Letting Go of Wall Street - My Response

Rasanath Das, in blue sweater, in a group meditation at Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park. Photo by Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal.The Wall Street Journal published an article last week entitled “Letting Go of Wall Street.” It features Rasanath Das, a 32-year-old MBA who previously earned a $170,000 salary working long days negotiating deals at Bank of America. Choosing to eschew materialism and devote himself entirely to spirituality, Rasanath Das resigned as an investment banker to lead the life of a full-fledged Hindu monk.

Over the past year, however, Mr. Das has been invited by bankers to speak on the subject of mindfulness and the market. Because of his Cornell University MBA and years in the industry, bankers can relate to Mr. Das, whose talks recount his career trajectory in finance and his eventual choice to leave it.

I decided to post a comment.

My Response to the Article

The “spiritual” aspect of the service Mr. Rasanath Das performs, as it relates to business, may be difficult for most of us to get our heads around. Not that there isn’t value there. I am merely acknowledging the challenge. Perhaps an easier concept to grasp is the important difference between providing “service” to all parties to a transaction in business for remuneration and merely engaging in “self-service,” where the transaction benefits certain parties disproportionately, especially the provider. I believe it is this ethos of self-service that is the root cause of the current problems we have in “big” business, and which is sparking this particular “revolt” that I believe is merely in its nascent stages.

The solution may be to go to a more value-added and transparent service model for larger businesses, much like the model successful small businesses provide.