Where am I supposed to land??

Values, morality, and judging others within this screwed up world

Hello everyone! I’m back from Asia, and before I begin my posts about Colombia, I’ll share a little rumination that has bothered me as I’ve moved from the progressive spaces of theoretical academia to the constraints and decisions people make in my reality at home. Enjoy the incoherency (especially the 5 or so people that may relate)!

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I was in the car with my brother driving home in the afternoon as he said,

“Shoot, I need to study for the GMAT (business school test)”.

And instead of being an empathetic and understanding brother, I took to criticizing the very choice of studying to piss away almost $200,000 to learn about stocks for two years.

There are multiple things wrong with my immediate judgment of my brother, and I think exploring them may be doubly useful for 1) showing how to be less of an asshole, of course, and 2) exemplifying the opportunities and difficulties of navigating a world where my values are too far removed from society’s realities. I’ll explain.

Here are the judgments underpinning my statement:

1. People who obtain MBAs tend to be wealthier, to begin with, and selfish

2. An MBA does not teach anything useful to members of society

3. Many of the people who have made the world a worse place come from the C-suites of MBA-filled companies.

4. The institution of business school is ultimately harmful to society because it advances selfish greed and contributes to an accelerating cycle of capitalist exploitation that is wrecking our planet and contributing to inequality.

Now, pick your butter knife to cut down my incredibly rash straw man arguments.

1. People who obtain MBAs tend to be wealthier, to begin with, and selfish
   I couldn’t find evidence to support this one, only anecdotal evidence from people around me.

2. An MBA does not teach anything useful to members of society
   I struggle to figure out what business students actually learn besides just networking. However, it is not my right to say that they do not learn anything useful. Many quantitative skills are necessary in today’s marketplace, and many argue that leadership growth is a fundamental part of curriculum. Still, take this critique from a professor (of course, negatively cherry-picked by yours truly).

   “But in the business school, both the explicit and hidden curriculums sing the same song. The things taught and the way that they are taught generally mean that the virtues of capitalist market managerialism are told and sold as if there were no other ways of seeing the world.

   If we educate our graduates in the inevitability of tooth-and-claw capitalism, it is hardly surprising that we end up with justifications for massive salary payments to people who take huge risks with other people’s money. If we teach that there is nothing else below the bottom line, then ideas about sustainability, diversity, responsibility and so on become mere decoration.”

   ¹ (Martin Parker, professor of management at the University of Bristol)

   However, I’ll throw in a direct rebuttal to this article for good measure:

   “The need for a moral compass and ethical behavior is drummed into business students ad nauseum. A greedy master of the universe wouldn’t even be able to get into a highly selective business school. Admissions would toss their applications in the reject pile faster than a hungry dog goes after a bone. The vast majority of business students today do not merely express deep concern for community and the less fortunate; they do something about it, creating social enterprises, leading nonprofit organizations, and volunteering their time to do real good in the world.”² (John Byrne)

3. Many people who have made the world a worse place come from the C-suites of MBA-filled companies.
   This is a somewhat true, heavily exaggerated claim. In my background of climate organizing and activism, I know that climate change denialism in the United States was largely shaped by a small number of C-suite oil executives who chose to ignore their scientists’ own reporting and manipulate public opinion through advertising and lobbying.³ However, to take this and attribute it to all graduates is a sweeping and misleading generalization. There are many actively harmful MBA graduates, but there are a lot of good ones. And as my brother says, “Most MBA graduates just become neutral corporate bots in their cubicle.”

Until now, this article may seem oddly specific and irrelevant to many other situations. After all, it’s just me being overly judgy about business school, of all things. But as I explore the last point, hang with me for a little bit.

4. The institution of business school is ultimately harmful to society because it advances selfish greed and contributes to an accelerating cycle of capitalist exploitation that is wrecking our planet and contributing to inequality.
   I do believe that this is true, whether it be business schools that funnel high-achievers into high-earnings positions often to increase corporate profits, ] “prestigious” private universities that give privileged individuals like me a leg up on all other job candidates⁴, or non-profits heavily dependent on raising funds from mega-donors and engaging in unsustainable short term projects.⁵ Almost everything may be screwing up our planet, upholding inequality, or accelerating the rise of post-truth pre-fascism as democracies fall and autocracies emerge.

If things are so bad, is it wrong for me to criticize these institutions? Where should I land in balancing my moral judgments against material realities?

An address to the radicals like myself

Most people reading this piece will skim it and find my claims absolutely absurd. As my grandpa might say, “This is the problem with the woke young generation.” And yes, my claims are somewhat absurd, and the last thing I want is a firestorm from coked-up Wharton bros wearing Patagonia vests. But I’m not addressing those types of people in writing this. I’m addressing people like myself. People who:

• See events like Gaza as a genocide, stress over the rise of the far-right in Europe or anti-immigration policy from Biden, and feel like the world is backsliding into an apathetic dystopia.

• Come from a place of privilege where they see their friends and family enter the throes of power in finance and consulting and judge them with somewhat of a superiority complex.

• Feel that our planet is burning and that ESG stocks and recycling won’t fix it. Rather, they believe radical, systemic change that gets to the root of our political and economic systems is what we need.

Hey you all, got your attention? The people who want to SCREAM that everything is going wrong and that it is up to people with privilege to change instead of following the same paths that have perpetuated our power in this screwed-up world?

A cartoon that always comes to mind.

Where I try to land

If there’s one thing that conversations like these teach me, it’s that being a judgy leftist is a really easy thing to do and is an excellent way to alienate others. Holding my moral framework against the individual actions that people take will never be a productive exercise. We are all stuck within broken institutions just trying to do the best we can.

Second, I may not be right about my diagnosis of societal ills. Understanding and untangling the role that economic growth, imperialism, big tech, public finance, private equity, etc. etc. play in making our world better or worse is an impossibly difficult quantitative task. Moreso, we will always come up with different answers based on our moral values. Whereas my grandfather has distrustfully grown to equate hard work with success and poverty with laziness because of being wronged by people in his life, I hold a more compassionate, certainly naive take that all humans are capable of goodness and that civil society exists to unconditionally provide well-being for all, even if that requires sacrifice from the well-off.

This is the fundamental pre-condition to differences in politics—what we believe human nature is and how much we believe in the capabilities of our fellow humans.

It should be debated and understood, not shoved back into the echo chambers from which they emerge.

Third, and potentially most importantly, I haven’t figured out what the best way to navigate this world is. If systems are broken, how much should we participate in them? What is the difference between working to re-elect Joe Biden even as a progressive worried about immigrant and Gazan rights, versus joining the prestigious finance industry to try and “change it from the inside” by adding impact investing metrics? When do I protest IMF policies that have put lower-middle-income countries in never-ending cycles of austerity and debt, and when do I accept that I do not have the expertise or power to weigh in on such debates happening between PhDs?

When do we scream? And when is it not worth it?

When do we criticize power? And when do we seek it?

Privilege and our obligations

I have to end this piece by acknowledging the privilege I and so many of us have that many don’t. I do not need to fight for my individual rights—they are protected. I do not need to fight for access to water, food, and shelter—they are given. But where real injustice lies, people are still fighting. In Kenya, in Myanmar, in Darfur, in Yemen, in Palestine, and in parts of the U.S. And for those fights, we need to show up. Through donations, advocacy, and whatever means possible so that people know that immediate injustices are occurring around us.

But as for business school, maybe I’ll shut up. Heck, it can’t hurt to learn how to use Excel.

1. “Why we should bulldoze the business school”

2. “Another Cheap Shot at Business Schools”

3. There is a lot of journalism about this. Check out this podcast series or this congressional press release

4. Definitely check out this scathing NYT piece showing elite universities’ lack of economic diversity

5. I recommend reading more about the Non-Profit Industrial Complex .