People who believe incentives are destiny tend not to take jobs writing for the New York Times. It's not like journalists enjoy high pay or great job security.

Maybe the author of this piece believes "I don't do X for the money, I do X to make the world a better place / for the love of X". Many people in the arts, education, charities, research etc act as if they believe this.

Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it.

There is a third, and far more likely option: they applied, and were rejected. Recruitment process are terrible through out, and world-changing institutions are no exception. Let me know when I can fix cancer or neurological disease: I know how well enough to make a significant contribution. While I wait, three head-hunters have called about that virtual good start-up…

Also: (b) is far more likely than (a).

The author does not have a job writing for the NY Times. He is a graduate student at Columbia University, with an internship scheduled for this summer with Uber.

>Perhaps it's never occurred to the author that people with the opportunity to change the world (a) might not care about changing the world or (b) might think a photo sharing app is the best possible way to do it.

Yet another third option: the people with opportunity to change the world do have the desire, but are working on something else at the moment.

It's a sad fact that the world has an extreme shortage of people with both competence and idealism, because our social system has a strange urge to exterminate idealism at all costs[1].

[1] -- http://www.thebaffler.com/past/practical_utopians_guide

Smart people are rational and cleverness is combined with ambition you find calculated risk. As long as you're willing to risk your youth for filthy amounts of money you're being rational since you'll still have a respectable resume and those unsexy jobs will always be there waiting.

You seem to have confused the econospeak-meaning of "rational" with its usual English meaning. It's rational to prefer meaningful work.

Large portions of our culture have a mental block about thinking that capitalism might be doing the wrong thing. Or rather, they simplistically equate "capitalism" with "freedom", fail to acknowledge that capitalism imposes its own imperative (namely: return-on-investment) on society, and thus end up wondering why these intelligent, free individuals haven't chosen to engage in noble, moral work. Since the presumption of "freedom" cannot be questioned (by noting that the capitalist imperative and the incentive structures flowing from it have a compelling power all their own), only one possible conclusion remains: all those intelligent, free individuals are just not very noble people, actually.

These people then proceed to sulk in a corner at the general suckitude of our species while voting for more capitalism.