Academia is the most relevant, toxic example that I can think of. Be horrible to others on a short term contract (grad students, postdocs) and break them whilst extracting maximum value -- get more papers, more grants written -- more money -- success.

Be nice, think about hard problems for a long period of time, only speak up when you have something positive to contribute -- be labelled an underperforming academic and managed into obscurity.

A great example of this is Peter Higgs, who famously said that he'd be unemployed pretty quickly in the academia of 2013. [0]

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...

Law was good people when? During the era of the 3/5ths compromise? Dredd Scott? Plessy? Lochner v NY? Buck v Bell? Korematsu?

Finance was good people when? When Swiss banks captured all the war spoils of WW2? When they ran Penny Auctions during the Great Depression? When they financed slave ships? When the Medici financed endless war across Europe?

I’m not saying people are all awful, but I don’t think there’s any “before times” where people were better than they have been since then in any ageless profession. Perhaps there’s some degree of variance or even ebb-and-flow patterns.

How do we remove that? Those are the exact kind of people most intelligent people find quite grating in an organization - though because they self-promote so much its difficult to unpack the truth until they have kind of weaseled their way into an entrenched position (normally they are reasonably good at politics).

I'll use the All-in podcast as a perfect example of the type of person described. They have some value in that they have palace intrigue + arguably asymetric access to information.

None of those categories were ever “nice”, wtf.

Along these lines always watch the flow of entrepreneurial Asians.

> This happens in any industry where value/status are at a premium.

So, all of them?

> guys who are average in talent but excel in demonstrating value and social management of the value/status

aka techbros

> Finance, Law, VC guys were good too in the beginning but when the value/status change happens it attracts certain kind of guys who are average in talent but excel in demonstrating value and social management of the value/status.

Those career paths were always crooked. We see that going back to my great grandparents time with Black friday of 1929. They fucked around with unrestricted capitalism, and found out. Quite a few killed themselves by throwing themselves off of buildings.

It was only when FDR took office and worked with Congress to make tons of rules keeping the money hoarders from destroying the economy yet again. And it bloody worked. For those of you who say FDR was a communist, absolutely not. He was fighting against a large contingent of the population who were socialists and communists. He did appease some of their demands, bit not many.

FDR led us into our most glorious 20 years, the 1950's to 1960's. Cheap education, cheap homes, plentiful well paying jobs, only needed 1 worker per house. Thats what the boomers remember and want.

And it was systematically dismantled piece by piece.

'VC guys were good too'?!?! I take it you do t remember the 1980's Mergers and Acquisitions crisis? Thats when enough data was available for a company, that mergers, acquisitions, and liquidations coukd make a handful of people scads of money, and destroy the economy to boot.

And i also scarce remember a time when 'Finance' was good. Their slur was beancounters. Something costs $20 but saves $1000? Nope, its -20$. The loss is never analyzed. Every job Ive woeked in has had this perverse logic.

And especially with money, Goodharts Law comes to mind. "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

"Men living in democratic ages have many passions but most of their passions either end in the love of riches or proceed from it." Alexis de Toqueville