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Powerful words. Reflect on the message. It runs deep.
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It. Was. Their. Choice. No one "sent" them. They said screw the common good, how can I make as much money as possible?
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The brightest minds have been working busily to improve the number of likes that we get on our social media๐
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Please define โbrightest mindsโ. Is it someone who can perform brain surgery or someone who can balance a checkbook?
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Greed > good
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They weren't forced at gunpoint to work in finance.
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The finance industry has damaged the whole fucking world and I will never forgive them. They are a bunch of leeches who only want to get richer and help the rich get richer, fuck the poor apparently.
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France doesn't have mechanical engineers and agronomists?
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Growing up as a kid in the 60s and 70s, I canโt believe how much hope there was back then for scientific research and how little money and interest for it there is now.
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We have been saying this since 2008.
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People became finance majors in college when they couldn't hack accounting.
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๐ข...I do remember when the Humanities and Arts got cut from colleges to be replaced by heartless and godless business...
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With respect, they were never our brightest minds, just good at math.
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Rest assured we have a lot of nepo dummies in finance as well
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I remember that in the Economics course I took in 1975, the dumbest students were the business majors.
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Interestingly tragic as it doesn't produce kind fulfilled people but arrogant self-interested hollow people.
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Most unspoken Tragedy: No news coverage: Whales are starving to death: The Ocean food Chain is broken (as i have said/posted 10+ years). We are so far past the tipping point that starts with things like Plankton: we are now at the apex feeders. WHALES going Silent journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
Audible changes in marine trophic ecology: Baleen whale song tracks foraging conditions in the eastern North Pacific
Among tremendous biodiversity within the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) are gigantic mysticetes (baleen whales) that produce structured sequences of sound described as song. From six years of pass...
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White collar looting of America is why we are here
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Thatโs funny, thinking the โbrightest mindsโ are working in finance.
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Completely true. Our best & brightest were led to worship the MBA!
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As a dual board certified University and fellowship trained general and vascular surgeon with a degree in biochemistry, who graduated from naval nuclear power school. I can assure you that our brightest minds are not in finance.
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We need them working on solutions for climate change. At 2ยฐ C staple crops start to fail. We are currently hovering around 1.5ยฐ C with no end in sight. With the Trump administration pretending it doesn't exist isn't helping.
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Trump killed America.
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Because analysts donโt see long-term growth as growth. They absolutely demand that we demonstrate โsolid growthโ month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year. If you backed off your โgrowthโ a little bit to invest in long-term growth, that would be interpreted as failure. Analysts suck.
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Tax. Wealth. First.
Everything else will follow.
Spread the word.
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WHOSE FINANACES??God help them!!
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The premise is flawed. Not sure our brightest minds went into finance
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In the past 50 years crop yields have been transformed by genetics, molecular breeding, transgenics, satellite technology and old school farming practices made new like tiling (drainage).
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Oh the pathos...
.. Puh-leeeze... Free will means they chose-and were not "sent"
The concept of "enough" which is to say a place of satiation... of contentment..fulfillment and rest simply does not exist in finance/business. Such useless frantic toil for a dollar more next year.
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To be fair, few minds are equally bright in all those disciplines. Most would lack the interest and aptitude in them.
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I know people who work in finance.
They ainโt your brightest minds ๐
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This is why great societies collapse. Greed.
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This fact was one of the points made in the book โThe Big Shortโ that was sadly lost in the movie.
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Only, theyโre not โour brightest minds.โ The problem for all of us is that they think they are.
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Fucking crooked businessmen playing shell-games, rigging the system and bleeding the public isn't "the best and brightest"... It's just pressuring those who CAN get higher education in this fucked up society to go into business or its associated infrastructure instead of advancing society.
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Oh thereโs so much more but yes, benevolent capitalism has gone out the window.
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And the best and the brightest minds that went into government work because they believe they could serve the Country were discarded like used Kleenex.
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Incredibleโฆ
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Much like our greatest tech minds, what we got is a bunch of overpriced tech companies who think, spell-check, social media, and an AI that gives me the answers I want is some kind of great contribution to the world. What happened to cleaning up the oceans and reducing CO2?
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Ironically, it's hard to say who are worse people or who have done more harm: The Silicone Valley mousetrap maker billionaire douche-bags, or hedge fund/PE douche-bags.
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We didnโt send them, they chose the greed
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I went to college with a bunch of those people. Nobody โsentโ them into finance. They just cared more about making money than doing something worthwhile.
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16.55%?! That's massive. Insanely massive compared to what regular people have access to.
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I was a bright kid who had financial luxury, familial support, and self-confidence to not go into finance. But at many at selective schools, finance is the default and logical next step. And for folks w/ math/physics PhDs, few non-penury jobs outside of finance. slate.com/life/2025/07...
Iโm a Student at Harvard. Almost Everyone I Know Wants the Exact Same Type of Job.
Contrary to popular belief, Ivy League students are not overly idealistic. Quite the opposite.
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100% true. Most of our brightest minds have become parasites not producers.
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We've made an extraordinary mistake with how we understand money, but we haven't even begun to realize or inspect either that fact, or its consequence upon society. Many of which we are and have been experiencing for far, far too long.
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You are not wrong.
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So who was it, the brightest or best in finance that caused the sub prime mortgage catastrophe? Or was it the brightest and best in finance that failed to notice it, let alone prevent it?
Finance is where you send the idiot second or third sons of wealth.
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โฆthereby enriching billionaires who use their money for evil.
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Finally the geniuses are noticing the error of their ways? Well, maybe one of them๐
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absolutely, and many more minds wasted on 1s and 0s and creating "artificial intelligence"...which is more likely to destroy us than nuclear weapons or climate change will
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"We" didn't "send" them. They "went" for the "$$$."
I was the one showing them "It's a Wonderful Life."
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Yes!
Iโve been say for years that we need less tax lawyers and more scientists !!!! All those bright minds saving corporations from a few % of tax rather than fixing big humanity problems is blatantly stupid of us as a species
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They donโt create anything or do anything besides make fake money into more fake money. The alienation of labor cuts on both sides.
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True! I went to a 7 Sisters college in the 60โs. We were all so idealistic! When banks sent recruiters to campus, no one wanted to talk to them and even the recruiters werenโt enthusiastic (I actually went to one bank interview.) I donโt remember anyone ever saying they wanted a career in finance.
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Too sadly true
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Gotta love Krasnov. His policy is more interested in increasing low paying jobs than focus on more high paying jobs.
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Iโve always disliked the jackass that gets their MBA, thinks that they are special and starts ruining things that have been working and benefiting greater mankind for years! Their mark on the world is a smudge, and we all pay for it.
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A finance bro thinks finance bros are the smartest, how very fitting.
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Guy in finance thinks all the brightest minds are in finance.
He doesn't get out much.
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You mean you sent the sociopaths to work in finance?
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And now you understand why the trades make more money than finance bro's. And they're not in debt.
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Or, bear with me, we set up our economy around a gambling system called stocks.
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Absolute truth.
The other overlooked error was sending an entire generation of Americans to fight distant wars against brown people, brainwashing them to worship the flag and heavy weaponry. Now they miss the high of Fallujah and is why they'll have no problem staffing up ICE.
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Sure, the genius of Sam Bankman-Fried. Along with Caroline Ellison and company.
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Economic incentives were skewed. Market failure followed
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Definitely.
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They are ruining this country!
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A friend's son switched from pre-med to finance. His income was good but he was bored & unfulfilled. Luckily his wife supported him to return to school to become a physician assistant. The money is less, but the emotional and intellectual reward is great.
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Woah, that's depressing AF.
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Ex bank owner, investor & fast car producer on why banks should be made boring again & the finance sector should be radically shrunk:
www.huffpost.com/entry/propos...
Proposals for the Banking System
Now that the President is looking at banking reform, here are a number of proposals for the banks, the FDIC, Federal Reserve, and Treasury.
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This scene:
Youโre a Rocket scientist. Margin Call (2011)
YouTube video by theidealEngineer
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Not all...but a lot of them, unfortunately.
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Follow the money
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Worse than thatโmost of todayโs finance is value capture not value creation.
And while the decision to pursue a career in finance makes sense at an individual level at a societal level over-investment in finance destroys value.
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He's not wrong. The incentives were to work to build a wealthy class. The salaries in finance were more than engineers absolutely more than scientists. The market demanded this shift.
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Not our brightest minds...our greediest.
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More money in money
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Sadly, true.
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Lets not forget all the people working on Internet advertising. A person who once worked at Google.
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In the 90โs I worked at Harvard Community Health Plan. One of my favorite docs quit to work for an insurance company. More money in denying claims. Fact
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Imagine thinking that the people in finance are our best and brightest.
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I naively thought these self-satisfied youngsters volunteered for finance to make big bucks, drive Bentleys and sip champagne with exotic models. โGreed is goodโ. Money, money, money. They werenโt drafted into the army or kidnapped by sex traffickers.
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1987's "Wall Street" gave us Gordon Gekko: "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit..."
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This is pretty foolish. The best minds certainly don't go into finance. There are plenty of scientists working on those problems. They are much brighter than the finance people and have made huge progress.
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Thinking of the people I knew in college... Not the brightest minds. No.
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The wolf we fed. Hooray?
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Wharton turned out Trumps.
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Iโm not sure I agree with all the assumptions in this statement.
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And we spent the last 30 yrs figuring out which shade of blue would make people click a button 0.03% ore often.
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๐๐
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โWe sentโ
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Coupled with also sending our best and brightest into the non-profit sectorโฆ creating the stark polarity we have today.
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Stop posting X crap!
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Actually, that would be the last 45 years, since the Reagan tax cuts gave the โjob creatorsโ more money to play with.
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So true. This is very true of my generation (Gen X) and continues to be the model at most elite colleges and universities. It, in part, explains what has happened to us.
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Greed is killing the best of America.
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And lawyers, George. Lawyers.
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The brightest minds at our top universities go to Goldman Sachs or private equity/hedge funds to manipulate the excess wealth of multibillionaires and asset strip everybody and every institution in our country in a mindless, pathological greed that is rushing the end of civilization upon us all.
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Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money
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A bit rich to think that "all the brightest minds" only work in finance.
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I agree with the finance part, but the alternatives reflect a certain snobbishness - why not list teachers and nurses and cops?
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Most of them couldn't do anything useful, or were too lazy to become qualified for that, so they made careers out of doing something useless that doesn't require much effort.
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To be fair, plenty of our brightest minds did pursue science and public service even though they could have made more elsewhere. Of course, we are now screwing those people over big time by stripping their funding/removing their public service jobs/otherwise attacking their work.
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As someone who over the years who has worked with Chinese students at American Universities it isnโt just us. So many switched studying computer science and engineering, and changed to finance almost overnight. Itโs not just us.
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Avarice is more powerful than altruism as a motivator ?
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Not all the brilliant minds went to finance. There are plenty of brilliant folks in Oncology research. Some brilliant people are just more service oriented than others
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And with the assault on all those institutions, the brightest minds are going elsewhere, Canada, EU, China, Japan! And we are stuck with MAGA stupid!
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This is not a โweโ - this is the result of capitalism. And it is a tragedy.
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Oh, sweet child. Only in finance does anyone believe that the brightest minds went to finance.
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Had we done the latter the rates would be better.
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We canโt eat money, we canโt drink oil and we canโt function biologically at extreme temperatures. We need a kind of change that nobody seems to care about. We have almost exceeded the point of sustainability. Not quackery but cold hard reality.
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And in the last decade, the brightest minds went to Meta and Google to feed us outrage bait to get more clicks to sell us another something we donโt need.
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Because the rich don't seem to understand the simple concept of "enough".
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People work where they can get the best compensation. I guess finance can afford it, since they're primarily leeches who add no value, and get rich in the process.
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True
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This may be the most insightful post I read all year.
Late-stage capitalism is both stupid and not for the faint of heart.
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โThe brightest mindsโ? Spoken with the arrogance of a finance person.
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Too many Gordon Gekkos, not enough Louis Pasteurs.
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Is the tragedy that โwe sent themโ or that they themselves chose profits over people? Some of us graduated from Ivies and became teachers or nurses and others decided itโs better not to contribute anything positive to society so long as they themselves are comfortable.
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Our brightest minds arenโt in finance, our biggest narcissists are
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Only someone in finance would think those were the brightest minds.
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You know what their big โachievementโ was? The pos idea of private equity scavengers buying companies and selling them off for parts, then taking the money and running to enrich a handful of people at the expense of the many.
Fuck capitalism.
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Big assumption that the most intelligent people work in finance. The most intelligent people are kind, funny & fair.
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Those are NOT our best and brightest minds.
Nonetheless, there's something to his point. We did channel too many smart-ish people into an empty, greedy, exploitative profession, and they have been very destructive.
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Relentless greed of a few has caused the downfall of many societies in the past. Can we react in time to prevent it from happening this time?
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
โSelf-termination is most likelyโ: the history and future of societal collapse
An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished
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Tell me you donโt understand agriculture without telling me you donโt understand agriculture
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Yepโฆโฆ
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Tragic. But true. My old business partner used to say, ยซ Prioritize your day by doing what makes you the most money ยป. I believe thatโs a soul-killing life philosophy.
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I'm pretty sure it's only people working in finance who think they're the brightest people.
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One of the only good things that may come out of this mess is the return of Trade Schools. Not everyone needs college. There is a huge need for craftsmen, electricians, builders, plumbers, etc.
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Spencer, you are NOT surrounded by the best and the brightest, nor are you one of them. Sorry.
Your definitions are way off. I see a spoiled, introverted brat, not a shining star.
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"We" didn't send them. They went.
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I still remember a commentary in an industry magazine (Aviation Week?) attempting to answer the question of why weren't there more women engineers. The conclusion was that women could advance faster, with better pay, and not face as much sexual discrimination by going into finance.
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Why would anyone think that all the smartest people work in finance?
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GREED sent them. They were not forced into finance.
Pitchforks are coming.
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Only the arrogance of a finance guy would think they were the brightest people. The brightest people are our liberal arts majors who went to college and learned to think.
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Greed will do that, though it's obviously exaggerated.
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Nope. โAll our brightest mindsโ work to improve disease outcomes, increase crop yields, mitigate climate change... Only those fixated on gleaning more money from investmentsโto have more money than the next guyโwent into finance.
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Well not all of our best minds (thatโs some hubris) but I take your point. Finance was always overvalued. Signed, someone who worked in EMS, law, markets, advocacy, and health admin.
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Not sure the brightest- but the economy, equality and our society by financialization.
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Or teaching civics, or history... bsky.app/profile/davi...
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Exactly! When you have a culture that worships money and the rich above all else, the greatest minds will be wasted just dreaming up ways to make the rich richer.
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๐
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He is creating new fires to distract you from the real issueโthe Epstein files and who holds copies of them. He wants you focused on the chaos so you donโt look where you should. This puts the US in a compromised situation, making the country weak.
Are you proud of being an American?
Greed-cancer
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"Our best minds". Lol.
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Not all of our brightest minds by far but certainly our greediest minds and we grossly over paid them.
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I have a hard time believing this.
Seems like the guy is just trying to compliment himself
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China built bullet trains. The US built McMansions.
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This idiot. Farmers with big tractors and companies who use GMO's have been increasing crop production for the past 80 years. There is no profit when you spend mass amounts on inputs (fertilizer and fuel) without considering sale price. Many farmers depend on subsidies for this reason.
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Not sure it is entirely true
Technology has leaped and in fact it is ahead of financial innovation
www.mckinsey.com/capabilities...
McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2025
Which new technology will have the most impact in 2025 and beyond? Our annual analysis ranks the top tech trends that matter most for companies and executives.
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Lots of changes when they run out of money and can't buy power. VOTE.
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Did we though? Because if they were the brightest minds then surely they would have realized โTrump 2.0: One More Time Without the Guardrailsโ was going to be very different the Trump 1.0, and they seem to have missed that very obvious possibility.
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This might be the most obnoxious humblebrag I've ever seen
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My daughter went to a meeting for those accepted to USC to convince them to attend. As a welcoming tactic, they asked for the students to stand when their major was called. About 90% stood for business in a room of 60 kids.
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Capitalism Gone Wild
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...no shit...
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Itโs even worse than that. Many of the best and brightest spend their time figuring out how to optimize the American Online Shopping Experience โ so that we can buy more crap we donโt need which our kids will cart to a landfill when we die.
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They would have burned the crop yields in any case...
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Didn't Bill Gates, back in the day, took Sal Khan as a rare example of the opposite? He left Finance for starting Khan Academy.
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Itโs all about the profit !!! And not sharing that profit with those who actually worked to get you those profits !!!
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"Plastics."
While we were blissfully pumping out Happy Meal toys and packaging for our packaging that predictably found its way into our food/water/soil, no one spent 10 seconds thinking about the end game for our new miracle material.
#HumansAreStupid
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One of the most cogent comments Iโve seen.
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I would not say ALL, by any stretch of the imagination.
But too many, certainly.
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Or teach our children.
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Obviously they are the only ones who think they are the brightest minds.
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Economists have indeed destroyed the world
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Or how about we pay teachers what we pay people working in finance so the best and brightest are able to embrace one of the most important jobs.
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That "we" in this statement is doing a lot of work.
I recall the 80s as a time that our society REVERED those who did this or who made lots of $$ period--including those who made a profession of better ways to kill people (ie govt. contracting for the military).
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A lot of kids earn engineering degrees intending to go straight to Wall Street because that's where the big easy money is. Why work for it in dribs & drabs by contributing to society when you can just climb on the bandwagon charging folks rent for flipping their own money? 1/2
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Not โwe sent themโ. They chased the almighty dollar.
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Crop yields are a distraction. We are growing corn that is unhealthy for human consumption to fatten cows and hogs and chickens in a most unhealthy manner. If that same acreage that is planted in corn every year were planted in human grade fruits, vegetables and nuts, groceries would get cheaper.
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๐ฏ
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๐ข
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Weโre rushing headlong into an Eloi/Morlock society
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I really don't think the finance guys are really all that bright.
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With the upcoming Trumpy falsification of labor statistics, we are in the โStop testing for PPP because it will make me look badโ phase of Trump 2.0.
From here, Trump will take more and more actions that will kill Americans and American democracy.
God help us!!
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Brightest minds? 80s S&L scam & market crash, 90s dot com bubble, 2008 banking crash and global recession. They purposefully destroyed the middle class, the climate and made it impossible for lower income people to survive. I hope they all end up broken, poor and their children hate them.
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No shit.
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Maximization will be the end of our planet, if we're not careful.
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Greed is literally one of the seven deadly sins of the Bible but American leadership thought they'd give it a go anyway
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While the returns were minimal, the percent of GDP generated by the financial sector tripled.
Which was the most damaging because we went from making things to making derivatives.
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Brightest and best minds? Please. Greedy, yes.
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They went (go) because we pay an obscene amount of money to be a Wall Street croupier
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Finance is now tech
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Priorities: Wrong
Another example: Obscene bonuses and student loan forgiveness for ICE โagentsโ while teachers and healthcare workers canโt afford housing.
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Replace bright with greedy and it's the truth
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If they think the brightest minds are in finance, they are likely not one of the finest minds.
