is come to New York, meet some very rich people, learn how they think and operate, and observe what they do to keep and grow their levels of power. It's not as hard as it sounds. It is expensive, but it's not difficult. There are apartments selling for $100 million. Who lives in those? How did they get there? What are their stories? The answers are not what middle-class Americans think (hard work! pure luck!) but you don't exactly have to become one of them (almost impossible) to learn how they do things. They don't even bother to hide it anymore. After about 5 years, you'll realize that most of the "effortless" rises are cases of people who learn something damning about a powerful person and leverage it into all kinds of social currencies. Stupid extortion: "Give me $10 million or I'll reveal <X>." That's far too direct and really dumb. You go to jail for that. Smarter (if still evil) extortion: "Hi. You may not remember me but I was with you on January 24, 2007 in New York when <X>. Those were fun times, no? I heard that a lot of venture capitalists attend your winter party in Aspen. I'd like to attend, because I'm looking to start my own company." That's how 90+ percent of the most successful people got where they are.

theorique 13y ago
That makes a lot of sense. I'm not in NY but I do see this among the very wealthiest people I know. In a lot of ways, frats and university clubs do similar things, formally and informally. When people do embarrassing, dangerous, illegal, or immature things together, it bonds them in interesting and tight ways. One can imagine that if it was 1999 and you had been one of GWB's close Yale or MBA buddies who had blown a snowstorm of cocaine together, and you called him up for a little favor or consideration, that such a thing might come through rather quickly and discreetly.

tankenmate 13y ago

The problem with finding this sort of data is that it is self unselecting; i.e. it suffers from survivour bias. So you would need to asses base level corruption in organisations over their histories collectively and severally. Look for the quiet spots and compare the relative successfulness of under capitalised students, i.e. do students from poorer backgrounds do better during years where there is less scandal? You might also want to compare to low level scandal to form a relative comparison; how many research papers are non reproducible, had to be withdrawn, etc. Then you need to figure if there is a causal link; this is left as an exercise for the reader.