#1
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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/23/get_an_mba_save_the_world#.T5Va8BhvCgE.twitter

But there is more than one way to make the planet a better place. Here's another option: Get an MBA and go work for a big, bad multinational company. Consider this: Over the past decade, foreign direct investment in Africa topped foreign aid -- and in 2011 alone, by $7 billion. And unlike food handouts or free latrines, this kind of investment built factories, financed banks, and opened mines and oil fields, creating tens of thousands of jobs and transferring invaluable knowledge to the countries that need it most. That's good news, because it is increasingly clear that new technologies are what's driving improved quality of life in Africa, and new ways of doing business are vital to sustaining economic growth on the continent.



But that's far from the whole story. Across much of the planet, the items the rich world takes for granted on supermarket and drugstore shelves have for decades only been available to a lucky few. Multinational firms bring in technologies and business practices that lower the costs of these items and extend their reach. Competition creates markets in ways foreign aid just can't, turning goods like mobile phones and medicines that were previously luxury items for an urban elite into products used by rich and poor alike. When a simple bar of hand soap does so much to promote income growth, lower child mortality, and improve adult health, there's no shame in working for the faceless corporation that sells and markets it. So, get that international MBA. Then you can really say: "I work in development."

#2
lies half the time
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Multinational corps built that infrastructure to facilitate resource extraction, indeed they export billions if not trillions of dollars from africa yearly. Randgold alone takes net profit of $500 million per year of africa'a wealth and dumps it in europe
#3
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how does an mba make the student more efficient at prfit extraction? or is it a purely ideological exercise?

i had a look at the lse facebook mba gimmick, but the content seemed to be pretty worthless
#4
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Link was posted by an acquaintance who graduated at the top of her class from a private women's school. I'm imagining the experience of disillusioned youth like the first chapter from Heart of Darkness verbatim.
#5
[account deactivated]
#6
penitent
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direct aid is often really harmful in africa tho, article kinda has a point
#7
penitent
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capitalism doesnt really want people dying of starvation or dysentery in a refugee camp, it just wants them as miserable and unfulfilled surplus value producers dying of overwork or mangled in machines. i think thats better. im not sure but its probably better
#8
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i will get an MBA and do my part
#9
penitent
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I WILL GET A BA AND DO PRECISELY NOTHING, FOREVER
#10
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tahts my life goal
#11
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i have a degree in Street Knowledge from teh School of Hard Knocks 5th Ward Campus
#12
meet me in st louis
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get a cosmologist license and shave the world
#13
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get an MBA, and get a job, is what it should say, because you need an MBA to get a job now. officially. the president announced it.
#14
penitent
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Join the NBA, something something something kobe
#15
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looks like literally anybody can get whatever qualifications it takes to write for foreign policy, if thats not democracy then i dont know what is
#16
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a few months ago i learned that all the managers at my hotel sign on to contracts and have to work 10-hour shifts and have basically no rights, and i often wonder how they feel about these asshole unionizing employees who demand things like 8 hour shifts with overtime if the shift goes over 8 hours, and knowing your schedule 2 weeks ahead of time, and at least 10 hours between shifts, and and and a whole endless list of basic human decencies. none of which managers have.

#17
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rakauq posted:
a few months ago i learned that all the managers at my hotel sign on to contracts and have to work 10-hour shifts and have basically no rights, and i often wonder how they feel about these asshole unionizing employees who demand things like 8 hour shifts with overtime if the shift goes over 8 hours, and knowing your schedule 2 weeks ahead of time, and at least 10 hours between shifts, and and and a whole endless list of basic human decencies. none of which managers have.



yes, but is there anything sweeter to the ego than playing the role of a petty tyrant?

#18
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guidoanselmi posted:
get a cosmologist license and shave the world



cosmetologist????

#19
meet me in st louis
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^ whoops. force of habit

cleanhands posted:
looks like literally anybody can get whatever qualifications it takes to write for foreign policy, if thats not democracy then i dont know what is



Example: http://www.matthewkroenig.com/

#20
[account deactivated]
#21
Dont Mess With Sucess
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http://www.cgdev.org/content/expert/detail/1424569
#22
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what do you actually do in an MBA program?
#23
drivel of drunken hags
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you take classes in accounting, marketing, finance, things like that, and you work with case studies in group projects a lot. employers usually subsidize them, and the students usually have a couple years in the workforce before doing it (which means schools, especially the better ones, make a lot of money through these programs.)
#24
Kurdt
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discipline posted:
I've decided to go work for a union if I can't get one of three other jobs out of school

which one

#25
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you sit around tables and high five your bros and talk about which hedge funds you got offers from (all of them, because youre elite as shit)
#26
drivel of drunken hags
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hedge funds and other trading-centric institutions have little interest or use for MBAs
#27
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everything i know about the finance/ibd career path i learned from leveraged sellout
#28
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cleanhands posted:
you sit around tables and high five your bros and talk about which hedge funds you got offers from (all of them, because youre elite as shit)



damn yo im definitely signing up for an MBA program then

#29
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i get the impression that MBAs are a lot different in europe than in the U.S.
most the people i know in America who have MBAs got em after like 4 or 5 years of corporate work. While the people I know in Europe did them right after they got their bachelors.
#30
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“Tiff, OMFG, I can’t wait to get to Joshua Tree tonight. There are going to be SO many of them there,” Jessie eagerly told her friend.

“I know Jessie, it’s going to be awesome. I put on an extra splash of Heaven just so I can get one who has a belt with whales on it.”

“Your hair looks great tonight and so does your tan, just like you came back from ‘Hollywood,’ joked Jessie, winking and nudging her friend, pleased with her wit. “So…who was that boy you went home with last night?” she prodded.

“He was from Goldman SACHS,” Tiff immediately responded. “Goldman SACHS.” she emphasized giddily, not realizing the effect it would have on her friend.

Jessie swooned. She was standing, holding on to a pole for support and nearly lost both her grip and balance as if hit by a spell of vertigo. Her head rose slowly in the air and her hand lightly caressed the nape of her neck. She shuddered as her knees buckled together slightly. She paused in this position as the fantastic notion settled in. Recovering after a moment, she responded,

“TIFF, that is freaking AWESOME! What was his name?”

“I have no clue, and I don’t care.”

“Yeah, neither do I. I am so jealous. The best I’ve done all month is Lehman Brothers,” complained Jessie.

“Oh don’t worry hon,” consoled Tiffany. “It’ll happen for you too one day. I’m sure it will,” said Tiffany with an air of condescension.

“No it won’t. I’m fat,” explained Jessie, frowning and pinching the slight girl-gut extruding from between her bright pink tank top and her 7 for all Mankind jeans. “I’m gonna end up with a retail banker, she sobbed. “How do you stay so slim?”

“Oh come on Jessie…”One bump before lunch and two before dinner. One in the morning and you’ve never been thinner!” instructed Tiffany as if reciting an age-old adage. “Anyway, I’m setting my goals even higher tonight.”

“Higher than the G-Man?!”

“Yep. I’m gonna find a guy from Black—“

“Oh shit please Tiff don’ even say it. I can’t handle it,” interrupted Jessie. Clutching her crotch as if to prevent a sudden, uncontrollable explosion.

But Tiffany was in her own world. Her hands were in her tight back pockets, cupping her elliptical-machine toned buttocks. Her back was arched and neck craned upwards, her rock-hard nipples piercing through her tank-top like sharpened tic-tacs.

“Blackstone…” she finished grandly.
Overcome, both girls let out a dreamy sigh full of hope and collapsed in a heap on the floor, drenched in sweat and passion.
#31
drivel of drunken hags
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leveraged sellout was so terrible its author either doesn't really work in the industry or just wanted to write tawdry tucker maxesque stuff based on legends and movies and books from the 70s and 80s

the reality of a banker's life is far more banal, i don't see the point in throwing up stories of personal excess and vapidity as a polemic when the consequences of reality itself is far more damning

it's seriously the kind of book middle office guys read and would try to emulate, not a real telling look at an elite though
#32
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he def didnt work in finance but i think like all his college friends did or something, his best and most telling pieces are the ones through the eyes of a neurotic indian ibd guy who puts on this pathetic frat bro front to avoid constantly getting clowned (professionally and romantically) by connected east coast white dudes

that whole liars poker extended universe thing comes across as more his impression of elite wasp culture than something worth emulating, imo
#33
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(banker sitting on a bench as if it's human)
#34
Poronto
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cleanhands posted:
you sit around tables and high five your bros and talk about which hedge funds you got offers from (all of them, because youre elite as shit)



lol no

#35
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Change Afghanistan Can Believe In
10 years later, life isn't just better -- it's much better.

Trickle-Down Economics
There’s a free-market solution to the world’s water crisis. Make people pay by the drop.

Out of Eden
Pre-modern lifestyles were fraught with violence, disease, and uncertainty. We should be happy that indigenous societies are increasingly leaving them behind.

There Will Not Be Blood
Across the world, crime is down -- and in a big way. Are violent movies to thank for less real blood and gore?
#36
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lol:

In the next few weeks, thousands of freshly-minted MBA grads from the nation’s top business schools will be heading off for six-figure salaries at investment banks and tech start-ups. Then there are the handful of students from the MIT Sloan School of Management who will be heading to the slums of Nairobi… to build toilets.

Vallabhaneni said the idea for a company was hatched when he and fellow MIT students studied sanitation conditions in places like Kenya. In parts of Nairobi, for instance, many people defecate in plastic bags, then throw the bags on the street. Others pay 6 cents to use makeshift bathrooms.

The Sanergy team thinks people will pay that same 6 cents to use Sanergy toilets, essentially modified porta potties. They’re far from glamorous, but a huge step up from current conditions.

It will cost Sanergy about $200 to build each toilet. They’ll then turn around and sell it to a Nairobi resident for $400. At 6 cents a visit, Sanergy projects the new small business owner – essentially a franchisee – can make back his or her investment in about four months.

The company will charge the franchisee, $6.25 a month to take the waste to a processing facility.

“Which then leads to the third part, which is conversion,” said Stradley. “So converting that waste into electricity and fertilizer that we can sell and generate the revenue for the business as a whole.”

And this is where the company believes there’s real money to be made.

#37
Mike Nelson here.
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the free market works
#38
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looking forward to the wave of suicides by kenyans heavily indebted to toilet owners
#39
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TROT_CUMLOVER posted:
looking forward to the wave of suicides by kenyans heavily indebted to toilet owners

#40
Mike Nelson here.
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some development ngos looked at how obviously bad microcredit can get and that's why you see the buzzword "micropayment" now where like a charity will give a person like a few dollars so they can buy a piece of tin for a roof or whatever. which is better but like... guys... it's 2012 and you just came up with the idea of "give poor people some money". it's like you fly in all these advisers and raise millions of dollars through aggressive marketing campaigns and then you come up with "flip a coin to that scruffy looking chap" as the bleeding edge in development aid technology.