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Maybe I'm going on a tangent to your interesting culture war anecdote, but since you touched on it, there is a problem that has been bugging me lately: is there any way we as a society can discourage our best and brightest from going into rent-seeking professions?
I used to be a quant trader. I left because I was bothered by the pervading sense that what we were doing created nothing of value for society or the world, and by the moral decay it seemed to create in the environments I was working in.
Almost by definition, quant trading will never generate any significant positive externalities for anyone, since most of what you are doing is seeking to exploit temporary inefficiencies. And it generates a significant negative externality by draining talent and capital that could otherwise be employed productively.
So why don't we ban quant/algorithmic trading? Or regulate and tax it heavily? This is what governments usually try to do when an industry is generating negative externalities.
I can make a few good arguments not to ban it outright:
A lot of the same considerations apply to other lucrative bullshit industries that are currently sucking up talent such as cryptocurrencies, internet advertising, social media, or video games. I think these are all terrible things and if it were between having them or not, the world would be better off without them, unquestionably. But I don't think it's a good idea to ban them, and politically, this is never going to happen.
Taxing these industries could be more practical. A well-considered tax could offset some of the negative externalities and shrink the number of seats available, forcing many would-be quant traders or social media engineers to venture out into the productive part of the economy instead. But there are still practical and political considerations that will prevent this from happening in our world.
So what else can be done? Since the government isn't going to do much to fix things, maybe the solution lies with individuals instead. As in, what would make me our best and brightest go against financial incentives and actively choose not to be quant traders?
To imagine what this solution might be, we can look at the petroleum industry. Years ago, many of our best and brightest engineers used to flock to oil & gas. Dating myself a bit, but when I went to school, chemical engineering was known to be a lucrative option. But then in the last decade or so, besides a correction to the price of oil, working in oil & gas became possibly literally the least cool thing you could do. The younger generations have experienced a major moral awakening, and decided that they wanted to be on the right side of history when it comes to the climate crisis.
Could finance have its moment like this as well? Certainly, back in 2010/2011 it looked possible with the Occupy movement. And of course, anti-capitalist sentiment amongst youth has been rising lately, especially ever since they got their hands on TikTok (what a strange coincidence). I would never rule out change due to negative backlash from an economically alienated, ill-informed mob.
But what I would really like to see is a positive change in the mindset of the elite itself. As someone who is arguably part of this elite, I would put forth the following ethical argument:
To me, this is the core of a belief system, or possibly even a religion. Speaking as an atheist, I think maybe at least part of the reason that these industries exist in their current form and the world is so screwed up today in our post-modern areligious world is that we've lost a bit of the moral anchor that religion used to provide us. So maybe what it takes to save us is actually a new kind of religion.
I just wanted to say thanks for these interesting thoughts - I'd hoped to see more discussion about the misallocation of talent especially since I don't know what to think myself. It seems unlikely people are going to engage on this topic anymore - too bad about the timing.
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