Jo Chamberlain has drawn my attention to a very telling article in the New York Times. It’s by a financier in Wall Street. Do read the whole article, but this is what it meant to me.
It describes how he was determined to get rich. Within a few years he was richer than he had previously dreamed of. Money brought power. However, instead of being satisfied he got sucked into the culture of envy: envy of people with even more money and power than he had.
It’s staggering to think that in the course of five years, I’d gone from being thrilled at my first bonus — $40,000 — to being disappointed when, my second year at the hedge fund, I was paid “only” $1.5 million.
As he changed, his girl friend ditched him.
Of course there was a turning-point – otherwise the article wouldn’t have been written.
It was actually my absurdly wealthy bosses who helped me see the limitations of unlimited wealth. I was in a meeting with one of them, and a few other traders, and they were talking about the new hedge-fund regulations. Most everyone on Wall Street thought they were a bad idea. “But isn’t it better for the system as a whole?” I asked. The room went quiet, and my boss shot me a withering look. I remember his saying, “I don’t have the brain capacity to think about the system as a whole. All I’m concerned with is how this affects our company.” I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. He was afraid of losing money, despite all that he had. From that moment on, I started to see Wall Street with new eyes.
He began to realise that the determination to get more and more money was an addiction. He offers some telling examples of the absurdities to which the addiction leads. Hard though he found it at the time, he left his job.
From a distance I can see what I couldn’t see then — that Wall Street is a toxic culture that encourages the grandiosity of people who are desperately trying to feel powerful. I was lucky. My experience with drugs and alcohol allowed me to recognize my pursuit of wealth as an addiction.
Once a person is addicted, it must be hard to leave. But what about the far larger numbers of people who, instead of helping them to recover, applaud the addiction and encourage them to continue in it? Why is modern capitalist society so busy disempowering democratic processes and governments, and inviting these addicts to run everything?