Comments on: Matt Levine on Investment Bankers

By: LHOOQ

LHOOQ — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 06:35:41 +0000

@stuffisthings I’ve been thinking about this a lot in regards to the banking crisis, although I feel like the banking issues are as much about actual incompetence as they are about morally diseased institutional cultures.

On a side note, I’m currently writing a paper about state funding of the arts, and I feel like I’ve Godwinned myself. Obviously there is a way to bring Hitler into a discussion where he is actually relevant, but I feel like it’s a very slippery slope down to saying things like, And you know who was the biggest proponent of state funding of the arts? Hitler. Never mind.

By: themegnapkin

themegnapkin — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:07:48 +0000

The year I graduated from (a fancy) college (2001), i-banks were recruiting heavily. The sense was that anyone with good grades, almost regardless of major, could get a job right out of college that paid $70k, you just had to be willing to give up sleep, and accept it that you would probably be let go or forced out after 1-2 years because of the heavy weeding those kinds of firms do. Mainly the classmates I knew who went into i-banking were either business or economics majors who *wanted* to work in i-banking, or kids who didn’t really know what they wanted to do and were attracted by the really high salary and, as often as not, needed $$$ to pay off loans.

By: stuffisthings

stuffisthings — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:50:35 +0000

@Sandy505 (Also, in actuality Godwin’s Law was meant to discourage people from derailing unrelated discussions into debates like this one, which is exactly what I’ve done. Sorry!)

By: stuffisthings

stuffisthings — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:22:37 +0000

@Sandy505 Yeah but the whole purpose of Arendt’s writings on “the banality of evil” was to provide insights about how certain institutional cultures mixed with human psychology enable normal people do terrible things — it just so happened that she developed the idea while writing about Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Israel. I’m pretty sure she didn’t intend for the phrase “banality of evil” to refer only and forever to National Socialism. That’s why she didn’t call her book “Nazis Are Bad.”

By: Sandy505

Sandy505 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:13:08 +0000

@stuffisthings Um, no. Godwin’s law was created to expose these silly comparisons of everything semi-bad to Nazis. When talking about things similar to Nazis, let’s stick with the ones that pass the common sense test. The Holodomor, Japan’s atrocities during WW2, etc. Bankers and CIA torture don’t pass the muster.

By: Sandy505

Sandy505 — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 19:11:30 +0000

By: stuffisthings

stuffisthings — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:52:41 +0000

@Mike Dang It’s too bad that because she wrote about Nazis bringing her up is an automatic Godwin’s Law, because the whole “banality of evil” concept is valuable in many other contexts. Quoth Wikipedia: “She raised the question of whether evil is radical or simply a function of thoughtlessness, a tendency of ordinary people to obey orders and conform to mass opinion without a critical evaluation of the consequences of their actions and inaction.” I think that could certainly apply to the banking crisis! Also CIA torture, etc. etc.

By: Mike Dang

Mike Dang — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:47:10 +0000

@stuffisthings I just flashbacked to being 20 and sitting in my Holocaust studies class.

By: stuffisthings

stuffisthings — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 18:44:12 +0000

Hannah Arendt called, but she’s not saying anything, just sighing.