Kind of reads 25 people's stories about "How I became a parasite". Why not create new things, instead of making a career out of leeching the wealth created by others?
This isn’t really a good angle to critique finance IMO, because it is indeed a necessary part of the modern economy.
A better angle is how finance tends to acquire a ton of smart young people that could/would otherwise be doing work that has more benefits to society. It’s hard to blame the individual here, because the salaries are orders of magnitude larger in finance vs. say, aerospace engineering. Would I turn down $700k at a hedge fund to earn $90k at a science lab? Probably not, unless I was already independently wealthy.
"it's all just numbers really. Just changing what you're adding up. And, to speak freely, the money here is considerably more attractive." - Peter Sullivan in the movie Margin Call
It's an intentionally naive position to say that places don't leech off of others. Even large places like Fidelity and Schwab that respect customers aren't just keeping people's money in vaults. They literally take your checking, savings, retirement accounts, etc. and make money off of them while they "sit".
Firms specialize in intercepting trades and then placing trades faster than 99.9% of others.
These institutions hide behind "we provide liquidity" like it's a selfless act of kindness, whereas that's just a mere side effect, and just one of many.
The entire modern financial system is layers and layers of unneeded complexity that almost solely rose out of people trying to leech money from the system. These financial institutions have built the entire system around them so that now they can say "look at how essential we are!".
the leeches are the publicly traded companies that are listed on the stock market. Any market should be happy to have more participants, unless you like price-uncertainty.
I didn't go to NYC, but Money is fungible so it's a simple math problem.
How much non-parasite good can you do making $50k/year * 10 years? Even if we ignore taxes and you donated your entire salary, that tops out at $500k worth. If instead you could make, say, $500k/year * 10 years, and then quit and form your own non-profit for $2,000,000 and do 4x as much good.
I get your point, but that was the exact logic of Effective Altruism and Sam Altman is now jailed for the Largest Fraud of All Time. It's a slippery slope.
Said on a website hosted by a major VC that specializes in Silicon Valley types of venture capital, bringing the next data collecting mobile app to your doorstep.
keiferski|1 month ago
A better angle is how finance tends to acquire a ton of smart young people that could/would otherwise be doing work that has more benefits to society. It’s hard to blame the individual here, because the salaries are orders of magnitude larger in finance vs. say, aerospace engineering. Would I turn down $700k at a hedge fund to earn $90k at a science lab? Probably not, unless I was already independently wealthy.
francisofascii|1 month ago
DontchaKnowit|1 month ago
stevenhuang|1 month ago
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking HFT/low frequency quant firms "leech wealth".
You can get out of the trap by learning about what they do and the essential role they play in the proper functioning of our markets.
bmitc|1 month ago
Firms specialize in intercepting trades and then placing trades faster than 99.9% of others.
These institutions hide behind "we provide liquidity" like it's a selfless act of kindness, whereas that's just a mere side effect, and just one of many.
The entire modern financial system is layers and layers of unneeded complexity that almost solely rose out of people trying to leech money from the system. These financial institutions have built the entire system around them so that now they can say "look at how essential we are!".
gosub100|1 month ago
goodmythical|1 month ago
fragmede|1 month ago
I didn't go to NYC, but Money is fungible so it's a simple math problem.
How much non-parasite good can you do making $50k/year * 10 years? Even if we ignore taxes and you donated your entire salary, that tops out at $500k worth. If instead you could make, say, $500k/year * 10 years, and then quit and form your own non-profit for $2,000,000 and do 4x as much good.
darth_aardvark|1 month ago
nzzn|1 month ago
bmitc|1 month ago