What's Cool

There’s a David Brooks op-ed in the New York Times today about social entrepreneurs. It’s a good overview of social entrepreneurship, and Brooks brings up interesting ideas like America Forward’s proposal to create semipublic funds that invest in local organizations.

It does, though, underline the fact that social entrepreneurship is appealing to conservatives because it involves a smaller role for government in meeting social needs. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes me think that ‘social entrepreneurship is displacing the public sector because it’s more efficient’ and ‘public sector failures create vacuums that are being filled by social entrepreneurs’ are equally plausible stories.

It’s also interesting the way social entrepreneurship is ‘cool’. Brooks writes about “some of the smartest, most creative people in the country” who are building new social service models based on a “decentralized worldview.” (This article makes me think our team ought to be dressing snazzier.) I think he’s right to be excited, though some of the more hopeful next-big-thing rhetoric reminds me of what people say about any trend that arises quickly and seems like it’s going to revolutionize everything.

But what’s striking is reading this op-ed next to articles on the current financial crisis. (David Leonhardt’s is particularly good.) Over the past ten years I’ve seen investment banks recruit lots of bright and confident young people from college campuses. The quantities of money involved made i-banking cool in a ‘masters of the universe’ kind of way: you could step up to the plate and conquer financial risk and see how much wealth you could create before turning thirty.

But now it looks like nobody knew anything. (If you’ll pardon the snark, some of these guys made millions for not understanding complicated investments. I, on the other hand, would have been willing to not understand complicated investments for free.) In a great profile of the investor Blaine Lourd, Michael Lewis says: “One day, someone may look back and ask: At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, how did so many take up financial careers on Wall Street that were of such little social value?” That might be overly harsh. But I wonder if this crisis might reduce the allure of finance for an entire generation of smart, creative, impatient young people- and if social entrepreneurship will be the new cool thing for them.

-Isaac