Wall Street
Street in Lower Manhattan and shorthand for US finance. Peter Singer’s “hopeful pragmatist” argument considers earning to give with a Wall Street job.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Hopeful Pragmatist | Jed Oelbaum | subject | Singer argues that taking a high-paying finance job to donate heavily may do more good than traditional charity work, and that people… |
| Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street | Herman Melville | setting | The narrator’s walled-in law chambers, where Bartleby copies, secretly lives and “would prefer not to”. |
| Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind | Yuval Noah Harari | subject | Line of New Amsterdam’s defensive wall, now the world’s most famous financial street. |
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The Hopeful Pragmatist — Jed Oelbaum (2016)
Source: Original · Readwise highlight
An organization called 80,000 Hours has recommended that some people get a high-paying job on Wall Street—you’re now a high earner and therefore have a lot of money you can donate to the most effective charities.
- Role: subject
- In the article: Singer argues that taking a high-paying finance job to donate heavily may do more good than traditional charity work, and that people with a conscience inside Wall Street firms can influence decisions such as financing a coal mine.
- Why it matters: Wall Street is used as shorthand for the finance industry; the argument is about the sector rather than the street.
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street — Herman Melville (1853)
Source: Bartleby, the Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street · Original · Readwise highlight
My chambers were up stairs at No.—Wall-street. At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom.
- Role: setting
- In the book: The narrator’s law chambers, at a Wall Street number he leaves blank, look out on a light-shaft wall at one end and a black brick wall ten feet from the window at the other. Here he employs Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut and hires Bartleby, who copies behind a screen facing a wall and then “would prefer not to”. On a Sunday the narrator finds that Bartleby lives in the office, and when the narrator moves out, Bartleby stays on in the building, haunting its stairs and landing.
- Why it matters: The office is the story’s main stage, and the subtitle names the street; its walled-in views mirror Bartleby’s “dead-wall reveries”, and the deserted Sunday street sharpens his isolation.
- Real vs. fictional: Wall Street is real; the building and its number are left blank.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari (2014)
Source: Original · Readwise highlight
The remains of the wall built by WIC to defend its colony against Indians and British are today paved over by the world’s most famous street – Wall Street.
- Role: subject
- In the book: The Dutch West India Company founded New Amsterdam at the mouth of the Hudson to control the river’s trade. Threatened by Indians and the British, it built a wall; the British took the town in 1664 and renamed it New York, and the wall’s remains lie under Wall Street.
- Why it matters: A neat physical link between a Dutch joint-stock empire and modern finance.