
Join Wall Street. Save the world - jejune06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/join-wall-street-save-the-world/
======
michaelkeenan
If you're interested in effective altruism, you might be interested in the
Effective Altruism Summit, which will be held from June 30 to July 6 in San
Francisco. All four of the effective altruism organizations mentioned in the
article (GiveWell, Giving What We Can, The Life You Can Save, and 80,000
Hours) are participating, along with some not mentioned. Peter Singer, Peter
Thiel, and Jaan Tallinn (co-creator of Kazaa and Skype) will give talks.

<http://www.effectivealtruismsummit.com/>

~~~
clarkm
At a similar event on Efficient Charity at the Berkeley Faculty Club, Robin
Hanson made some interesting (and unsettling) points about how most charities
operate. [1] For example, he claims that most charitable contributions are
actually about status signalling and not about maximizing impact. Because if
someone truly wanted to do the Most Helpful Thing, they would save all their
money and donate a _single_ lump sum to a _single_ charity right before they
die. This strategy leverages compound interest while avoiding certain tax
pitfalls, but has the downside of making you look selfish for most of your
life.

Scott Alexander has a pretty good summary [2] of the event if you don't want
to listen to the audio.

[1] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/04/more-now-means-less-
la...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/04/more-now-means-less-later.html)

[2] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/05/investment-and-
ineffici...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/05/investment-and-inefficient-
charity/)

~~~
glomph
That is absurd. Charities know about interest rates. If that is the best way
to use money (and you choose an effective charity) that is what they will do.
But the fact is they can get better returns now by either spending your money
on fundraising/awareness or by having real impact now.

Spending money on achieving their goals in the present is not only what they
are for but will also reduce future costs. Prevention is better than cure.

Also there are problems that need solving now. If the current generation of
philanthropists all wait until they die then there will not be enough money to
solve problems that exist in the present.

Why would you think that you know how to use money to achieve a goal better
than an organization built around that goal?

~~~
cbr
"If that is the best way to use money (and you choose an effective charity)
that is what they will do."

There are actually a lot of legal constraints on charities that make "invest
the money for decades and then spend it" not work well for them. If you think
this is what makes the most sense at this point you pretty much need to do it
yourself, potentially with a donor-advised fund.

"Prevention is better than cure."

Sometimes. There are tradeoffs, and depending on what you're working on either
can be more efficient.

(I agree with your bottom line, that giving money now is important, but for
different reasons.)

------
mathattack
I am very suspicious of people who say they enter Wall Street to save the
world.

That said, I also believe most charity events are very economically
inefficient. Rather than get a dozen musicians together for a discounted
concert at a small concert hall, wouldn't it be more efficient to ask them all
to donate one days worth of sales from performing at arenas?

Rather than get a hundred bankers together for a $250/head dinner, wouldn't it
be more efficient to ask them to donate what they'd make in 2 hours? (Although
the dinner does have social purposes)

You can like Warren Buffett or hate him, but the best thing he can do for
society is earn money and then efficiently give it away to solve big problems.
That would be much better than him working full time for the peace corps, or a
non-profit.

~~~
dragontamer
On the other hand, only Bill Gates has had the vision to lead his charity into
wiping out polio from the planet. (only 3 countries left, and only because
terrorists keep shooting at volunteers before they can administer cures IIRC).

Sure, money helps charities. But a brilliant leader, like what Gates has been
to the Gates Foundation, is a force multiplier to that money.

~~~
mathattack
I'm on the fence with him.

Here's why...

Answer 2 questions: 1) Could somebody else have figured out how to apply that
level of thinking on these topics, and been able to convince other to donate?
2) Could he have made another ten or twenty billion by staying at Microsoft?

If the answers are "Yes" and "Yes" then he should have stayed at Microsoft.

The answers might be "No" and "No" in which case you are spot on.

My dogma says the former, but I think you're right. I'll accept him as the
exception that proves the rule. :-)

------
edw519
_His logic is simple: The more he makes, the more good he can do._

It may be his logic, but it's not mine. And it doesn't have to be yours,
either.

I believe "doing good" is something to be done all the time.

If you wait until the time is right or the conditions are right or you have
enough money or time or something else, you will probably never get around to
doing good. And even if you do, how much good will _not_ get done while you're
on your journey to being able to do good.

You do good by the way you treat other people and in the hard work and good
deeds that you do. And it can be just about anything. You don't have to do
charity work or walkathons or open source or make giant donations for all to
see in order to do good. If your work provides value to someone else, then
you're doing good.

It's up to you to decide how good your doing good is. And the best time to
start doing good is now. Every little bit matters.

~~~
codegeek
Agreed in general that you don't need to be a millionaire to do good. But his
words "The more he makes, the more good he can do" still makes sense. He is
using the word "more" and talking purely in terms of financial ability. In
order to do good, money comes second because you have to be *willing" first.
But once money comes in the picture, it makes it a hell of a lot easier for
someone who makes $100K compared to someone who makes $50K.

~~~
ca98am79
I disagree. For example, Gandhi and Mother Teresa had no money and did orders
of magnitude of more good than many others with money. They did more than many
others who had money _and_ good intentions.

~~~
wbl
To the extent Gandhi was responsible for the poor economic performance of
post-independence India, as well as the Partition, he is responsible for
millions of deaths.

~~~
kamakazizuru
thats a very broad statement..based on...nothing?

------
LowKarmaAccount
Local governments are also involved in the stock market. High frequency
traders make money by acting as an intermediary between buyers and sellers,
and thus not creating actual wealth. Instead their supposed value is the
"liquidity" they add. That means that the price of "adding liquidity" is a
lower return on a stock or bond invested by a local government. Which in turn
means that the local government might have to cut funding services for the
poor. Even if you give away the money you earn, you are still robbing the poor
so you can give to the poor people that you like.

~~~
tome
Wait, do you think intermediaries never create actual wealth?

~~~
LowKarmaAccount
No, I don't think that. I also don't think that HFT is necessary for an
intermediary to create wealth.

------
scotty79
Meanwhile his employers will drain the third world by speculating on food
based derivatives.

~~~
davorak
The effective method of fighting that though seems to be organized political
action. The needed skills to organize and drive such groups does not seem very
common so it understandable and advantageous for everyone that their efforts
are put else where.

Though it is dangerous to ignore this arena completely.

------
fatman
Is it really that simple? If your main concern is net "good" to the world,
don't you have to balance that against any "bad" generated by your job? Wall
Street certainly is capable of damaging people's lives, and HFT does get some
of the blame. Also, is net gain the only concern - if an assassin donates his
profits to charity and in the process saves more lives than he takes, is does
his net "good" make him moral?

~~~
rdl
HFT seems fairly neutral; it makes trades more efficient, but is an "arms
race" for all the traders.

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piokoch
High frequency trade and similar "financial instruments" are mostly created to
enable banks to create even more empty, debt driven money. So although it is
nice that this guy gives some money to charity, his everyday job leads in the
long run to financial crises and to poverty that cannot be equalized by all
wallstreet workers giving money to charities.

Besides, the article sounds like some expensive Public Relation action from
wallstreet companies. I guess they have hard time to find decent employees...

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ivan_ah
I am completely appalled by this article. How could working for the system (in
this case, the finance sector) ever be considered as a positive gain? The
state of the world affairs is f'd precisely because currently all aspects of
life are viewed through a mechanistic view focused on short term financial
gain. Wall street, by supporting and feeding the mega-corps, is indirectly
part of the economic exploitation of the world.

Furthermore, as pointed out by @mathattack, some charities are very
inefficient operations--sometimes bordering on unethically so. My friend
worked as a webmaster for a charity whose operations overhead was ~70% (mostly
due to the annual general meeting held at a 5* resort in Banff, attended by
all the volunteers working in the charity (most of them spouses of the
donors)).

OK, I am going to calm down now. It is just words. Just propaganda. Perhaps
this article was commissioned by Wall Street as an attempt to influence
perceptions and to assuage the existential threat to their existence. If the
analytically-minded youth of the next generation makes the really moral choice
and STOPS going to work for wall street (and big corp in general), then the
system stands no chance.

~~~
barry-cotter
The proper gauge of a charity is not overhead but lives saved per unit money,
whether you go for acturial lives saved or quality adjusted life years.

If the charity your webmaster friend worked at saved a life for $1,800 donated
it would be a good place to donate money.

Jason Trigg probably saved 20 lives last year. Are you saying that what he did
is bad?

~~~
ivan_ah
Jason Trigg actually sounds like a good guy and I applaud him for his choice.
My disagreeing is with the idea of ethical-corporate-whorism being a viable
way to do good in the world---the "new trend" the article purports to have
discovered.

Let's assume for the moment that donating 50k/y led to some tangible benefits
for humanity. Were there any human costs as well? Were people actively harmed
for him to obtain the 100k/y salary?

The chain of implications between actual harm being done on the ground (say in
a 3rd world country) and Jason's day to day job is very long and whitewashed
by buzzwords, but it is still there:

    
    
       Company X1 deals with gov. of country Y to rob people of a water resource (buzzword: privatization)
       Company X2 owns X1 stock  (buzzword: market)
       Company X3 trades in X2 stock
       Company X4 makes high-freq deals for X3 (buzzword: fluidity)
    

So the people have no water, but nobody is responsible!

Meanwhile a new charity forms: let's give money so that the people of Y can
have drinking water.

~~~
barry-cotter
I'm glad to engage in this discussion with you but I'm not the best person to
do it. My personal response would be to look at the _marginal_ impact Jason
Trigg is making, i.e. what is different about the world because of what he did
or did not do. If he didn't take that HFT job someone elsse would have, and
the overwhelming likelihood is that that person would not have saved twenty
lives through their donations.

Now, government or political activism may be the best way for some people to
do the most good. This is actually an active subject of research and
discussion in the effective altruism movement.

If you want to discuss this topic with people who know and care more about
than me this guy's posts are mostly about effective altruism/efficient
philanthrophy.

<http://lesswrong.com/user/JonahSinick/submitted/>

Most of the background assumptions the people involved in this movement agree
upon are in these two posts.

lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_separately/)

------
rayiner
Interesting note: Goldman Sachs donated $377m in cash last year. At $2,500 per
life saved, that's 150,000 live saved per year.

~~~
dev1n
It should also be noted that by donating a smallish amount of money (377M is a
relatively small amount of money for a bank like Goldman) banks can get tax
breaks, which could amount to more than they donated.

~~~
lix2333
This is actually a common misconception. No matter how much you donate (or a
corporation donates), you'll still end up net negative.

------
masonhensley
John Arnold, Houston billionaire & hedge funder, closed up shop last year to
focus on his foundation with his wife:

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-new-science-of-
giving-2126...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-new-science-of-
giving-212647170.html)

------
ekm2
How can you get into HFT without a degree from an elite school?

~~~
michaelbwang
MIT is an elite school. Is this comment meant to be facetious?

~~~
gyardley
I suspect he's asking a question, probably for his own benefit, instead of
commenting on the education of the person in the article.

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nickpinkston
Join Wall Street. Attempt to save the world through donations. End up unable
to recognize what to solve.

This is a pattern that all these guys do. Even Warren Buffet just gave his
money to Gates.

You'd think a guy who spends his life picking out successful businesses would
be able to recognize this in non-profit / social ventures, but he's so removed
from real problems he can't.

If you want to save the world, save the world first.

Stop. Fucking. Waiting.

~~~
swampthing
The question is whether the world is better off if Buffet had taken your
advice. Not clear that it would be?

~~~
nickpinkston
I think it's good that he gave money to something more innovative than the
Salvation Army or some such, but generally if you're taking the conservative
approach to "world-saving" (working and donating), your donations don't have
great leverage or relevance. It's why GM couldn't make Tesla...

How many times do they go into it thinking this and just end up with a bunch
of cars and naming rights to a building at Harvard at best... We see it the
vast majority of the time.

~~~
swampthing
Well, I think a lot of people end up like that - but then I'd argue they're
not really taking any approach (much less a conservative one) to "world-
saving". They've switched their goals at that point!

~~~
nickpinkston
Sure, but that's my argument. They go into it thinking this, but the system
changes their goals. I'm sure politicians think this too going in, and then
the ones left are the ones who can play the donations game.

Startup orgs (for- or non-profit) allow you to actually start serving people
now, not later, and that gives you better insight into solving problems and
picking them.

~~~
swampthing
Yea, I see your point. But I'd just point out that even with the attrition
from people changing their goals, society may still be better off with having
outliers like Buffet and Gates. People like Buffett and Gates enable others to
start off in public service, and fund people that have insight into solving
problems and picking them.

------
m52go
Join Wall Street, make some money, and then start a company that actually does
something useful (i.e., not make photo-sharing more beautiful or social
marketing .01% more effective).

Giving money away is an effective way of actually accomplishing very little,
unless you're doing it like Bill Gates and can have very tight control over
what your money is actually doing.

~~~
cbr
"unless you're doing it like Bill Gates and can have very tight control over
what your money is actually doing"

This kind of impact is actually accessible even to people who are giving
smaller amounts: <http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities>

------
greesil
I thought the recruitment pitch was, "Join Wall Street, fuck the world."

~~~
UVB-76
A lot of the activities that take place on Wall Street are fairly harmless.
Some might even be considered socially productive.

~~~
greesil
Yeah it's just the other activities like the occasional overleveraging that
destabilizes the global financial markets and causes depressions. Or,
leveraged buy-outs that fuck the rank and file of a company out of their
contractually agreed upon pensions.

~~~
rayiner
How much social harm is caused by buggy software? Was Windows 95 a "fuck the
world" on the part of Microsoft's programmers?

~~~
xradionut
I actually made good money while using Win95 back in the WWW 1.0 days.

------
genofon
This is so stupid.. so instead of working to make the world a better place
let's speculate on everything, trying to rip of as much as we can so then we
can give our money away. It's like working as a lumberjack and then use your
wages to plant other trees, you will never be able to replant what you
destroyed previously

------
taurath
$100k is a high finance salary? Maybe for a really low trader...

~~~
andyjsong
His bonus will make up for that.

~~~
enraged_camel
Aren't bonuses performance-based? From what I hear, that is what provides an
incentive for finance-types to fuck over everyone, including their own
clients.

~~~
ig1
You could say that about all incentivized pay, i.e. salespeople, developers
rewarded for hitting milestones, etc.

~~~
enraged_camel
How many developers do you know who can truly and massively fuck up the world
economy while pursuing their bonuses?

------
tannerc
One engineer donating $50k is great.

One teacher-focused engineer doing a decent job at influencing and educating
others to do more with their money is... priceless?

It's good that Mr. Trigg is doing what he can, but discounting the ability of
an education role to impact even more people is slightly silly.

~~~
davorak
At least in my life time and durring my education, mid USA, there seemed to be
a considerable amount of emphasis placed on doing good with your own hands,
even going to the extent of suggesting that getting a high paying job was
morally negative or at least undesirable as an intention.

The article and the sentiment behind it is more about this negative stereotype
changing and hopeful disappearing rather then devaluing what is already
valuable.

------
sailfast
I fail to see how earning 100K and donating half of it as effective as working
to save a life for $500 instead of $2500 over time. Like all things in life, a
balance is required and no one way is going to be a cure-all.

I applaud people that live frugally and donate what they have to worthy
causes, but maybe a bit more introspection is also required to figure out why
the career path has really been chosen.

~~~
cbr
Saving lives 5x more efficiently would be awesome. But how many people over
how many years does that take? It may be that someone like Trigg who is
earning to give would actually do better to go into malaria research, but it's
a hard question. It's one I'm very interested in, though, if you know
something about this.

(What is clear is that he's doing a lot of good, and if more people followed
his example that would be great.)

------
blueprint
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking
at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and
money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that
misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

Henry David Thoreau

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thewarrior
By this logic you could justify becoming a drug lord provided that you donate
some of your earnings to charity.

------
briancaw2
It's cool to do what you think is righteous. Nobody knows the right answer.

