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.
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.
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.
What about those that go into risk management at a big Wall Street firm because they view this as the best use of their background? Would you rather have someone who didn't understand the mathematical intricacies of fixed income managing the risk of an entity capable of bringing an economy to a halt, or would you prefer that job to be taken by someone who knew what they were doing?
> managing the risk of an entity capable of bringing an economy to a halt
I am more worried about talented quants building/inventing new financial products which lead to further instability and //cause// risk.
From what I hear from friends who work in the field, they don't have much control over company policy and direction. At the risk of sounding provocative, I will say that quants are glorified code monkeys. The fact that they are really smart will not allow them to influence decisions. If it is not clearly illegal and it makes profits, it will be done halt or no halt.
The way I see it, the less "advances" in the financial sector there are, the better.
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.