. . . & By Implication, Modern America
“When you see others . . . doing stuff at the expense of the broader society, your first reaction, at least early in your career, might be to call them out, but your considered reaction will be to keep mum about it. And when you see people making money off some broken piece of internal machinery — say, gameable ratings companies, or riggable stock exchanges, or manipulable benchmarks — you will feel pressure not to fix the problem, but to exploit it.”
–Michael Lewis, “Occupational Hazards of Working on Wall Street“; Bloomberg View (9/24/2014)
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”
–Hillel
If anything, Lewis understates the harm wrought by contemporary Wall Street.
It’s not just because we have a corrupt financial system — which we do — but that there are so many spillover effects.
Brain Drain
Spillover effect #1: co-opting — corrupting, really — the best and brightest going on two generations now (I date the phenomenon, as Lewis does, to the early ’80’s).
That’s because of Wall Street’s dual siren call of lucre and status.
As Lewis puts it, “I’m going to Goldman,” is still about as close as it gets in the real world to “I’m going to Harvard,” at least for the fiercely ambitious young person who is ambitious to do nothing in particular.”
The catch, of course, lies in the limitations of personal ambition.
False vs. Real Legacies; “A Cause of . . One“
Doing for one’s self — even on such a grand scale as modern Wall Street affords — pales in comparison to doing for others.
Doing for one’s patients or clients (as the case may be); one’s community; or — perish the thought — one’s society.
That’s what people who leave real legacies commit themselves to.
Not piling up riches at the expense of others.
See also, “Drug Dealers vs. Bankers: ‘Top Ten’ Differences”; “Michael Lewis’ Growing List of Enemies“; “Michael Lewis’ ‘The Big Short’: Diabolical Castles in the Sky“; “Boycott Goldman Sachs? How??“; “Goldman Sachs: ‘It’s Not My Dog’“; and “You’ll Know It’s OK to Get Back in the Stock Market When . . .”
