Investment Banks as Plantations

Chapter One: Escaping the Matrix

Dreading the prospects of wage-slaving your entire life at a 9-5, you--a starry-eyed highschooler--turn your eyes to Investment Banking. What the job entails, have you zero clue. Regardless, Investment Banking is still your destiny. Somehow, you get accepted into a 'Target School' senior year; "No, not the retail store. My gateway to financial freedom", you clarify to Mom.

Chapter Two: Reverse Slave Auction

Enter NYU Stern. At first, the sights you behold shock you: Qing Long from Calculus 1 grinding arcane econometric models in the name of 'quant', Chad Henry from Securities Analysis religiously reciting BIWS400....what happened to chasing chicks and partying? Impossible, you proclaim--your friends at Deloitte claim that I-Banks treat employees like literal slaves. Who would subject themselves to such torture? It reminds you of the auctions you read about in 7th Grade History, except in reverse. Students auctioning themselves off to the 'most prestigious' masters--since when did people willingly become slaves?

Unable to accept fault in your decisions, you convince yourself that everyone else must know some esoteric secret regarding Banking. Feeling like a sheep surrounded by wolves, you attempt to blend in and embark on the journey of recruiting. Eventually, you learn that the biggest plantations are the most prestigious, and after countless hours of paper LBOs at Bobst Library, you receive an offer from the most prestigious plantation of all: Goldmine Sachs.

Chapter Three: Full-time Slave

The mailman used to deliver tons of letters from Mom, but she eventually realized that her efforts were futile. "My son still loves me--his plantation just confiscates all my letters!!" she reassures herself. Little does she know you've received every single one, but you're too busy to spend a single moment responding.

One thing caught you off guard, however. After your first Sabbath, Master berated you for not working. Who the fuck works on Sabbath? But it made sense after he explained that our Oriental customers don't observe Jewish traditions, so we must work during the Sabbath. You note the irony that even your MD (Master-slave Director) is a slave to our clients. It dawns on you that slavery is omnipotent, that there is no respite.

After a year, all the blood, sweat, and tears you've sacrificed finally paid off when you received your first paycheck of $100,000. "All my friends back home make $50,000....they must be jealous of how much I make" you proclaim, assuring to yourself that these efforts are worthwhile. Unbeknownst to you, this might as well be Monopoly Money because you have no place to spend it. You refuse to do the math because otherwise, you'd realize that you're earning much less on an hourly basis. Nothing will undermine your efforts (or sunk costs). 

The day of redemption finally arrives when your friends visit the city. What better opportunity than to flex my new riches? Before dinner, you spend $70,000 an iced-out manacle (factory set diamonds + jubilee bracelet). The thought of squandering their salaries equivalent on fashion strokes your ego. When you finally meet them, your first priority is to flex the new Drip. As they laugh among themselves...you can't help but wonder, is this out of envy or pity?

Chapter Four: The Promised Land

Two years have passed, and you've earned your lashes. After another reverse auction, you secure a job at Apollo, an even more prestigious plantation. The Land of the Free, where one earns more while working fewer hours. Congratulations--you've escaped the matrix and entered the kingdom of financial freedom. Childhood ambition: Actualized.

Accompanying of your elevation in social status is the change in responsibilities. Now you're a farmer, that scours the fruit market for healthy-looking seeds with cheap price tags. Once found, your job is to sow the seeds, nurture their germination, and harvest the fruit after a few years. "This business model is so clever: seeds are cheap and we can sell the ripe fruit for 3-4x the cost of seeds!!" But you are unaware that every plantation within a 50-mile radius is doing the same thing. The realization escapes you, that surrounded by hungry people, the cake you have is not yours alone to eat.

Aside from your duties, payment is also different. Your Master offers you something called 'carry', which he describes as an "invisible piggy bank storing all the profits of your hard work." He explains that upon selling the fruit, you can finally collect your dues from the piggy bank. However, Master conveniently left out some key points: if locusts devour the fruit before harvest, if the fruit rots, if it doesn't grow past a certain diameter or if it's sold at too cheap a price, then your piggy bank implodes. 

Ultimately, you learn that in the Promised Land, earnings are held captive by factors beyond your control: other farmers, fruit-market dynamics, and nature. Wondering if there's any escape from slavery in one form or another, you turn to your unemployed friend who lives off his rich parents. It dawns on you that he too is held prisoner--not by plantations or money, but by his parental dependency.