20 ms·

For the Love of Money

576 points by _ntka 13y ago

yetanotherphd 13y ago
I think the author has suffered from a lot of psychological pain stemming from his childhood, and I can sympathize a lot with that. I think he really did have a wealth addiction, like he describes. However, that doesn't generalize to the entire industry. People (especially men) like money and power because of the benefits they brings. It doesn't have to be an addiction. Furthermore, the idea that it would take an addiction to wealth not to see how immoral the finance industry is, is reliant on having very specific (and wrong, in my opinion) political views.
- benched 13y ago
  I agree. In fact, the article seemed disingenuous to me from the first sentence. As if he's trying too hard to hit a 'can you believe my lack of perspective' note. But I don't see it. Sure, if you have millions, your personal material needs are taken care of many times over, and you're very fortunate. But the difference between 5 and 100 million is very real. There are plenty of significant things you can do with 100 million that you cannot do with 5 million. And once you're at that altitude, that probably becomes that much clearer.
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    I think his overarching point is that these people (by and large) do NOT do anything 'significant' with their millions. They don't even participate in a part of society that is useful beyond making ridiculous amounts of money. That was why I believe he highlights that he has started speaking to the less fortunate and trying to 'make a difference' towards the end of the article. Edit: Not to say this guy still doesn't sound like a total twat. Look at how he ends with a sales pitch...
    - deleted 13y ago
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- chroem 13y ago
  There was an article a while back that discussed how most people's perception of what is "enough" wealth is always ~30% more than what they currently have, be it thousands or millions of dollars. Unfortunately I can't find the article at the moment, but the point still stands that, to a certain extent, wealth addiction has become embedded in our culture and we are taught to seek it from a young age. So to say that the financial industry is somehow immune to something everyone else around them is suffering from seems to be pretty disingenuous.
  - gjm11 13y ago
    I'm sure there are a lot of people in the finance industry who constantly think that "enough" is 30% more than they currently have (or maybe rather more than that -- someone well placed in finance can accumulate wealth pretty fast). I wonder, though, how much of what's gone wrong with finance is because of that. The spectacular cockups and conspiracies that have become public seem to be more about seriously pathological greed than about ordinary garden-variety wanting-a-bit-more. (Also, I offer myself as a counterexample to the strongest versions of the enough-is-30%-more theory: my current estimate of how much is "enough" is lower than it was 10 years ago, even though I have a lot more money now than I had then. However, I am not in the finance industry and I'm only one person :-).)
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  Yes, I was sharp, good with numbers. I had marketable talents. But in the end I didn’t really do anything. I was a derivatives trader, and it occurred to me the world would hardly change at all if credit derivatives ceased to exist. Hits the nail on the head for me. In the end these people make incredible amounts of money for doing what amounts to a job that is worthless to the society at large.
  - philosophus 13y ago
    If it is "worthless to the society at large" then why do people pay for it? Are they insane? It's popular to beat up on the financial industry, but they do actually do something: finance loans. Without them, good luck getting a mortgage, car loan, or a loan to start a business.
    - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
      You're seriously attempting to imply that there were no loans/lending of money before 1993 (when the derivatives markets became a 'thing')? Or are you just talking about the financial sector in general (and even so there were loans long before that.) Wall St. does not exist so people can get loans to purchase houses/cars... You may be missing some points about loans vs trading here...
      - gfodor 13y ago
        You're seriously attempting to imply that there is no value provided by a highly liquid and efficient derivatives market? I'm not going to say these people are earning an amount commensurate to the value they provide to society, but pretending that they are just running a casino is equally naive.
        ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        I would say they provide little to no value to the average person no. Please clarify what they provide to society at large (meaning most people and not just large portfolios or predatory credit companies)? Greater security and insulation against bad investments? (which to be clear the vast majority of people do not have enough money to make in the first place.) Seems a lot like playing odds at a Casino, to use your example, to me. And your edit is valid they do not provide the value (though there may be some, if little) that their millions of dollars in bonuses/salary would imply.
michaelochurch 13y ago
I've worked in finance. There are all types. Sure, there are asshole alpha traders who whine about $2 million bonuses. Those guys are pretty uncommon, they're disliked even in spite of their P&L, and no one helps them when they get unlucky. There are also people who don't think or live very differently from respectable professors-- except who have $12 million in their bank account instead of $12. There some pathological "wealth addicts" in finance, but not that many; and there are far more in the VC-funded startup world. (VC-istan is essentially Wall Street with a lower talent level and worse ethics.) I used to think it was a negative that Europe doesn't have the same "class" mobility. If you're rich in Germany or England, you're still considered middle-class. Politicians don't worship you, your kids still have to work hard if they are to attend good schools, et cetera. (The "upper classes" are hereditary aristocracies that have lost 80-95% of their wealth, privilege, and relevance.) You can't become upper-class if you weren't born into it, but the flip side of that is that middle-class people can rise quite high. (There's less mobility in social class, but more in terms of things that actually matter-- economic well-being, access to education, etc.) The sickness of the US is that we unify wealth, power, privilege, fame, and social connections by creating an efficient market through which people can trade one for another. Instead of having a society where some people have more money and some have less, we have this toxic arrangement where some people are just implicitly held to be universally better. The issue for the OP (who sounds like a self-indulgent twat, to be honest) is that he learned the hard way that making more money didn't make him a better person-- at all. It didn't make him smarter, happier, or anything else. He met his God and saw vapor. The sad thing is that he's still better off than any of us. If he wants to start a hedge fund tomorrow, or raise a $5-million seed round for whatever project he wants to take on, he's got the credibility to do it. If he doesn't feel like working hard, he could probably use his VC connections as a cash cow by funding young startup kids on a shoestring while taking an unreasonable percentage in equity (although that's been done before).
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Class in the UK is not solely about money. You can be upper class and living in a homeless hostel, doesn't happen much but possible. You can be working class and be a multi-millionaire. It's about heritage and social [inter]actions as much as it's about money. Class doesn't really feature in how much "better" you're perceived to be either. Some Lords are highly benevolent, clued in and useful members of society that treat their privilege as a blessing rather than a right; others are completely obsessed with themselves or disregard those without similar means. Similar contrasts can be found at other points in the spectrum of class.
logicallee 13y ago
I like how after all that, he ends with an ask for a quarter of his readers' bonuses to start a fund for his philanthropy old habits die hard :)
- mbillie1 13y ago
  > an ask Can this new idiom be stricken from our collective lexicon? I've heard this a lot lately in the tech community (although mostly from manager types) and it's a linguistic abomination. "...he ends by asking..."
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - jellicle 13y ago
    It's a term of art in the marketing world. Legitimate jargon. What's an equivalent... hmm, suppose I talk "a pull" in the context of a version control system. I'm talking about something with a specific meaning. It would be wrong to try to correct me and tell me I should talk about "a thing that is pulled".
    - mbillie1 13y ago
      Except that a pull in VCS is a separate thing. "An ask" seems to always mean "the thing that we are asking for," not some nuanced alternative or domain-specific concept.
  - prawn 13y ago
    Ends with "a request" for...
- lnanek2 13y ago
  I found that pretty hilarious too. "Stop working to get rich, money is evil! Oh, by the way, give me your money."
tkiley 13y ago
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 infrastructure in a way that could be a win-win for society as a whole. If today's financial wizards went away, would we feel a surprising amount of ripple impact, or would they really just not matter?
- munchbunny 13y ago
  Yes, those innovations are critical, but those central concepts and the legal mechanisms that make them possible have very little to do with what much of Wall Street does, which is inventing financial devices and arbitraging the everloving crap out of them. I think the point of "the world goes on without Wall Street" is that banks and stock markets will still provide speculative capital to expensive ventures whether or not high frequency trading is around, and agriculture will still grow and sell food whether or not hedge funds are buying and selling futures.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  It is debatable if derivatives do more harm than good. Just look at the 2008 financial crisis... From Jaredsohn's link further in the thread: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)#Economic_f.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)#Economic_f.... In the context of a 2010 examination of the ICE Trust, an industry self-regulatory body, Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which regulates most derivatives, was quoted saying that the derivatives marketplace as it functions now "adds up to higher costs to all Americans."
  - tkiley 13y ago
    Best case, what is the societal function of derivatives? As a relatively ignorant layperson, my guess is that derivatives allow productive businesses to hedge against uncontrollable risks. A business with less risks requires less capital buffer, which encourages & allows for more capital investment and profit-taking. In a nutshell, derivatives allow businesses to run and grow on less capital, by reducing the amount of capital-on-hand required to buffer against risk. Is there some other way in which derivatives serve an ostensibly positive function in society? Am I missing something here?
mindcrime 13y ago
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 in some ways, or do bad things along the path, does not change the fundamentals. You can be rich and unhappy, or poor and unhappy. Given a choice, if I'm going to be unhappy, I'd rather at least be rich. No one should feel any need to apologize or feel guilty about wanting to make money, even lots of money. If you want to be a fucking billionaire, go become a billionaire. Just feel guilty if you lie, or cheat or steal, or otherwise do unethical things to get there. And remember that having more money doesn't make you a better person, or intrinsically more valuable.
- deleted 13y ago
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- gjm11 13y ago
  I don't really disagree, but: You write as if the only options are "rich" and "poor". It's possible for the following two things both to be true: (1) Being poor sucks big, steaming donkey balls. (2) Being rich (as opposed to not-poor) is, for one reason or another, not a wise thing to aim for. As it happens, I think #2 isn't correct, because given the way the world is (a) being rich is the only way to be reasonably well assured of never being poor, and (b) there are a whole lot of people in the world who are desperately poor, and if you care at all about them then you have a use for an unlimited quantity of money, namely sending it their way. But in a less messed-up world, I think it would be eminently reasonable not to have a strong preference for being rich over merely comfortably off, and if the former takes a lot more work or risk than the latter then it would be reasonable not to bother.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    I don't really disagree, but: You write as if the only options are "rich" and "poor". True... in the name of brevity, and perhaps out of haste, I did generalize a bit. And the two points I mean to emphasize are: 1. Being poor sucks (I think we can all agree on this) and 2. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to be rich, even "dirty, rotten, filthy stinking rich". In the case of (2), I posit that the desire itself is fine, but the actions you take to try and achieve that end, may or may not be noble, just, good, or ethical.
yodsanklai 13y ago
"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.
- gesman 13y ago
  It's arguably better to feel empty about million dollar occupation vs. feeling empty about poorly paid occupation.
  - rpicard 13y ago
    It's arguably better to feel empty about a poorly paid occupation than to feel empty about being unemployed. It can go on for a while, but it doesn't mean people shouldn't address their problems.
    - gesman 13y ago
      ...starting with definition of the problems...
CreakyParrot 13y ago
TL;DR: He used to use drugs and booze to deal with his insecurities. Then he used money. Now he (apparently) uses the attention that comes from telling everyone how wise and honorable he has become.
- ivanca 13y ago
  This is a perfect example of the cynic snarkiness for the sake of snarkiness that plagues Hacker News; the guy of the article only has written one article besides this one[0] and that's it. He doesn't even have a profile pic or a clickable profile as most journalist in the NYT have. And he seems to spend his time as the director of something called groceryships not creating support groups for money addicts or selling self-help books. So much for an attention-seeker. [0]http://www.ocregister.com/articles/obesity-596818-food-stress.html
  - CreakyParrot 13y ago
    "Cynical: believing that people are motivated by self-interest." Call it a plague if you like, but I'm OK with it. And I wasn't being sharply critical (snarky) for the sake of being sharply critical. Honest. He's pretty actively promoting himself, his story, and his business (which is what it is) online, and he just successfully SEO-bombed his way to the top of the charts. You may think it's out of an abundance of goodness, but I think that's as naive a view as you think mine is cynically snarky. (Or snarkily cynical.)
    - ivanca 13y ago
      Because his name is not clickeable it means 100% of the people that is interested in him had to google him. So it's pretty easy to measure it's impact. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%20SAM%20POLK http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%20SAM%20POLK So it's impact augmented by a factor of 20; if he was searched 10 times per month before it means now he is being searched 200. So not that much but even if it were your point still doesn't make sense to me because what difference would there be with anyone writing anything? I guess that your point is not that everyone should write anonymously right? So, what is it?
rwissmann 13y ago
Just to point it out: The comments under Readers' Picks and NYT Picks are really worth reading as well.
yodsanklai 13y ago
I find the finance world quite fascinating! Some of those guys are super wealthy even though they have what looks like regular technical office jobs. With the same skills in a different industry, they would have had "normal" salaries.
- lxlxlxlxl 13y ago
  You might enjoy the book "Liars Poker" by Michael Lewis that the author references. I find the finance world interesting also, and read the Financial Times as much as possible. Most fascinating obituaries youll ever read.
yodsanklai 13y ago
“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.
- ricardobeat 13y ago
  That's not to be taken literally, you can be pretty sure the head of a hedge fund understands the system very well. He was just stating his priorities.
  - adaml_623 13y ago
    A large number of hedge funds lost a lot of money in the crash. This is proof of a sort that their heads did in fact not understand the system well.
    - kamaal 13y ago
      There isn't much incentive or motivation to think of the larger system, when you are being paid $12 million an year bonus to think only of your own benefit.
      - venomsnake 13y ago
        And that is why businessmen make mediocre politicians and policymakers at best. You need to take all thing into account thinking decades into the future. So next time a self made billionaire thinks he can enter politics on basis of his current success this should be taken into account.
- whatgoodisaroad 13y ago
  It reminds me of that old quote from Baron Rothschild (popularized, I think, by Ben Bernanke): > Baron Rosthschild was once heard to say that he knew of only two men who really understood gold -- an obscure clerk in the Bank of France and one of the directors of the Bank of England. "Unfortunately," he added, "they disagree." http://goo.gl/7EUCx http://goo.gl/7EUCx
frogpelt 13y ago
This is the ugly underbelly of capitalism: that people aren't paid based upon their "importance". They are simply paid based upon their "value" to the market. Is it important for Clayton Kershaw to pitch for the Dodgers? No, but it is demanded. While I understand the sentiment of wanting to help the poorest of the poor, if it's true that money isn't the be-all, end-all then does it really matter that a trader makes millions while a nurse practitioner only makes $100k? The money isn't what's important, right? And the poorest of the poor in this country are rich compared to the poor from previous generations.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  I would say that in most cases, people need to redefine importance in a way that is hard to accept. There is no need for scare quotes. The value is real, and when a person earns a certain amount, it's because the produce that much value (finance is kind of exceptional, in that there is a mix of true value and rent-seeking). Now how can it be that nurse practitioners don't produce that much value? It is because the relevant quantity is the marginal value of an additional nurse practitioner, not the average value. And why is it fair to pay people according to their marginal value, and not their average value? That is because it incentives the most efficient behavior. An additional software engineer is worth more to society than an additional nurse. The fact that getting rid of all nurses would be worse than getting rid of all software engineers (assuming this was true) is irrelevant, because as people quit the nursing profession, wages will rise. So the problem is not capitalism, but people's inability to accept that the implications of economics theory: first, that there is no ethical reason to reward people for the average value of a person in their profession, as opposed to the marginal value, and second, that frivolous things like Twitter can be as valuable as medical services (if people are willing to pay as much for either).
  - frogpelt 13y ago
    Very well stated. And you're right, no need for scare quotes.
read 13y ago
What stood out for me was this sentence: From a distance I can see what I couldn’t see then Why is it that when you are close you're unable to see something for what it is?
- KiwiCoder 13y ago
  perspective
  - peterpathname 13y ago
    or parallax ... I always confuse the two.
auvrw 13y ago
yeah, that's pretty f'd up, but it's good that the guy's moving on with his life. 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."
shmerl 13y ago
Love of money? Sounds bad already.
31reasons 13y ago
I am just wondering, are these Wall Street traders smarter than an average techie working in Silicon Valley ? Are they so irreplaceable that they are offered so much salary and bonuses ? It just doesn't seem right. I am afraid to even ask for 150k salary in SV for the same amount of cerebral work.
- kooshball 13y ago
  In my mind it's not so much that they're smarter but rather the value they add is more easily measurable. If the trades they make for a hedge fund creates a 10 millions dollars a year profit then it's easy to demand a million dollar bonus. The value of a startup engineer is much harder to determine in a year by year basis.
  - 31reasons 13y ago
    I heard some estimate that each software engineer adds $1 million (not necessarily to a start up). But there should be a way to reward based on quantitative performance than evaluation by a manager who have no clue about software development.
    - kooshball 13y ago
      That $1mm/engineer estimate is sometimes used for the valuation of a startup, not a yearly rate.
      - 31reasons 13y ago
        Thats because most startups don't have revenues, so they use that as a heuristics instead of a revenue figure. But since revenues are yearly, the value of a developer is implied to be yearly.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- bigbang 13y ago
  I was wondering the same. How hard is it to go from a programmer to a trader in a bank?
Montareo 13y ago
I personally find the comments here, written by so-called "hackers", truly depressing. Instead of tinkering about how the system can be made more just, viable, etc., instead of "hacking", the only "idea" that comes to the minds of so-called "innovators" is: how can i become THAT rich ?, where do i have to sign ?. Sad, depressing, disgusting, predictable.
- VexXtreme 13y ago
  Sorry to break it to you, it's called "human nature".
  - chippy 13y ago
    Actually calling something "human nature" is lazy, inaccurate and harmful. It's giving up on the issue, it's simplifying psychology, it's encouraging inertia and the status quo. It's saying "Sorry, nothing can be done, it's biology". This goes for many things, not just the desire to have lots of money.
ilaksh 13y ago
We need to change the structure/paradigm to make so much inequality technically infeasible.
nilkn 13y ago
Do programmers on Wall Street ever see similar bonuses, or is it necessary to work on the trading floor?
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  No way. Programmers are on the wrong side of the suit/geek divide, which is something like the blood-brain barrier.
  - nilkn 13y ago
    Bummer. I suppose what I should really be asking, though, is this: do programmers on Wall Street make enough to live comfortably in the city while still hitting normal savings goals, like retirement? For Manhattan, I'm thinking this would be a total comp. of $200k or above.
    - ChristianMarks 13y ago
      One can live comfortably in the city on ~ 95K. Perhaps one would have to make $200K on Wall Street, if only because turnover tends to be high.
      - kchoudhu 13y ago
        If you avoid the Wall Street lifestyle, you can make do quite beautifully on about $150K a year, which is what my wife and I do. It's a good way to save for other life aims, for sure.
      - nilkn 13y ago
        I probably over-estimated what I'd need. I was just basing the number on what I make currently and the difference in COL. It wouldn't be possible for me to maintain my current savings goals on $95k in Manhattan.
- kchoudhu 13y ago
  No. Not unless you're the techie that makes partner, in which case you're still going to bring in less than the people who are actually swinging pnl.
blazespin 13y ago
The fundamental problem with HFT is not HFT itself, but rather that there is massive intellectual capital playing tug a war with itself while it could be working on huge problems in genetics, AI, software, physics, etc.
geezer 13y ago
This is apropos for this thread "The wealth of the 85 richest people equals that of half the world's population, says development charity Oxfam http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/wealthy-grabbing-power-says-oxfam-29931690.html http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/wea...
msie 13y ago
Lucky guy.
jackgavigan 13y ago
I've long since grown tired of these sensationalist, populist, polemical, self-flaggellating, attention-seeking, pseudo-confessionals by ex-bankers (usually failed ones, although they'll rarely admit that, preferring to portray themselves as having quit for moral reasons, rather than having been unceremoniously fired), getting all angsty about their previous life as an evil, greedy, detached-from-reality monster. Geraint Anderson, Polly Courtney, Tetsuya Ishikawa, John Rolfe and Peter Troob - they're all just pale imitations of Michael Lewis's "Liar's Poker" (Frank Partnoy's "FIASCO" is a notably less-pale imitation), feeding the media's seemingly-endless appetite for new scandalous revelations about the behaviour of people who get paid lots of money. Seriously. Enough already! Disclaimer: I was an evil, greedy, detached-from-reality monster in a previous life.
- perfunctory 13y ago
  I am curious how do you tell a pseudo-confession from a genuine one.
  - gadders 13y ago
    See if they have a book or other project to publicise.
    - kelvin0 13y ago
      So I guess everyone marketing a book is a phony? You never learned anything valuable written by someone who marketed it and believed in it? I though I was cynical ... you Sir are the King.
pimentel 13y ago
Whenever I see rich guys forfeiting on more money so they can help the poor, I remember this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others... TL;DR: If a high-powered lawyer who makes $1,000 an hour chooses to take an hour off to help clean up litter on the beach, he's wasted the opportunity to work overtime that day, make $1,000, donate to a charity that will hire a hundred poor people for $10/hour to clean up litter, and end up with a hundred times more litter removed. If he went to the beach because he wanted the sunlight and the fresh air and the warm feeling of personally contributing to something, that's fine. If he actually wanted to help people by beautifying the beach, he's chosen an objectively wrong way to go about it. And if he wanted to help people, period, he's chosen a very wrong way to go about it, since that $1,000 could save two people from malaria. Unless the litter he removed is really worth more than two people's lives to him, he's erring even according to his own value system. If he feels it's unfair that he makes so much more many than others, he should make even more and give out what he think is enough to make it fair.
- g8oz 13y ago
  Better yet he should be taxed at a 75% marginal rate.
- codingdave 13y ago
  That sounds completely logical, but misses the human element. Your story only works if the people making all the money actually spend it on helping others. Most of the time, they do not. One of the things that will trigger people to charity and generosity is going out and doing some charitable work on their own. It lets them see the results, show them the personal satisfaction that can be gained by it, and sets them up to have the desire to contribute in other ways.
- arjie 13y ago
  Statement fails to take into account all factors by using a contrived example. It isn't just about cleaning the beach. It's about cleaning the beach in the same way as everyone else. It's about a long-term sustainable solution. What happens when the lawyer is gone? Should you find another funding lawyer or is it better to have everyone get into the habit of cleaning the beach? Then once it becomes a community activity, it doesn't matter if the lawyer exists or not. It becomes a thing that people do. To address your second comment, we must consider the possibility that people are interested in long-term solutions to problems. What happens when the person who thinks that his profession makes too much money has given away all his money? Is the problem fixed? The world isn't binary. When someone says "I want to help the poor", there's a world of meaning you can gather from context. We aren't AliceBot, we're humans. And humans are fairly good at understanding statements like that. After all, one way to help people is to kill oneself in a manner that preserves organs for donation, but you'd dismiss this kind of meaning even coming from a down and out guy who makes nothing and has no family. Why? What's he implying when he says he wants to help people?
mrbill 13y ago
My thought after reading this article: "Must be easy to feel good about walking away from making more money, and make a career of talking about it, when you've got that nice cushion of a few million in the bank already."
- vehementi 13y ago
  Same here, I was thinking of that anecdote about the catch 22 author being at some party. Some banker says "that 25 year old over there made more money last year than you have in your whole writing career" and the author replies back "I have something he'll never have - enough" Except when the banker wisens up and has the "epiphany" that his tens of millions are enough and lives a paradise of a life ever after.
- vijayr 13y ago
  Very true. [But] At least he did walk away and is doing something good, unlike thousands of other wall streeters who haven't, and who never will - that's something to keep in mind (I'm not defending him though).
speakme 13y ago
Having spent a few years in the finance industry, in my experience most people in my area of work were not these type A money addicts described. That said, I am confident they added no value, and made millions of dollars taking management fees in exchange for lower returns to their clients than they could have gotten in an index ETF. That might be just as big a problem: that even honest members of the industry can convince themselves they're worth their exorbitant salaries, because someone's willing to pay it.
mikekij 13y ago
Great article. TL;DR - I was a douche. Then I was visited by the ghost of christmas past, stopped being a douche, and started giving away groceries. I'm still rich though.
nctalaviya 13y ago
I really like it

576 points by _ntka 13y ago

I think the author has suffered from a lot of psychological pain stemming from his childhood, and I can sympathize a lot with that. I think he really did have a wealth addiction, like he describes. However, that doesn't generalize to the entire industry. People (especially men) like money and power because of the benefits they brings. It doesn't have to be an addiction. Furthermore, the idea that it would take an addiction to wealth not to see how immoral the finance industry is, is reliant on having very specific (and wrong, in my opinion) political views.

benched 13y ago
I agree. In fact, the article seemed disingenuous to me from the first sentence. As if he's trying too hard to hit a 'can you believe my lack of perspective' note. But I don't see it. Sure, if you have millions, your personal material needs are taken care of many times over, and you're very fortunate. But the difference between 5 and 100 million is very real. There are plenty of significant things you can do with 100 million that you cannot do with 5 million. And once you're at that altitude, that probably becomes that much clearer.
- ItendToDisagree 13y ago
  I think his overarching point is that these people (by and large) do NOT do anything 'significant' with their millions. They don't even participate in a part of society that is useful beyond making ridiculous amounts of money. That was why I believe he highlights that he has started speaking to the less fortunate and trying to 'make a difference' towards the end of the article. Edit: Not to say this guy still doesn't sound like a total twat. Look at how he ends with a sales pitch...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
chroem 13y ago
There was an article a while back that discussed how most people's perception of what is "enough" wealth is always ~30% more than what they currently have, be it thousands or millions of dollars. Unfortunately I can't find the article at the moment, but the point still stands that, to a certain extent, wealth addiction has become embedded in our culture and we are taught to seek it from a young age. So to say that the financial industry is somehow immune to something everyone else around them is suffering from seems to be pretty disingenuous.
- gjm11 13y ago
  I'm sure there are a lot of people in the finance industry who constantly think that "enough" is 30% more than they currently have (or maybe rather more than that -- someone well placed in finance can accumulate wealth pretty fast). I wonder, though, how much of what's gone wrong with finance is because of that. The spectacular cockups and conspiracies that have become public seem to be more about seriously pathological greed than about ordinary garden-variety wanting-a-bit-more. (Also, I offer myself as a counterexample to the strongest versions of the enough-is-30%-more theory: my current estimate of how much is "enough" is lower than it was 10 years ago, even though I have a lot more money now than I had then. However, I am not in the finance industry and I'm only one person :-).)
ItendToDisagree 13y ago
Yes, I was sharp, good with numbers. I had marketable talents. But in the end I didn’t really do anything. I was a derivatives trader, and it occurred to me the world would hardly change at all if credit derivatives ceased to exist. Hits the nail on the head for me. In the end these people make incredible amounts of money for doing what amounts to a job that is worthless to the society at large.
- philosophus 13y ago
  If it is "worthless to the society at large" then why do people pay for it? Are they insane? It's popular to beat up on the financial industry, but they do actually do something: finance loans. Without them, good luck getting a mortgage, car loan, or a loan to start a business.
  - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
    You're seriously attempting to imply that there were no loans/lending of money before 1993 (when the derivatives markets became a 'thing')? Or are you just talking about the financial sector in general (and even so there were loans long before that.) Wall St. does not exist so people can get loans to purchase houses/cars... You may be missing some points about loans vs trading here...
    - gfodor 13y ago
      You're seriously attempting to imply that there is no value provided by a highly liquid and efficient derivatives market? I'm not going to say these people are earning an amount commensurate to the value they provide to society, but pretending that they are just running a casino is equally naive.
      - ItendToDisagree 13y ago
        I would say they provide little to no value to the average person no. Please clarify what they provide to society at large (meaning most people and not just large portfolios or predatory credit companies)? Greater security and insulation against bad investments? (which to be clear the vast majority of people do not have enough money to make in the first place.) Seems a lot like playing odds at a Casino, to use your example, to me. And your edit is valid they do not provide the value (though there may be some, if little) that their millions of dollars in bonuses/salary would imply.

michaelochurch 13y ago

I've worked in finance. There are all types. Sure, there are asshole alpha traders who whine about $2 million bonuses. Those guys are pretty uncommon, they're disliked even in spite of their P&L, and no one helps them when they get unlucky. There are also people who don't think or live very differently from respectable professors-- except who have $12 million in their bank account instead of $12. There some pathological "wealth addicts" in finance, but not that many; and there are far more in the VC-funded startup world. (VC-istan is essentially Wall Street with a lower talent level and worse ethics.) I used to think it was a negative that Europe doesn't have the same "class" mobility. If you're rich in Germany or England, you're still considered middle-class. Politicians don't worship you, your kids still have to work hard if they are to attend good schools, et cetera. (The "upper classes" are hereditary aristocracies that have lost 80-95% of their wealth, privilege, and relevance.) You can't become upper-class if you weren't born into it, but the flip side of that is that middle-class people can rise quite high. (There's less mobility in social class, but more in terms of things that actually matter-- economic well-being, access to education, etc.) The sickness of the US is that we unify wealth, power, privilege, fame, and social connections by creating an efficient market through which people can trade one for another. Instead of having a society where some people have more money and some have less, we have this toxic arrangement where some people are just implicitly held to be universally better. The issue for the OP (who sounds like a self-indulgent twat, to be honest) is that he learned the hard way that making more money didn't make him a better person-- at all. It didn't make him smarter, happier, or anything else. He met his God and saw vapor. The sad thing is that he's still better off than any of us. If he wants to start a hedge fund tomorrow, or raise a $5-million seed round for whatever project he wants to take on, he's got the credibility to do it. If he doesn't feel like working hard, he could probably use his VC connections as a cash cow by funding young startup kids on a shoestring while taking an unreasonable percentage in equity (although that's been done before).

pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Class in the UK is not solely about money. You can be upper class and living in a homeless hostel, doesn't happen much but possible. You can be working class and be a multi-millionaire. It's about heritage and social [inter]actions as much as it's about money. Class doesn't really feature in how much "better" you're perceived to be either. Some Lords are highly benevolent, clued in and useful members of society that treat their privilege as a blessing rather than a right; others are completely obsessed with themselves or disregard those without similar means. Similar contrasts can be found at other points in the spectrum of class.

logicallee 13y ago

I like how after all that, he ends with an ask for a quarter of his readers' bonuses to start a fund for his philanthropy old habits die hard :)

mbillie1 13y ago
> an ask Can this new idiom be stricken from our collective lexicon? I've heard this a lot lately in the tech community (although mostly from manager types) and it's a linguistic abomination. "...he ends by asking..."
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jellicle 13y ago
  It's a term of art in the marketing world. Legitimate jargon. What's an equivalent... hmm, suppose I talk "a pull" in the context of a version control system. I'm talking about something with a specific meaning. It would be wrong to try to correct me and tell me I should talk about "a thing that is pulled".
  - mbillie1 13y ago
    Except that a pull in VCS is a separate thing. "An ask" seems to always mean "the thing that we are asking for," not some nuanced alternative or domain-specific concept.
- prawn 13y ago
  Ends with "a request" for...
lnanek2 13y ago
I found that pretty hilarious too. "Stop working to get rich, money is evil! Oh, by the way, give me your money."

tkiley 13y ago

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 infrastructure in a way that could be a win-win for society as a whole. If today's financial wizards went away, would we feel a surprising amount of ripple impact, or would they really just not matter?

munchbunny 13y ago
Yes, those innovations are critical, but those central concepts and the legal mechanisms that make them possible have very little to do with what much of Wall Street does, which is inventing financial devices and arbitraging the everloving crap out of them. I think the point of "the world goes on without Wall Street" is that banks and stock markets will still provide speculative capital to expensive ventures whether or not high frequency trading is around, and agriculture will still grow and sell food whether or not hedge funds are buying and selling futures.
ItendToDisagree 13y ago
It is debatable if derivatives do more harm than good. Just look at the 2008 financial crisis... From Jaredsohn's link further in the thread: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)#Economic_f.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)#Economic_f.... In the context of a 2010 examination of the ICE Trust, an industry self-regulatory body, Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which regulates most derivatives, was quoted saying that the derivatives marketplace as it functions now "adds up to higher costs to all Americans."
- tkiley 13y ago
  Best case, what is the societal function of derivatives? As a relatively ignorant layperson, my guess is that derivatives allow productive businesses to hedge against uncontrollable risks. A business with less risks requires less capital buffer, which encourages & allows for more capital investment and profit-taking. In a nutshell, derivatives allow businesses to run and grow on less capital, by reducing the amount of capital-on-hand required to buffer against risk. Is there some other way in which derivatives serve an ostensibly positive function in society? Am I missing something here?

mindcrime 13y ago

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 in some ways, or do bad things along the path, does not change the fundamentals. You can be rich and unhappy, or poor and unhappy. Given a choice, if I'm going to be unhappy, I'd rather at least be rich. No one should feel any need to apologize or feel guilty about wanting to make money, even lots of money. If you want to be a fucking billionaire, go become a billionaire. Just feel guilty if you lie, or cheat or steal, or otherwise do unethical things to get there. And remember that having more money doesn't make you a better person, or intrinsically more valuable.

deleted 13y ago
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gjm11 13y ago
I don't really disagree, but: You write as if the only options are "rich" and "poor". It's possible for the following two things both to be true: (1) Being poor sucks big, steaming donkey balls. (2) Being rich (as opposed to not-poor) is, for one reason or another, not a wise thing to aim for. As it happens, I think #2 isn't correct, because given the way the world is (a) being rich is the only way to be reasonably well assured of never being poor, and (b) there are a whole lot of people in the world who are desperately poor, and if you care at all about them then you have a use for an unlimited quantity of money, namely sending it their way. But in a less messed-up world, I think it would be eminently reasonable not to have a strong preference for being rich over merely comfortably off, and if the former takes a lot more work or risk than the latter then it would be reasonable not to bother.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  I don't really disagree, but: You write as if the only options are "rich" and "poor". True... in the name of brevity, and perhaps out of haste, I did generalize a bit. And the two points I mean to emphasize are: 1. Being poor sucks (I think we can all agree on this) and 2. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to be rich, even "dirty, rotten, filthy stinking rich". In the case of (2), I posit that the desire itself is fine, but the actions you take to try and achieve that end, may or may not be noble, just, good, or ethical.

yodsanklai 13y ago

"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.

gesman 13y ago
It's arguably better to feel empty about million dollar occupation vs. feeling empty about poorly paid occupation.
- rpicard 13y ago
  It's arguably better to feel empty about a poorly paid occupation than to feel empty about being unemployed. It can go on for a while, but it doesn't mean people shouldn't address their problems.
  - gesman 13y ago
    ...starting with definition of the problems...

CreakyParrot 13y ago

TL;DR: He used to use drugs and booze to deal with his insecurities. Then he used money. Now he (apparently) uses the attention that comes from telling everyone how wise and honorable he has become.

ivanca 13y ago
This is a perfect example of the cynic snarkiness for the sake of snarkiness that plagues Hacker News; the guy of the article only has written one article besides this one[0] and that's it. He doesn't even have a profile pic or a clickable profile as most journalist in the NYT have. And he seems to spend his time as the director of something called groceryships not creating support groups for money addicts or selling self-help books. So much for an attention-seeker. [0]http://www.ocregister.com/articles/obesity-596818-food-stress.html
- CreakyParrot 13y ago
  "Cynical: believing that people are motivated by self-interest." Call it a plague if you like, but I'm OK with it. And I wasn't being sharply critical (snarky) for the sake of being sharply critical. Honest. He's pretty actively promoting himself, his story, and his business (which is what it is) online, and he just successfully SEO-bombed his way to the top of the charts. You may think it's out of an abundance of goodness, but I think that's as naive a view as you think mine is cynically snarky. (Or snarkily cynical.)
  - ivanca 13y ago
    Because his name is not clickeable it means 100% of the people that is interested in him had to google him. So it's pretty easy to measure it's impact. http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%20SAM%20POLK http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%20SAM%20POLK So it's impact augmented by a factor of 20; if he was searched 10 times per month before it means now he is being searched 200. So not that much but even if it were your point still doesn't make sense to me because what difference would there be with anyone writing anything? I guess that your point is not that everyone should write anonymously right? So, what is it?

rwissmann 13y ago

Just to point it out: The comments under Readers' Picks and NYT Picks are really worth reading as well.

yodsanklai 13y ago

I find the finance world quite fascinating! Some of those guys are super wealthy even though they have what looks like regular technical office jobs. With the same skills in a different industry, they would have had "normal" salaries.

lxlxlxlxl 13y ago
You might enjoy the book "Liars Poker" by Michael Lewis that the author references. I find the finance world interesting also, and read the Financial Times as much as possible. Most fascinating obituaries youll ever read.

yodsanklai 13y ago

“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.

ricardobeat 13y ago
That's not to be taken literally, you can be pretty sure the head of a hedge fund understands the system very well. He was just stating his priorities.
- adaml_623 13y ago
  A large number of hedge funds lost a lot of money in the crash. This is proof of a sort that their heads did in fact not understand the system well.
  - kamaal 13y ago
    There isn't much incentive or motivation to think of the larger system, when you are being paid $12 million an year bonus to think only of your own benefit.
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      And that is why businessmen make mediocre politicians and policymakers at best. You need to take all thing into account thinking decades into the future. So next time a self made billionaire thinks he can enter politics on basis of his current success this should be taken into account.
whatgoodisaroad 13y ago
It reminds me of that old quote from Baron Rothschild (popularized, I think, by Ben Bernanke): > Baron Rosthschild was once heard to say that he knew of only two men who really understood gold -- an obscure clerk in the Bank of France and one of the directors of the Bank of England. "Unfortunately," he added, "they disagree." http://goo.gl/7EUCx http://goo.gl/7EUCx

frogpelt 13y ago

This is the ugly underbelly of capitalism: that people aren't paid based upon their "importance". They are simply paid based upon their "value" to the market. Is it important for Clayton Kershaw to pitch for the Dodgers? No, but it is demanded. While I understand the sentiment of wanting to help the poorest of the poor, if it's true that money isn't the be-all, end-all then does it really matter that a trader makes millions while a nurse practitioner only makes $100k? The money isn't what's important, right? And the poorest of the poor in this country are rich compared to the poor from previous generations.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
I would say that in most cases, people need to redefine importance in a way that is hard to accept. There is no need for scare quotes. The value is real, and when a person earns a certain amount, it's because the produce that much value (finance is kind of exceptional, in that there is a mix of true value and rent-seeking). Now how can it be that nurse practitioners don't produce that much value? It is because the relevant quantity is the marginal value of an additional nurse practitioner, not the average value. And why is it fair to pay people according to their marginal value, and not their average value? That is because it incentives the most efficient behavior. An additional software engineer is worth more to society than an additional nurse. The fact that getting rid of all nurses would be worse than getting rid of all software engineers (assuming this was true) is irrelevant, because as people quit the nursing profession, wages will rise. So the problem is not capitalism, but people's inability to accept that the implications of economics theory: first, that there is no ethical reason to reward people for the average value of a person in their profession, as opposed to the marginal value, and second, that frivolous things like Twitter can be as valuable as medical services (if people are willing to pay as much for either).
- frogpelt 13y ago
  Very well stated. And you're right, no need for scare quotes.

read 13y ago

What stood out for me was this sentence: From a distance I can see what I couldn’t see then Why is it that when you are close you're unable to see something for what it is?

KiwiCoder 13y ago
perspective
- peterpathname 13y ago
  or parallax ... I always confuse the two.

auvrw 13y ago

yeah, that's pretty f'd up, but it's good that the guy's moving on with his life. 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."

shmerl 13y ago

Love of money? Sounds bad already.

31reasons 13y ago

I am just wondering, are these Wall Street traders smarter than an average techie working in Silicon Valley ? Are they so irreplaceable that they are offered so much salary and bonuses ? It just doesn't seem right. I am afraid to even ask for 150k salary in SV for the same amount of cerebral work.

kooshball 13y ago
In my mind it's not so much that they're smarter but rather the value they add is more easily measurable. If the trades they make for a hedge fund creates a 10 millions dollars a year profit then it's easy to demand a million dollar bonus. The value of a startup engineer is much harder to determine in a year by year basis.
- 31reasons 13y ago
  I heard some estimate that each software engineer adds $1 million (not necessarily to a start up). But there should be a way to reward based on quantitative performance than evaluation by a manager who have no clue about software development.
  - kooshball 13y ago
    That $1mm/engineer estimate is sometimes used for the valuation of a startup, not a yearly rate.
    - 31reasons 13y ago
      Thats because most startups don't have revenues, so they use that as a heuristics instead of a revenue figure. But since revenues are yearly, the value of a developer is implied to be yearly.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
bigbang 13y ago
I was wondering the same. How hard is it to go from a programmer to a trader in a bank?

Montareo 13y ago

I personally find the comments here, written by so-called "hackers", truly depressing. Instead of tinkering about how the system can be made more just, viable, etc., instead of "hacking", the only "idea" that comes to the minds of so-called "innovators" is: how can i become THAT rich ?, where do i have to sign ?. Sad, depressing, disgusting, predictable.

VexXtreme 13y ago
Sorry to break it to you, it's called "human nature".
- chippy 13y ago
  Actually calling something "human nature" is lazy, inaccurate and harmful. It's giving up on the issue, it's simplifying psychology, it's encouraging inertia and the status quo. It's saying "Sorry, nothing can be done, it's biology". This goes for many things, not just the desire to have lots of money.

ilaksh 13y ago

We need to change the structure/paradigm to make so much inequality technically infeasible.

nilkn 13y ago

Do programmers on Wall Street ever see similar bonuses, or is it necessary to work on the trading floor?

ChristianMarks 13y ago
No way. Programmers are on the wrong side of the suit/geek divide, which is something like the blood-brain barrier.
- nilkn 13y ago
  Bummer. I suppose what I should really be asking, though, is this: do programmers on Wall Street make enough to live comfortably in the city while still hitting normal savings goals, like retirement? For Manhattan, I'm thinking this would be a total comp. of $200k or above.
  - ChristianMarks 13y ago
    One can live comfortably in the city on ~ 95K. Perhaps one would have to make $200K on Wall Street, if only because turnover tends to be high.
    - kchoudhu 13y ago
      If you avoid the Wall Street lifestyle, you can make do quite beautifully on about $150K a year, which is what my wife and I do. It's a good way to save for other life aims, for sure.
    - nilkn 13y ago
      I probably over-estimated what I'd need. I was just basing the number on what I make currently and the difference in COL. It wouldn't be possible for me to maintain my current savings goals on $95k in Manhattan.
kchoudhu 13y ago
No. Not unless you're the techie that makes partner, in which case you're still going to bring in less than the people who are actually swinging pnl.

blazespin 13y ago

The fundamental problem with HFT is not HFT itself, but rather that there is massive intellectual capital playing tug a war with itself while it could be working on huge problems in genetics, AI, software, physics, etc.

geezer 13y ago

This is apropos for this thread "The wealth of the 85 richest people equals that of half the world's population, says development charity Oxfam http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/wealthy-grabbing-power-says-oxfam-29931690.html http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/wea...

msie 13y ago

Lucky guy.

jackgavigan 13y ago

I've long since grown tired of these sensationalist, populist, polemical, self-flaggellating, attention-seeking, pseudo-confessionals by ex-bankers (usually failed ones, although they'll rarely admit that, preferring to portray themselves as having quit for moral reasons, rather than having been unceremoniously fired), getting all angsty about their previous life as an evil, greedy, detached-from-reality monster. Geraint Anderson, Polly Courtney, Tetsuya Ishikawa, John Rolfe and Peter Troob - they're all just pale imitations of Michael Lewis's "Liar's Poker" (Frank Partnoy's "FIASCO" is a notably less-pale imitation), feeding the media's seemingly-endless appetite for new scandalous revelations about the behaviour of people who get paid lots of money. Seriously. Enough already! Disclaimer: I was an evil, greedy, detached-from-reality monster in a previous life.

perfunctory 13y ago
I am curious how do you tell a pseudo-confession from a genuine one.
- gadders 13y ago
  See if they have a book or other project to publicise.
  - kelvin0 13y ago
    So I guess everyone marketing a book is a phony? You never learned anything valuable written by someone who marketed it and believed in it? I though I was cynical ... you Sir are the King.

pimentel 13y ago

Whenever I see rich guys forfeiting on more money so they can help the poor, I remember this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gj/efficient_charity_do_unto_others... TL;DR: If a high-powered lawyer who makes $1,000 an hour chooses to take an hour off to help clean up litter on the beach, he's wasted the opportunity to work overtime that day, make $1,000, donate to a charity that will hire a hundred poor people for $10/hour to clean up litter, and end up with a hundred times more litter removed. If he went to the beach because he wanted the sunlight and the fresh air and the warm feeling of personally contributing to something, that's fine. If he actually wanted to help people by beautifying the beach, he's chosen an objectively wrong way to go about it. And if he wanted to help people, period, he's chosen a very wrong way to go about it, since that $1,000 could save two people from malaria. Unless the litter he removed is really worth more than two people's lives to him, he's erring even according to his own value system. If he feels it's unfair that he makes so much more many than others, he should make even more and give out what he think is enough to make it fair.

g8oz 13y ago
Better yet he should be taxed at a 75% marginal rate.
codingdave 13y ago
That sounds completely logical, but misses the human element. Your story only works if the people making all the money actually spend it on helping others. Most of the time, they do not. One of the things that will trigger people to charity and generosity is going out and doing some charitable work on their own. It lets them see the results, show them the personal satisfaction that can be gained by it, and sets them up to have the desire to contribute in other ways.
arjie 13y ago
Statement fails to take into account all factors by using a contrived example. It isn't just about cleaning the beach. It's about cleaning the beach in the same way as everyone else. It's about a long-term sustainable solution. What happens when the lawyer is gone? Should you find another funding lawyer or is it better to have everyone get into the habit of cleaning the beach? Then once it becomes a community activity, it doesn't matter if the lawyer exists or not. It becomes a thing that people do. To address your second comment, we must consider the possibility that people are interested in long-term solutions to problems. What happens when the person who thinks that his profession makes too much money has given away all his money? Is the problem fixed? The world isn't binary. When someone says "I want to help the poor", there's a world of meaning you can gather from context. We aren't AliceBot, we're humans. And humans are fairly good at understanding statements like that. After all, one way to help people is to kill oneself in a manner that preserves organs for donation, but you'd dismiss this kind of meaning even coming from a down and out guy who makes nothing and has no family. Why? What's he implying when he says he wants to help people?

mrbill 13y ago

My thought after reading this article: "Must be easy to feel good about walking away from making more money, and make a career of talking about it, when you've got that nice cushion of a few million in the bank already."

vehementi 13y ago
Same here, I was thinking of that anecdote about the catch 22 author being at some party. Some banker says "that 25 year old over there made more money last year than you have in your whole writing career" and the author replies back "I have something he'll never have - enough" Except when the banker wisens up and has the "epiphany" that his tens of millions are enough and lives a paradise of a life ever after.
vijayr 13y ago
Very true. [But] At least he did walk away and is doing something good, unlike thousands of other wall streeters who haven't, and who never will - that's something to keep in mind (I'm not defending him though).

speakme 13y ago

Having spent a few years in the finance industry, in my experience most people in my area of work were not these type A money addicts described. That said, I am confident they added no value, and made millions of dollars taking management fees in exchange for lower returns to their clients than they could have gotten in an index ETF. That might be just as big a problem: that even honest members of the industry can convince themselves they're worth their exorbitant salaries, because someone's willing to pay it.

mikekij 13y ago

Great article. TL;DR - I was a douche. Then I was visited by the ghost of christmas past, stopped being a douche, and started giving away groceries. I'm still rich though.

nctalaviya 13y ago

I really like it