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Re:The mystique of Goldman Sachs by justin66 on Thursday December 15, 2016 @11:22AM (#13185670)
> It's disgusting to me that that much brainpower was/is dedicated to stock trading.

Is it more or less disgusting to you to spend brainpower on banner ads, or social media exchange of cat memes, or something? I'm honestly curious.

Re:The mystique of Goldman Sachs by jbob2000 on Thursday December 15, 2016 @11:36AM (#13185812)
For one individual to make their own decision to do those things, no issue.

But when a group of wealthy elite make it their mission goal to vacuum up money from everyone below, that's disgusting. The executive team at GS decided that they wanted to hire programmers to handle investing, instead of hiring programmers to handle nobler tasks.

At least when Google develops banner ads, they are providing value to the millions of people who need to advertise. When GS develops a better trading algorithm, you can count the number of people on one hand who benefit.

Re:The mystique of Goldman Sachs by muninn_ on Thursday December 15, 2016 @11:47AM (#13185920)
Google (or Facebook) developing those ads aren't providing value in a vacuum. Now my Internet experience sucks, my privacy is exploited, I'm psychologically manipulated to buy more shit I don't need (to increase the stock value of companies that GS is evaluating), and I become addicted to getting updates, and receiving the latest fake news.

It's easy to come out with a trendy anti-investment banking stance and claim that it's not noble. Meanwhile we also have genius developers working on CandyCrush and finding ways to get grandma to make in-app purchases for their own little business vacuum.

I actually find GS (or anybody really) developing a better trading algorithm to be much more of a benefit to humanity than annoying banner ads that I have to download software to block. Capital speculation, valuing companies, buying companies, mergers and acquisitions, etc... are all things that benefit the entire country and allow us to have free enterprise and for billionaires to fund crazy fun endeavors on the hope of receiving more money.

Re:The mystique of Goldman Sachs by kkhire on Friday December 16, 2016 @03:50AM (#13191968)
agree with everything you said.

there's this demonization of wall street and financial institutions as if it's a brain drain to make money. what does that make the millions of ad tech and food delivery startups then?

its the backbone of the economy. no companies can be formed and no biz's can do transactions without the banks working well. the more efficient and sophisticated they can be, the better off everyone else is.

ultimately, much of the money on sand hill road is coming from LPs who made it in finance

Re:The mystique of Goldman Sachs by geodel on Thursday December 15, 2016 @12:01PM (#13186050)
So will it be okay if wealthy elite do it individually and not as a group?