Young People With A Moral Purpose Should Work For Goldman Sachs, Not Google

I think he's forgetting this little thing called "fiduciary responsibility". In almost all jobs in finance, you have a legal obligation to generate externalities in the name of profit. You may learn how to make a different, but unless you get rich enough to be investing your own money to make the world better, you are often going to find yourself having to do things that damage the commons for the sake of the individual.

That being said, I used to work in finance, and I agree that there is a lot of value in spending 1-2 years there since it gives you a lot of operating insight into the impact of finance in getting things done and that knowledge is very useful if you find yourself on the other side of the table trying to convince finance professional to do the right thing. They understand finance and rarely understand how industries actually work, even though they think they do and write lots of reports giving that impression. To make them understand an industry or world problem, you need to put it in their vocabulary.

Wow, talk about Wadhwa throwing up a strawman there...

I think Shiller has a point, though. If young people are so appalled by what Wall Street is doing, they should be the ones working for them and changing things. Self-driving cars are cool, but what does the US need more - self-driving cars, or a sound and ethical banking system?