"I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself".

- Ivan Boesky, to the UC Berkeley School of Business, commencement speech, 1986

“Milken’s biggest problem was that some of his most ingenious but entirely lawful maneuvers were viewed, by those who initially did not understand them, as felonious, precisely because they were novel – and often extremely profitable.”

- Harvey Silvergate on Mike Milken, who served two of six years in prison

Worthy of note - Mike Milken is a major philanthropist now, with several charitable organizations. Also worthy of note, he took a plea bargain so he wouldn't be found guilty of racketeering. Fundamentally, however, they came out of a profession whose guiding principle is

That's never going to change. MBAs are all about the benjamins. Nobody gets an MBA to better run a nonprofit, to cure cancer, to reduce carbon emissions, to save the pandas.

Here's a better way to look at the subject:

For most people, "get enough to make you happy" seems to be around $70k a year after expenses. For MBAs it's probably more because of pre-existing FBGM conditions. The point of the video (I assume- I'm not sitting through a Stanford MBA lecture with a gun to my head) is that you can get more motivation and fulfillment out of doing Big Money Things than you can out of doing Little Money Things because FBGM.

Fundamentally, it's the argument of patronage, whereby you aren't a horrible 1%er drain on society if you throw $100k at the March of Dimes every year. After all, "Mother Teresa helped many people, but Michael Milken helped more." But fundamentally, it's an argument that first you get rich, then you help other people. I can understand why you find that disquieting.

But the worst is that they are not empathetic anymore. I was shocked by their lack of solidarity and care for people that worse off.

They no longer see themselves as members of that group. They have selected a new society, and what matters is where they are in their new society, not their old one.

How realistic is it? I think it's irresponsible to tell people that the rest of the world only matters when you can afford it. But I also think that a former Facebook exec having his cock sucked by a bunch of business school tards at Stanford is the worst possible place to find altruism and humanity and shame on you for thinking there'd be any.

I own four watches, by the way. One because my dad took too long to fix my first one, one of which was a groomsman's gift straight from the engraving shop at the mall, and one of which has cost me $80 in parts so far and is gonna be dope when it's done. I have no interest in acquiring lots of watches. My goal is to sell them to your friends.

So greed or not, I wish them well.