Weekend Wars: Soul vs. Hole
It's been a pretty eventful weekend for me on the personal front. I've had some good things happen, some interesting possibilities open up and some downright crazy monkey turds hit the fan. All in a life's work, I guess. All of this has me a bit contemplative as to how much control I really have over things.
From early on we're taught to do things. Create a plan, follow steps, seek out a result. But how much effect do we really have on our destiny? Is there a destiny? Are we meant to be someone or something or somewhere? Beats me. I do know, however, that there are things I have done which have led to unintended consequences. Both in the positive and negative realms.
This is why I am curious to know...how far would you guys go to get what you want?
I am not talking about crazy off-the-wall sorts of things here. No time travel and celebrity death matches. I am curious how far you guys would go to achieve your ambitions in a very real and practical sense, knowing that there may be far reaching consequences. All of us here are hovering somewhere in the financial industry universe, in which certain rules apply. There are rules, however, that haven't been written. There are corners to cut. Some of us have taken those shortcuts, many more will be tempted to...
I recently spoke to a guy who made a killing off sub-prime. He did some very questionable things. Absolutely none of them illegal. Legal, however, does not always equal sleeping well at night.
There is probably someone reading this post right now who sold Abacus like a miracle drug. There is probably someone reading this post who three-carded some shady repos back-and-forth. Even if there isn't...you know where I am going with this and you probably do not want to think about it. Well, you should. Especially the younger guys.
Gents, the time will come when you will be able to achieve your wildest fiscal fantasies. But along the way, there will certainly be a chance to do it a lot faster if at a more understated price. All it will take is turning a blind eye or perhaps "nudging" something in a certain direction.
When the time comes, which will you choose? Will you confirm that the path of the righteous man is indeed beset with inequity? Will you sell your soul for that bubbling gold and silver? Easy to say that you wont. But when the time comes...it comes for us all.
How much for your soul? What's the price? What is the market value of a good night's sleep? What's your walk-away-number?...from your moral compass, that is...
Lately, I am learning more and more that it is my actions which define me and that it is my achievements which live to serve others.
Do you hear me or are you just listening?
At the end of the day, the only thing you really have is your own integrity. You can lose everything else, all your wealth, your possessions, everything, in the flash of an eye. I'd rather be a man of character than some d-bag obsessed with making money. Life is a string of extenuating circumstances, and abandoning your principles even once will send you down a slippery slope (note I doubt I live my life like this but it is always something to try to do). For a refresher on over ambition, I'd suggest re-reading Macbeth.
Agree 100%. Abandoning your morals and principles for the sake of accumulating wealth will in one way or another haunt you.
ok monkeys lets test this theory:
you get a button, 100 million dollars if you press it, but 50 malaria infested african orphans die.
What do you do?
Can I push it twice?
I don't see why not... two part question then: if you choose to push it, how many times?
Real mature. You are basically saying, that at some point, for some amount of money, we would all become murderers. I would never commit murder for any amount of money. What can money possibly buy you when you are responsible for the deaths of 50 people?
Trust me, most people in this world would be quicker to push the button killing 50 wall street pricks over 50 malaria infested orphans
As much as it may pain you, everyone has a price.............and yes there is a price at which I would be willing to kill. I don't necessarily know what it is, just that it exists.
On a more serious note, I think Gekko said it perfectly, I don't know what my number is in this case but I'm sure that it exists
So you are effectively a hitman, but you charge a high price.
It's horrific that people on WSO are willing to take a life away for money.
I disagree that "everyone has a price". I would never kill anyone for all the money in the world. Why? Firstly, no one has the right to take someone else's life away (self-defence is the exception) and secondly, billions of dollars will not solve all your problems and make you Mr Happy.
I was joking...
My bad.
To further elaborate on Gekko's post, research has been done on this subject and just about all of us are capable of the worst atrocities. People like to think that the killers or mass murders are demons, but in actuality they are pretty normal.
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/03…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
Desensitization is pretty powerful. Combine an authority figure with dehumanization and we are all capable of doing horrible things.
This was an old episode of the Twilight Zone man, guy leaves a box with a button on your front door with a note that says if you press it, some random person dies but someone will come knocking on your door the next day with 50 grand. It was... Interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Its worse when authority figures are involved, especially when they assure you that its cool and you won't get into trouble, most end up doing stuff they normally wouldn't do.
yeah but I upped the stakes, go big or go home baby
I'll sleep well at night so long as my sheets are 1000 thread. Live ---> Get Money ----> Die.
On a more real note though - I have felt bad about taking peoples money before.... so I'm guessing there could be a situation that could arise at the workplace where I might choose not to make money on moral grounds.
Ever had played poker at a table with a REALLY pathetic REALLY compulsive gambler? It's SO EASY to win, but it's depressing and after a while it's just too much... a few times I've found myself needing to stop.
I would definitely not press the button.
Thanks Jorge. Yeah, the Milgram Experiment was pretty famous also.
I highly recommend the book on killing that I posted before. I found it to be a fascinating read.
So for whatever reason, this 100mm bucks to push a button that kills 50 African Cholera babies or whatever question has really been nagging the shit out me since I read it. I really don't believe that I could look anyone of you in the eye and say that, if presented with this exact scenario, I wouldn't push the button. In fact, I would probably beat that button like a fucking drum. I can't decide if I'm repulsed by my own lack of compassion for the AIDS babies or if I'm jealous of the fact that any of you would be able to resist the urge. I don't know if this does or does not make me a bad person since it's completely hypothetical, but I just cannot see myself passing up 100 million dollars if it meant 50 kids that already had a life expectancy of 25 would be killed. I would almost be tempted to argue that I would be doing them a favor but that's a pussy way out and everyone knows it. I apologize for rambling but this is seriously fucking with my head....feel free to weigh in on this.
In retrospect, I guess LIBOR was right.
Although I said I wouldn't press the button, that doesn't mean I wouldn't be tempted to. I think at the end of the day you still wouldn't push it. Its easy to say you would, but if ever in the situation, it would be a lot more difficult to summon the will to do it. Everyone remembers that scene from the Dark Knight with the ferries.
I'm a big fan of Kant so I'll do my plug on his behalf right here. Obviously, the above scenario would violate Kant's categorical imperative, and would thus be considered unethical. However, according to Kant, it is more ethical to be tempted to do wrong but then reason that you shouldn't do the action than it is to simply not do it without thinking about the ethical implications. In other words, blind faith of an ethical doctrine is not as good as using reason to determine the moral implications of an action.
Thus, the fact that we are tempted is good. But as men of reason, we should not act on our emotional inhibitions (in this case, the greed that would tempt us to push the button). Instead, we need to look at the action rationally to determine if it is moral or not (in this case, using other men as a means to the end of money violates Kant's doctrine... even a utilitarian would question whether this is ethical since you would have to use that money to create more utility than the utility lost by killing 25 people).
Of course, all of this assumes we are men of reason.
Using that logic, would you push the button even if there were no monetary reward?
In fact, just to get more thought provoking comments, would any of you push a button that killed 50 random people (with or without disease) but it offered no reward? I feel that thinking of it that way puts a whole new perspective on a the value of human life vs. money.
A very interesting discussion to say the least.
James, honestly man, I think you normally write some of the better posts on the site. That being said, this is not one of them. Would I push a button that killed 50 people? Of course not, the reason that the aforementioned scenario was such a mind fuck for me was because I valued that 100mm bucks over those 50 nameless faceless hypothetical people in the scenario. I wouldn't randomly blow up 50 random people for shits and grins. At least in the scenario where I got ridiculous sums of money for 'killing' those people, I could somehow justify it by saying I would reinvest that money in the same communities where those little AIDS babies blah blah blah...but asking if I would just off 50 people? That seems either nuts or far more abstract than my meager mind is capable of comprehending.
Fair enough.
But of course no one in their right mind would just kill 50 people, and I didn't expect anyone to endorse that in a response. The question was more hypothetical than anything because the answer was so obvious (unless you sympathize with Ted Bundy and the like, which is unlikely).
More or less, I was simply pointing out how putting money into the equation will drastically change a persons view point on the value of human life. No sane person on this board would kill just to kill yet they (some) would make an immediate consideration to end a life when money was a factor; and that is meat-and-potatoes of my point. It's an interesting aspect of human nature. Almost like wild animals; they kill for territory when they could just be content with their current state and find other methods for new land (but they are animals), we kill others for monetary gain (and a plethora of other reasons) when we could be innovative make our own $100 million; are we animals?
Plus, there are many more real world applications to this than just a hypothetical death button scenario.
My original post may have not met the expectations of my past post history but it did influence you to comment and add more to the conversation. In essence, it fulfilled its purpose.
haha, interested theory. Guess that I have heard a theory like this : if we can have a weapon, that it can kill people in distance without trace. human being will be diminished in 5s.
some very interesting thoughts fellas...
just to add where i was coming from with this...
think of the old "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there" cliche...
naturally, pressing a button is much easier than raiding a small village and pillaging face-to-face...
what i would like to hear is some thoughts in terms of curtailing self destructive behavior on Wall Street in the coming decades...i'm very clear about my laissez-faire worldview, but is stricter regulation really the only thing that can keep "us" in line?
what can "we" ourselves do to prevent new crises from occuring?
perhaps i should have said here's $100 MM...what will you NOT DO in order to get it?
I'm in IB precisely so I can earn my token $100 million so I DON'T have to kill African AIDS babies. Oh, and for the exit opps.
I would press the button.
Think of the flip-side, what kind of quality of life are these 50 malaria infested orphans going to have? What kind of opportunities are they going to have? What kind of pain are they going to endure? Starvation? Amputation? Rape?
History has a way of repeating itself (cliché, I know). It shows us that the worst is always inevitable; whether the whole world verges on collapse tomorrow or in 10, 15, 20 years… it will happen again. More Madoff’s and Abacus deals will emerge in the future I suspect, regardless of what policy is made in Washington. The next bubble will pop and many will make and lose millions. A hole in the revised system will be spotted and someone will find a way to exploit it and swindle others. Laissez-faire attitudes and strict regulation are noble ideas to stabilize the system but what it cannot control is people, and it’s the vindictive nature of a few people who will always find a way to bring an entity (late 1700s France, Nazi Germany, Saddam’s Iraq, Wall Street, etc.) to ruin (inadvertently in some cases) or close to it. This plays into my earlier posts of the wild animal-like nature of humanity... a harsh reality but cruel people do exist and what is to ultimately stop them?
What we as a collective society could do to prevent a new crisis is to be honest and fair and not attempt to be malicious or ruin other lives. But the world is not unicorns and rainbows and the application of the previous sentence actually happening is nothing but pure fantasy. The actual task of preventing a crisis could be viewed as more of a pipedream in the sense that another one will happen again eventually. That's not to say that we should not make efforts to prolong the event a crisis from happening again.
What we can strive for is the nobility of trying to make society (the economy, the world) better but knowing the reality of ever accomplishing the task in full is near impossible. It’s like wishing for world peace; we try to act in the best interest of creating a peaceful society but we know that world peace will never be real.
Personally I would never press the button (I have too strong a conscience), but to throw a twist to it: with $100 million you can donate $50 million to develop vaccines that can save a thousand lives in the future and still have $50 million. How would you look at it then?
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