Thursday, November 19, 2009

A smart mind is a dangerous thing to waste

When I did my undergrad the USSR was a going concern. The military-industrial complex sucked in a lot of smart grads. Their work would be classified, and would add little to the greater good.

Then came the fall of the wall. For a magical decade smart minds had good work to do.

Somewhere along the way, though, smart minds started working on novel financial instruments, malign pricing innovations, games with insurance plans, and other emergent frauds. Instead of building better bridges and inventing new conservation strategies and clean energy sources, too many of our brightest minds have been investing in complexity attacks.

We need a cultural reform movement that values people not by what the money they take, but by the worth they make. Anyone see signs of this anywhere?
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