Money, Maximization, and The Mature Life

[A "first person" piece I wrote for a writing course, amended from an old blog entry.]

We’ve all heard it, the standard money-won’t-buy-you-happiness argument—that amassing wealth only begets a desire for more (the “hedonic treadmill” concept); that working too hard and too long creates stress and stifles relationships; and that doing what you love is most important. The grey-haired gremlins coo with either smug satisfaction or uncomfortable regret, “Do what you love, kid.”

As a college senior choosing a career, I’m increasingly frustrated by the aching naiveté of the whole do-what-you-love-and-be-happy line of reasoning. If somebody were willing to pay me to snowboard down the back slopes of the Tetons, embark on a safari in the Great Rift Valley, or guide a speedboat through Amazonian rainforests, I’d be doing those things already. I would love to skip out of work and sip Johnny Blue at the corner bar, or tear across the country in a beat up Subaru—blasting music, windows down, feet out the window, arm casually resting on the cinnamon-tan inner thigh of an impossibly attractive brunette in a baby blue miniskirt. Yes, then I’d get a cozy cabin in the Adirondacks, read tattered paperback classics and wax poetic in my leather-bound diary about Dickens and Faulkner. If there is a company out there writing checks for the things I love, please forward my résumé.

The fact is, much of what I love—and most of what I want to spend my time doing—can only be had by doing other, less glamorous things. I know I’m not alone. Millions of people sit in air-conditioned skyscrapers all day, tirelessly churning out the motions of a mechanized existence, dreaming of the things they aren’t able to do because they are trapped by their total lack of short-term cash flow. The truth is, money is important—many of the things that contribute joy to existence, and many of the things which detract from it, actually can be measured in dollars and cents. Cold, hard currency is all too often, and way more frequently than the bleeding-heart poor wish or care to admit, the means able to provide the ends we desire.

I’m not saying we’re all going to be cubicle-dwelling accountants, or that we’re all going to dislike our jobs, or that we’re all going to be suppressed forever by four-figure checking accounts. Conversely, I am not saying that the solution to all of our problems is winning the lottery. Indeed, some of us, many of us, will find the fulfillment we are looking for in a family or an art form or a career. Some of us will start booming businesses that incite our inner passions. Maybe you find yourself three thousand miles away, taking notes for a National Geographic feature on the tragedy of the Burmese clergy.

As economists never tire of reminding us, life is about trade-offs—and the work and money versus love and happiness tug of war is perhaps the toughest trade-off decision we are forced to make. The trouble is, as humans, we are miserably bad at getting the trade-offs right. To our own detriment, we are usually just plain wrong when trying to predict what decisions will lead to joy. We spend too much time in painful labor for the money we end up spending on things we don’t need. What we think will make us happy, in the end, just won’t. Most of us end up working too hard for too long, spending too much on too little. I’m in that camp.

It is an enduring human pull to attempt what economists call maximization—that is, we constantly, and at times frenetically, seek out the best options in life. In virtually every psychological study, researchers have found that people who try to maximize are far more miserable than people who are willing to make do. We are all counterfactual historians, men and women who obsessively imagine different and better outcomes for ourselves.

I am a clear maximizer. I fluctuate madly—from day to day, from week to week—between different goals and plans and ideas. Some days, I feel as if I would be content to settle into a ninety-hour-per-week job in law or finance. Other days, I want to take a long shot and try to be that reporter in Burma, money be damned. Some weeks, I try to hit the kill switch on that lightning rod of adrenaline, unplug the live wire of naked impulse that lurks within, and settle down into the more predictable tedium of mature life. Other weeks, I want to foster it, nourish it, feast rapturously on the idosyncratic thoughts and difficult passions that speed and instability and risk inspire. 

There’s no clear solution. What to do with our lives, and how to lead them, is the monster trade-off, the most important decision we make. Maybe we shouldn’t let a trifle like happiness muck it up.

The Tough Sell: A Profile

[Something I wrote recently for a writing class. Name changed to protect the innocent.]

It’s 12:34 a.m. Somewhere in the world, lovers are embracing, DJ’s are mixing, tourists are beaching, and Matthew Gardner is writing cover letters. He’s executing a sale, and he’s selling himself — the product of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said to be the nation’s finest undergraduate business program.

Always be closing, they say, but this pitch is a tough sell, because Matt is a long way from the top. His suit hangs limp, shirt untucked; he sighs, beleaguered. Scanning his resume, his eyes keep returning to his GPA, which he knows puts him around the fortieth percentile in his class of six hundred students.

Somewhere else in the building, a fellow classmate is about to “drop” a resume that includes a crowning achievement, writ large in bold black typeface: 3.88. His application will merit a first round interview with Goldman Sachs, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and a host of other banks and consulting firms. Matt says matter of factly, “You can’t compete with guys like that. No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, they’ll beat you. Every single time. You’ll never win.”

Percentile is destiny in America, and the cold reality is that you’re never quite high enough. Matt’s SAT scores put him in the ninety-ninth percentile. His talent for multiple-choice tests earned him an early slot at Wharton.

It was December 14, 2005 when he heard the news. Matt’s grandfather had passed away. He was a mess of emotion, but he managed to get to his computer at 7:50 p.m. Refresh. Refresh. Eventually, the screen appeared: “Congratulations! You’ve been accepted…”

“I thought I’d made it, that this was it, you know…fait accompli.” He was only 18 years old, but Matt had been running for half his life. He’d been amassing momentum, from middle school spelling bees onward. Vying for honors, medals, distinctions, promotions. Founder of Quizboal; Co-captain of Speech and Debate – “Where I learned how to bullshit so well,” he says with a wry smile; math team; and varsity soccer. He even headlined as Antonio, the anti-Semitic merchant in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

Motivated to go on to a top college, the desire to get ahead was the only inspiration Matt needed. At Penn, at Wharton, he would be able to morph his current life into something dramatic and meteoric. “I thought I’d meet all these interesting people and we’d start businesses and foundations and, and…”

Maturity muddled such fantasies. “…it was such a letdown. Such a letdown.” Matt came to realize that the early life grind wasn’t temporary. Pointless classes and clubs, test-prep books, AP exams, private schools, grade-grubbing nerds, nagging parents, college applications—these were not temporary, single-play chores, but precursors to another thirty years of the same routine.

“My freshman year, I called my high school advisor and told him, ‘I hate this place. I’m transferring to Yale. But, you know, it never happened. Here I am.’”

Matt is way out on the bell curve’s leading edge, but he’s still scrambling for that next promotion: a full-time job offer from a reputable financial firm. Steeped in the intricacies of finance and management and accounting, Matt is applying to bulge-bracket Wall Street firms, major consulting conglomerates, and a select group of Fortune 500 companies like American Express.

The task is less method than art. Matt is hyperaware that, unless his pitch is refined, unless he networks and emails and climbs—up and up, higher on the ladder of life—he’ll end up on a rung lower than he thinks his smarts and savvy merit. “I’m not going to apply to some no-name boutique,” he says caustically.

Finishing up, Matt walks to a nearby bar to relieve some pressure. He recites his order, one he knows as reflexively as the format of his cover letter: “Double Dewars on the rocks.”

As the scotch hits, relief washes over him, and he appears happy. He banters with three friends, laughing, passing off an abridged quote from Plato as his own. His strain forgotten, camaraderie takes hold. They laugh and talk and laugh some more.

But there’s a great deal of desperation and sadness in the laughter, because they’re carrying with them the knowledge that this is one of the few respites they’ll have in the coming months. This group of friends is about to leave the haven of the university and be thrown into the brutal, free-spinning world.

The morning comes, and the lingering effects of last night’s escape make it hard to adjust to the drone of the professor’s voice. Matt’s mind rolls to where he’d rather be, on some beach, or in a beat-up Mercedes on the Autobahn, drinking draft beer in a tavern booth. Anywhere, really, but here. But here he is, running.

The New Jersey Turnpike: Dreams Deferred

In 1984, David Remnick wrote a feature for the Washington Post about the New Jersey Turnpike (which unfortunately, I can’t find online). He called his piece “The New Jersey Turnpike: A Love Story” and it was a paean for the pike. I found the piece well-written but absurd. Who could lavish such praise upon the Turnpike with a straight face? His piece was hyperbolic, as is mine, which is a kind-of Remnick reprisal, if you will. I answer his love story with a more-or-less hate story. A hate story with a theme.

This was an “observational” piece, an exercise in journalistic writing for a writing course, so don’t be offended by the details. It’s less objective fact or strait-laced opinion than a work of writing. This is art, not science. Also, this is an early draft, and will likely be revamped and revised many times.

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In just thirty-two minutes, you can drive from the exit of Broadway’s bustling midtown corridor to the entrance of a less prestigious artery. From the brains of America to its bowels. From its heart to its gut. Veer right. Welcome to the New Jersey Turnpike.

Jammed into one contour of the Turnpike’s 12-foot-wide concrete intestines, it’s hard not to notice the toxicity—the stools of the gritty Gotham you left behind. The slimy marshes are a spitting distance from the precipice of the cigarette-strewn shoulders; they shine a mossy, golf-course green in the September sun, speckled with empty Marlboro cartons and tin Sunoco canisters, tobacco and diesel, the lingering poisons to a fading body. The smoky, gassy smell confirms: this place is Three Mile Island toxic – a cavern of festering bacteria sprinkled over the putrid plains of the polity it serves.

The fertile marsh-land of silt and mud holds recycled beer cans and plastic milk jugs, Anheuser Busch and Kellogg, Madison Avenue’s consumer crap, used and tossed aside. Thrown out and forgotten.

A mid-90s Jeep Cherokee rattles along. It’s a bag of steely, American-made nuts and bolts with enough intra-Jersey miles to round trip this toll road ten thousand times. The SUV of old creaks through the turns of northeast Jersey’s cantilevered truss bridges like a motor home on a dirt track: past Newark and Jersey City; high above the Meadowlands; past the sagging drawbridges spanning the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers; beneath the Britain-bound Boeing jets of Newark’s airport; alongside the nameless, rusting boxcars traversing tarnished tracks; atop the dirt-blackened cement, atop the sand-filled caissons, atop the soft, swampy earth…sinking lower.

The Jeep, a weather-beaten paint shaker of a vehicle, is a Jersey story in itself, with 120,000 miles to its pages. Its narrative is borne out of miles upon miles of trips to Jersey’s branded bastions: trips east on State Route 72 for Beach Haven weekends – LBI, baby! – and north on the Garden State Parkway, to Exit 116, for Coldplay and Springstreen and Dave Matthews Band concerts at the PNC Bank Arts Center – Trippin’ Billies!; of trips south on I-95 for a sunny summer day at Six Flags; of trips west on I-80 for the weekend flea market near the Delaware Water Gap; and trips up and down, along this pike, this roadway that runs past towns of European name but American tradition: Elizabeth, Bayonne, Woodbridge, New Brunswick…New Jersey.

New Jersey– new, better, that was the promise. When the Turnpike was constructed in the early 1950s, it was a promise of better access to the engine of capitalism by which global commerce is sustained. Perhaps, some imagined, with the Turnpike, Jersey’s proximity to New York could be tapped – and its less esteemed neighbor could abscond with some of the ingenuity, some of the culture, some of the power.

But that power can only be seen from afar, not grasped. Travelling north on the Turnpike, New York’s skyline explodes into the purview, eminently visible over the retaining walls that were built to contain the semis and Hummers heading north to the Hudson River moat. Look east, and look high, toward New York—unencumbered by the trash heap below, you might forget that you’re in the throes of its waste.

The piercing rays of sunlight on this autumn Saturday illuminate the massive buildings, with their dizzying turrets and iridescent facades—these blue-hot, skyscrapered fantasyparks of finance that rise so inexplicably from an island of cold rock. They seem to taunt, to position themselves like elder statesmen over the kids on the Turnpike, as if they might be daring doe-eyed dreamers to approach, to join its ranks, to try and conquer The City. But it’s like a bullying bookie in a seedy, Atlantic City casino – because the odds are fixed, and the patron is but a fool for buying in. The draw? To win big, of course. Jackpot.

The Jersey Turnpike is not New York’s Royal Flush; it is New York’s bust, a meek and disenfranchised rounder, hoping for some luck on the river. Day by day, the hands are dealt, and the Turnpike continues to service the house. New York gets the lion’s share even while the Turnpike sells its goods and services, facilitating the arrival of new junkies hoping for a hot hand.

One rest area promises a respite, a dealer change for the Turnpike driver. Here, overpriced junk food is served by unapologetic minimum-wage workers. They grovel, grumbling, a sea of defeated countenances. The dull eyes tell the story of dreams deferred and dreams deceased.  Road-weary retirees and scruffy, unkempt middle-aged men carry plastic containers into aged Buick boats and smoke-black Ford trucks– inhaling the calorie-packed sleaze of Burger King and Roy Rogers, Popeye’s Chicken and Sbarro. Tired, beer-bellied truckers scarf up greasy slices of pizza from Sbarro, feasting out of triangular green and red-branded boxes they’ll later pitch from their windows – onto the receptacle below.

Foreign tourists stand out, Kodak cameras draped over their shoulders and fanny packs full of U.S. dollars strapped to their hips. They’re here to catch a glimpse of the American dream, to capture digitally the sublime portrait that the ceaseless American marketing machine has painted for the world. The jubilant Japanese travelers might be fooled by the Statue of Liberty postcards in the gift shop, but they’re in the wrong place.

Others, the more enlightened—some of them, perhaps, defeated Manhattan refugees—proceed to the Turnpike Starbucks. This branch is just forty miles from New York, but it couldn’t be more different from Manhattan. No stilettoed savants, no Ferragamo loafers. No Bowery-dwelling, botoxed beauties or fashion-forward, Upper East Side mommies.

The “baristas” are not the young, educated-looking urban-dwellers one’s used to in New York. Here, a hair-gelled Indian fatso named Nik barks orders to a frail-looking albino girl, Claire. She looks tired and abused. “Grande toffee nut latte with fat-free skim milk. Fat free, I said. That means no fat,” he bellows in a bastardized accent as he snickers. Claire doesn’t feign amusement. She’s new here.

The fixin’s bar is a standalone island of condiments, and it’s crowded with caffeine addicts readying themselves for the next stretch of road. The cylindrical glass sugar container has run dry – the snow white cane powder has been emptied, the sweetness sucked out.

There’s nothing sweet about this place. It’s a runoff of bitterness: New York’s indigestion, America’s acid reflux.

The Senior Slump Syllabus

I’m slumping in school. I’m burned out. Tired of classes. Bored in lectures. I have some general requirements left, but I can’t take them now. I’ll save them for next semester. This is a regrouping period — a time I need to take classes I’m inspired by regardless of academic need.

Here are the courses I’m taking. Feel free to salivate, for this is enviable college coursework.

Class 1: The Art of Profile Writing (Dick Polman)

I’ve been a fanboi of the profile genre for some time, and I have written about it twice on this blog (here and here). Dick Polman, one of my favorite writers and teachers (as well as my potential Thesis advisor), leads the course. Here is the course description:

One of the toughest challenges for any journalist is to master the art of profile-writing. In this new course, students will read and critique some of the classic profile articles of the past 40 years, and, most importantly, write profile articles of their own. Writing about people is often very rewarding, but rarely easy. In this course, students will debate the questions that have plagued and energized journalists for generations: How do you persuade somebody that he or she is a worthy topic for a profile? How do you ask sensitive questions? If the person is a celebrity, how do you avoid being manipulated into writing a “puff piece”? Do you tape the interviews or just take notes? How do you structure a profile in order to keep the reader’s attention? Is it even possible to capture the essence of a person on the written page? Are you a friend to the profile subject – or a manipulator? A journalist at The New Yorker recently said that a writer’s relationship with the profile subject is “a kind of love affair.” On the other hand, a famous author once said that a profile writer is typically “gaining their trust and betraying without remorse.” Which is closer to the truth? Students, in addition to writing their own profiles, will kick around these questions while reading some of the best contemporary profile writers, including Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, David Remnick, Mark Bowden, and Judy Bachrach. The instructor will also offer several of his own.

Class 2: The Call of the Wild (Rachael Nichols)

On the heels of my trip to Alaska, I thought this course would be a good pick:

Jack London’s novel, published in 1903, was tremendously popular—but it was not alone. It was written in a climate of intense interest in the U.S. wilderness; only a few decades earlier Theodore Roosevelt had worked to establish Yellowstone as the country’s first national park. While some attempted to memorialize the wild in writing, others hunted for specimens to display in the new museums of natural history in New York and D.C. All, however, feared the wilderness was in danger and in need of protection. This class will chart a history of conservation in the United States, with an emphasis on the turn of the century, to consider the lasting appeal the wilderness has had as a site of economic and cultural capital, and the various ways people have sought to sustain it. We will read works by Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Theodore Roosevelt, John Burroughs, Sarah Orne Jewett, Jack London, Sarah Winnemucca, and Willa Cather. This class will focus on analytical reasoning skills and argumentation, both written and oral. Looking at a range of material, from novels to newspapers, we will experiment with different genres of persuasive writing. Class requirements include weekly blog posts, several short papers and one final long paper.

Class 3: Advanced Journalistic Writing (Dick Polman)

Another course by Dick Polman. It should be a solid one:

This is a how-to course for talented aspiring writers–how to write well in the real world; how to hook the reader and sustain interest; how to develop the journalistic skills that enable a writer to gather, sift and report information. The instructor will share his own real-world experience, as a full-time working journalist for the past three decades. He will be joined on occasion by eminent journalists- including several star journalists from the New York Times–who will address the class and appear at mandatory forums to be held at the Kelly Writers House.

Even though students will read and critique some famous practitioners of non-fiction writing-among them, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Michael Herr, Truman Capote and Richard Ben Cramer–along with contemporary newspaper storytellers that include the instructor (a national correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer), the emphasis will be on the students’ own writing.

The goal is to inspire students to tap their own potential, gain fresh insights, and feel comfortable enough to share their assigned work-both short and long pieces-with others in the class over the span of the semester. Students will write all kinds of non-fiction pieces, from personal memoirs to long-form features about anything from the Philadelphia scene to campus issues and events. The topics are less important than the craftsmanship; anything can be a great read if it’s written and reported well.,P. Journalistic issues, both practical and ethical, will also be addressed–among them: how to decide who to interview, and how to handle an interviewee; how to use (and not use) the Internet; when to use (or not use) anonymous sources.

Class 4: Transatlantic Romanticism (Jeff Edwards)

This class looks good, though I think the instructor, Dr. Edwards, and I will disagree often. Gauging from the first two sessions, he and I have different conceptions of Romantic literature — mine is more narrow and traditional; his strikes me as a wider and more a product of the modern-day academic avant garde — though his enthusiasm for the texts is contagious and he’s humble in discussion and debate. Here’s the info:

Between the 1760s and the 1860s an Atlantic-rim literary phenomenon termed Romanticism occurred. This was not simply a British movement led by a handful of men (Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, and Wordsworth), but a vast conversation between men and women, Europeans and Americans, blacks and whites. In this class, we will immerse ourselves in the conversations and debates taking place during this time concerning revolution and reform, civilization and nature, gender formation, and slavery and abolition. Among the writers we will read are the five mentioned above, as well as Mary Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouges, Margaret Fuller, Quobna Ottobah Cuoano, Phillis Wheately, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Apess, Joanna Baillie, Samsom Occom, Mary Prince, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Lydia Sigourney.

The Color of Sacrifice: Pebble Mine and Red Gold

Coming unexpectedly upon such a trove a man is overcome by greed; by the mad desire to possess it all, to load his pockets, his knapsack, his truck with these hard lustrous treasures and somehow transport them all from the wilderness to the shop, garage and backyard.  – Edward Abbey

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There are no highways here. No railroad tracks. No hiking trails. No wide concrete landing strips. It’s a place most of us will never go. A place I might never have seen. But this is the most beautiful place on earth. And it’s a place that could be sacrificed forever.

From the air, it appears a pristine wasteland. There are no signs of life. Glaciers and snowfields thawing in the August sun, dissolving into the deep, violent rapids of ceaseless rivers. The jagged banks lined with the green shoots of summer, but no hordes of fishermen. The melted, mossy mush of beaver ponds, but no dams. The stern, white faces of craggy buttes, but no ski tourers or snow machines. Shadowy ravines and humplike hills, but no mountain bikers.

The place is the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage and 70 miles from tidewater at Cook Inlet. And there is life here – this place is the foremost wildlife area in all of Alaska; the source of the most productive commercial and sport salmon fisheries on the planet; home to more than 120,000 caribou and tribes of moose and bear; and not least, the hut-filled habitats of Iliamna, Nondalton, and Newhalen – small villages of indigenous, subsistence peoples who’ve been in the region for thousands of years, building a culture and a lifestyle many would consider third rate and third world.

And in this place sits a great fortune – a treasure trove tucked in the tundra, resting as calmly as the grizzly bear and caribou herds that graze in its footsteps. The treasure, a vast depository of gold and copper, lies at the headwaters of the Mulchatna/Nushagak River and the Newhalen/Kvichak River – two of the most famous salmon producing river drainages on the planet, both of which feed into Bristol Bay, where an estimated 50 million salmon come to spawn each year. Experts say the metals could be worth up to half a trillion dollars.

A proposed open pit mine of almost mythical size – to be called “Pebble Mine” – would extract the metals while altering the landscape irrevocably. The multi-billion-dollar industrial excavation would require: the construction of bridges and dozens of miles of roads and electric power lines across wild, undeveloped terrain; the erection of prodigious pipelines for fuel and rock slurries; the impoundment of large quantities of surface water; and the frenzied transport and use of toxic chemicals.

Pebble Mine would be one of the largest mines ever built. Its open pit would carve 2700 feet into the earth’s crust. It would include the largest dam in the world, a structure larger than Three Gorges Dam in China – made not of concrete but of earth, in order to hold back the toxic waste created in the mining process. Each day, the resource-thirsty operation would soak up as much energy as the city of Anchorage.

The estimated seven billion tons of copper-laden, toxic-waste scrap-crap would have to be contained not for a month or a year but for perpetuity.* Controlling seven billion tons of anything is a shaky proposition in a region fraught with torrential rains, titanic gusts of wind, and winter temperatures swooning to 70 below. An active volcano spews its steam nearby. There’s also a fault line some 30 miles away, a geologic menace credited with several medium-sized earthquakes each year – and one capable of producing a catastrophic shock sure to crumble the constructs of men.

If a small portion of the seven billion tons of rock were not properly contained, if even traces of the toxic dust were to flow into the fish-filled streams, the red salmon – and by extension, all the wildlife in the area – would face extinction. Even copper concentration of 3 or 4 parts per billion in fresh water destroys a salmon’s ability to navigate and thus imperils its ability to spawn.

The impassioned, partisan hullabaloo over ANWR looks like child’s play in light of the proposed Pebble Mine, which is shaping up to be ground zero for the most important environmental, ecological, and political battle this nation has seen in years. In a New York Times feature, Bill Lardley wrote that the war is one “between economies and cultures, between copper and clean water, gold and wild salmon.”

Proponents claim the mine would be an economic godsend to the area. The multinational mining conglomerates, Northern Dynasty Minerals and Anglo American, say they will hire the rural peoples who have yet to enjoy the industrial innovations of the modern era. Others foresee broken promises, as the mining companies import skilled laborers from abroad.

Tribes of Yupik Eskimos, Aleuts, and Athabascan Indians are split. The business bigwigs boast of $70,000 per year salaries – the alluring promise of a better life and nicer things, the fruits of capitalism to which the salmon-smoking simpletons have never been privy. Supporters note that mining yields $200 million a year in state tax revenue; newly swollen government coffers could pave asphalt roads and concrete runways, building better schools and post offices and playgrounds. Copper, credit cards, and crew cuts. Bullion, Jeeps, and Jim Beam benders. The Good Life.

Others say that the real gold shines red, and it’s found in the salmon.** The Alaskan red salmon is a lavish renewable resource, the lifeline of rural Alaska and the darling of the state’s $300 million per year fishing industry. Precious metals are a finite discovery and yield finite riches. The salmon is forever. And so far it has been – from the time their ancient ancestors crossed the Bering Strait up until now, red salmon have been the benevolent beings by which the natives have survived.

The gold and copper lies dormant, waiting to be mined and processed and carted off in diesel trucks…or left alone. The mining process, opponents say, would likely destroy the infinite wealth restored each year by the silent churning of the cogs in the engine of the eternal ecosystem.

At its root, the conflict over Pebble Mine is one of human nature. It’s a battle of now versus later; instant wealth versus delayed gratification; greed versus prudence. At issue is man’s respect for the natural world by which he is sustained; man’s power to harness the pearls of the planet for his own needs and his own desires; and the treatment of the gift bestowed upon man and his transformation of it, for better or poorer, for the re-wrapping, and re-bestowment, of that gift upon the generations of men who will follow.

John T. Shively, head of the foreign consortium that’s pushing for Pebble Mine, may have said it best: “Perhaps it was God who put these two great resources right next to each other…just to see what people would do with them.” Maybe that’s right. It might be a biblical-scale challenge of character and conscience, a tug of war among men over a decision of sacrifice.

Religious doctrine is riddled with annals of sacrifice. Sacrifice, in its noblest manifestations, involves man giving up something he values – a possession or a pastime or a lifestyle or a resource – for something he deems greater. The sacrificial exchange: something ephemeral for something eternal; an object of desire for an object of necessity; the finite for the infinite; less for more.

Something valuable must be sacrificed. What color is the gold?

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*As one mine opponent put it: “Do you know how long perpetuity is?”

**This red-gold trope is borrowed from a film called Red Gold, which is awesome. Read about it here.

Pumping: The Centi-Million-Dollar Market-Cap Crap-Trap

Technology advances, but human nature stays the same. It’s cliched by now, but it’s never been more true.

We all remember Gordon Gekko, cinema’s epic representation of the 1980s Wall Street titan. Gekko is a slimy master of the universe, an unscrupulous speculator with morals as flexible as the tape he trades. “Greed…is good.”

Less remembered is the the 90s equivalent of Wall Street, the movie Boiler Room. The protagonist signs on at a brokerage house (J.T. Marlin) alongside a bunch of cocky, smooth-talking Turks who seem to be making a lot more money than they deserve by pushing mysterious investments hard-sale style through aggressive cold calling and practiced coercion. It’s a standard pump-and-dump scheme. The salesmen recruit the capital of their unsuspecting clients and deploy the money into the stocks of bogus companies, thereby ratcheting up the share price. The large stakeholders – the top brass at J.T. Marlin and their pals – sell at the top of the run-up right before the shares swoon.

The pump and dump is a tired classic in the annals of market manipulation, and it’s little different from petty thievery. You’re taking the money from the fools you convince to buy. This happens all the time. In some cases, it’s egregious fraud, like the scheme in Boiler Room. In other cases, it’s almost morally defensible. Take Jonathan Lebed, a kid who, at 15 years old, became the first minor to ever face proceedings for stock-market fraud. Michael Lewis wrote a great piece, from which I quote:

[Lebed] had used the Internet to promote stocks from his bedroom in the northern New Jersey suburb of Cedar Grove. Armed only with accounts at A.O.L. and E*Trade, the kid had bought stock and then, ‘using multiple fictitious names,’ posted hundreds of messages on Yahoo Finance message boards recommending that stock to others. He had done this 11 times between September 1999 and February 2000, the S.E.C. said, each time triggering chaos in the stock market. The average daily trading volume of the small companies he dealt in was about 60,000 shares; on the days he posted his messages, volume soared to more than a million shares. More to the point, he had made money…The kid’s take from six months of trading had been nearly $800,000.

While it seems like the kid should be reprimanded, Lebed comes to his own defense quite well:

People who trade stocks, trade based on what they feel will move and they can trade for profit. Nobody makes investment decisions based on reading financial filings. Whether a company is making millions or losing millions, it has no impact on the price of the stock. Whether it is analysts, brokers, advisors, Internet traders, or the companies, everybody is manipulating the market. If it wasn’t for everybody manipulating the market, there wouldn’t be a stock market at all.

Very. Scary. Stuff. My friend Boris may have said it best: “I don’t even know what it means when a stock goes up anymore.”

I just finished a summer gig working for StockTwits, a start-up, Twitter-based, social-media client built to facilitate stock and financial chatter and distribute finance-related content. The question StockTwits users answer is “What are you trading?” in 140 characters. Simply, it’s a service to talk about and talk up your positions. Twitter will probably be defunct before the bureaucrats at the S.E.C. get their pants on, but the new technology could facilitate exactly what Lebed did on message boards and, more generally, what J.T. Marlin does in Boiler Room.

A recent feud on the interweb between Mahalo founder Jason Calcanis and StockTwits head Howard Lindzon touched on the subject. Calcanis said it feels like tweeting trades on StockTwits is pumping positions. Lindzon lashed back on his blog, saying:  “I look forward to the time when a tweet from someone on Stocktwits can move a stock. They will have earned the respect of enough legitimate people to be followed.”

I agree and disagree. Pumpers do have to earn respect to be effective (or else be really clever). But since when does earning respect from others and the following of the masses absolve one from moral lapse? Sometimes it doesn’t. If I’m a pro at technical analysis and I make money through trades demonstrated in real time, it’s conceivable that I could garner a substantial following on Twitter, whereupon I might notice that, gosh, when I buy the stock of a small capitalization company and tweet my trade to my following, I get a bit of an extra boost. Volume up. Price up. Sell. Profit. Money.

Money perverts and corrupts. Win or lose, rich or poor, money shapes us even as we earn it and spend it and lose it. Respect from others can be abused for personal gain. At StockTwits, we’ve been banning and blocking scores of users who seem to be doing exactly this. There are the telltale signs: repeated focus on micro-cap companies or lightly traded stocks; repetitive, unnecessary enthusiasm for a position; and clear use of dual accounts. But there are also the covert tactics. Some users create many fictitious names (like Lebed did) and claim to enter positions, increasing the interest in the pump-and-dump darling of the man behind the avatar. Twitter is viral, so it’s not hard to be relentlessly self-promotional without being discovered until it’s too late. I’ve been sniffing these scammers out all summer, and they only get smarter.

Many times, the pump and dump works. And often, it’s a fraud being perpetrated by a talented trader who has earned the respect and following of legitimate people but then steps over to the dark side of easy money. Who needs technical analysis when you can just take money from the dopes who follow you in?

Other times it’s unintentional. Brian Shannon from Alphatrends is a great trader and a technical analysis pro, and he certainly has the capacity to enact a pump-and-dump scheme at will for his own enrichment. He has nearly 9,000 followers on Twitter, and he runs an awesome premium trading product. I’ve noticed that when Brian enters a position and tweets his entry, people follow him in blindly. He’s so good that great traders like Doug from Wall Street Media swear by the follow-Brian-blindly gambit. (Doug is also one of Covestor’s seminal crew of investment managers.)

I’ve seen this on the StockTwits stream and on my platform concurrently. On June 11th, Brian tweeted an entry – “bot $PLLL 222” – and I thought to myself, hell, if Brian is in maybe I should get in also. But it was too late. I noticed three or four other user’s tweets after Brian’s saying things like “long $PLLL 2.25” and “bought $PLLL 2.27” – and this was all happening in real time, and it was backed up by the tape. One of Brian’s followers lamented that he didn’t enter at $2.25 when he had the chance — so sudden was the spike, he lost the opportunity. The volume in Parallel Petroleum Corporation surged and the share price jumped. From the numbers, it appeared that everyone who was buying shares in this tiny, rinky dink energy company was on StockTwits. Seven minutes after his initial post, Brian tweeted that he sold part of $PLLL at 2.29. Not a bad way to make a few bucks. 3% profit. You do the math.

This is a memorable case I refer to for its demonstrative effect, not to criticize Brian. I’m familiar with Brian’s trading and I use his premium service, and I’m convinced that his morals are beyond reproach and his intent is pure. I am sure the PLLL trade was one he pursued for other reasons. It was a speculative play that he didn’t even mention to his premium subscribers. Also, at day’s end, he was still holding a position in the stock. Moreover, Brian focuses almost exclusively on heavily-traded stocks of mid- and large-cap companies. His premium members are rarely (if ever) given an entry instruction on a micro-cap stock that a bunch of rogue, tweet-tastic traders could move. (Save the heavy lifting for the Goldman machines, kiddos.)

Brian’s innocence notwithstanding, it’s easy to see how a person, having built up a following and demonstrated speculative skill, could engineer a quick, easy pump-and-dump scheme for a great profit.

I suspect that the more savvy and sinister pumpers utilize many different Twitter accounts and build followings through the most covert methods. They claim to trade larger cap stocks too, as if to take the dogs off the scent. They don’t pump and dump every time. They show their followers a profit, sometimes, before sticking them really deep on a centi-million-dollar market-cap crap-trap. They work in groups. Bulls On Wall Street is a lame StockTwits alternative that was just recently launched by a cadre of pennystock pumping, speculator-deviants whom StockTwits banned for their market-milking machinations.

So Jason Calcanis may have a point. In some cases, tweeting a trade is pumping (both intentional and unintentional) and in other cases it’s clearly not. When Howard mentions that he’s bought a bucketful of Wal-Mart shares, that’s not pumping. When the crew from Bulls on Wall Street put their stamp on a stock, cavet emptor people. The internet is supposed to make everything transparent. But the “transparency” afforded by emerging technology can be harnessed for evil ends. Transparency can muddy as well as enlighten.

It’s fundamentally about human nature. In a way, we’re all pumpers. We’re always grinding, always chasing that trade. Always on the lookout for The. Big. Score. We’re all looking out for our own self-interest. We want money and we want it right now. We want in, baby. Let’s trade.

The introductory scene from Boiler Room is instructive here. The sentiment shared is one attractive to me and many others:

The $87 Million lottery winner, that kid actor that just made 20 million on his last movie, that internet stock that shot through the roof, you could have made millions if you had just gotten in early, and that’s exactly what I wanted to do: get in. I didn’t want to be an innovator any more. I just wanted to make the quick and easy buck. I just wanted in. The Notorious BIG said it best: ‘Either you’re slingin’ crack-rock, or you’ve got a wicked jump-shot.’ Nobody wants to work for it anymore. There’s no honor in taking that after school job at Mickey Dee’s…honor’s in the dollar, kid. So I went the white boy way of slinging crack-rock: I became a stock broker.

We just want in. But don’t forget, how you get there matters. A man is only as good as his last trade. You’re good or bad, honest or dishonest, noble or ignoble. Are you willing to trade character for cash, morals for money, principles for power? Those are the most important trades or non-trades we make in this life. Believe that.

U Chic at U Penn

Up until now, Penn freshmen have started their college careers by reading a book and then discussing it – an orientation activity meant to pique the mind and unify the class. This year, incoming students will look at, study, and discuss a painting for the “reading project.” People don’t read anymore — I’ve written as much here and here – but the whole check-this-painting plan strikes me as a painfully shallow compromise for one of our top universities.

The summer before I matriculated at Penn, I and the other incoming freshmen were required — or asked, encouraged, begged — to read Larry Lessig’s Free Culture. The book could not have been more timely and relevant. It’s about the culture of the internet, the tyranny of our legal system, the oppressive power of media conglomerates, and much more. Though I disagreed with Lessig, I devoured the book and recommended it to other friends who were going to college elsewhere.

The agenda for my orientation included a small discussion session during which a group of incoming freshmen could talk about the book, argue over Lessig’s macro thesis or his finer points, and so on. The discussion session was followed by a presentation from Lessig himself (it was awesome). I remember thinking that this was the reason I came to college, an elite college with scholar-alumni like Lessig, a $45k per year college — further, that this was the point of the academy: reading, debating, listening, responding.

My optimism took a hit when I found myself in a room of my peers, most of whom had not read Free Culture and a few of whom were bragging about “getting away with” not completing the assignment. That the book was required wasn’t the point. The point was that it was supposed to be relevant and interesting and it was supposed to inspire ideas and conscious discussion — in a word, meaning.

The Daily Pennsylvanian article on the great 2009 painting-reading project is embarrassing for Penn. A particularly telling excerpt:

Penn freshman Ali Derassouyan of Langhorne said that she liked the idea of a more visually analytical assignment and that it meant she could spend her summer reading time on books such as U Chic: The College Girl’s Guide to Everything.

“I kind of wanted to read fun books over the summer instead of ones that I was required to read,” said Derassouyan, a graduate of Nazareth Academy, a Catholic prep school in Northeast Philadelphia that typically required her to read many long books over the summer.

I’m glad that Penn’s decision not to require another weighty, time-consuming tome like Lessig’s Free Culture — massive in its 300 something pages — has afforded Ms. Derassouyan and others of her ilk the opportunity to glean insight from U Chic. The book includes the following topics: sharing space, or “a fashionista’s tips for fitting it all in”: sorority chic, or “The ins and outs of going Greek”;  and love life, or “hookups and surviving long-distance relationships.” How. Bloody. Enlightening.

Quote Corner

[Marketing] is the Buddha’s worst nightmare. It is the grand illusion, the Veil of Maya, turned pseudoscientific and backed by billion-dollar advertising campaigns. It perpetuates the delusion that desire leads to fulfillment. It is the enemy of mindful human consciousness, because consciousness is content with its own company, and needs little from the world.

–Geoffrey Miller, Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior

Joe’s Next Model

This is a promotional post for my friend Nii Mensah, who has made it into the final 10 contestants for selection of Joe’s Next Model. The competition is for a modeling contract. I’m not really into dudes, but Nii seems pretty stylish and classy…and he’s a cool kid.

Nii is a rising senior at Penn getting a pre-med degree. He plans to go to medical school and become a plastic surgeon, and then, I suppose, he will operate on himself in order to become even more attractive. Nii needs your support. Make an account – it takes 47 seconds – and you can vote for him each day for the next week. Voting takes seconds. If he makes it into the top 5, he will earn a trip to California. Please support him by Clicking Here.

Cease and Desist: A Lesson in Customer Service

I can’t find the link, but I remember last year I read a post about a JetBlue pilot mixing up his schedule and inadvertently delaying the departure time of his flight nearly 45 minutes. The pilot took full responsibility for his own mistake, absolving entirely his company, his fellow pilots, and his crewmembers. Nevertheless, JetBlue sent vouchers to the passengers after the fact. The post was instructive – it argued that when you mess up, your response matters. If a company or a company’s employees and representatives don’t take accountability for their failures and make an effort to resolve them, a small problem can morph into something bigger.

While I was infuriated that the wireless internet was not working on two consecutive BoltBus trips – despite the company’s claims – I was far more incensed by the response of the driver and the customer service representative. Had I received even an apology or an explanation rather than disregard and disdain – as well as condescension about what is and what is not supposed to be provided for my purchase – I would have forgotten the whole matter. Instead, I was motivated to write a letter, which is copied below.

[I know I have too much time on my hands. I also know I come across as a pompous jerk, but hey, I have a point.]

————————————————————-

Dear [Associate General Counsel]:

On Sunday, July 26, 2009, I rode the 6:30 p.m. BoltBus from 30th Street Station to New York City (34th and 8th). The wireless internet was not working, but I understood. Technical difficulties are to be expected.

I took the return bus on Monday, July 27, 2009 at 3:15 p.m. The wireless internet was not working again. I informed the driver, and her exact response was, “If it don’t work, it don’t work.” I proceeded to contact customer service at 3:43 p.m., after which I was told by your customer service representative that she would contact the driver of the bus – it was No. 0800 – and instruct her to reset the router. If the representative ever did so, there was no evidence of action upon the instruction. The driver never bothered to do so – not during the trip, not at the next stop in Cherry Hill, and not even when another customer asked her to reset the connection.

I told your customer service representative that I didn’t appreciate the non-provision of services for which I paid and which I expected to receive. She responded that I paid for the travel and not the wireless internet and that the wireless internet was provided as some sort of bonus. That is simply not true: I expect to receive the services advertised to me on your website and elsewhere at the agreed upon price. That includes wireless internet.

I think the FTC would agree. Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45, declares unlawful and prohibits any “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce,” and empowers the FTC to take appropriate action against such acts.

Technological difficulties will occur, but in the event of such difficulties, BoltBus employees should make every effort to remedy them. It is also not acceptable to include a disclaimer buried deep in the Frequently Asked Questions section on the BoltBus website that says: “BoltBus makes every effort to provide these services free of charge to every passenger. However, if, for whatever reason, the service is unavailable we are unable to supply a refund.” If that is the case, then that disclaimer should be clear and evident where and when wireless internet is advertised.

The disclaimer – even as it is, misplaced and hidden – is legally sloppy. To promise “every effort” is an impossible and problematic commitment – not to mention one neither your customer service representative nor your driver met in any respect. Was the service really “unavailable” or were you unwilling to make it available? And are you really “unable” to supply a refund or a comparable free trip, or are you unwilling?

First, I hope that you are willing to supply a refund to me or provide me with a free roundtrip pass. One or the other can be mailed to me at the above address. Evidence of my purchases is enclosed herewith.

Second, I advise that you CEASE and DESIST from continuing to make any false, deceptive, or misleading claims, statements, assertions, or representations – whether explicit or implicit – regarding services you do not provide or provide only occasionally. This correspondence is a formal request for you to immediately remove such claims of “free wireless internet” or “WI-FI” from all your promotional materials, whether in written, electronic, verbal, visual or audio form, including, but not limited to, advertisements, emails, Web site pages and the materials thereon, press releases, announcements and correspondence. Otherwise, I would advise that you change the language of your disclaimer and make it more readily available and obvious to the recipients of your promotional materials.

Third, I suggest that BoltBus employees show more respect for customers and greater desire to contend with the non-provision of services.

I hope to continue using your services, and I hope the services I expect will be rendered accordingly in the future.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Very truly yours,

Kiley E. Austin-Young
Enclosures

cc:        [Senior Manager of Customer Service]