Can HN folks help me come up with a catchy name for something here? In particular, when somebody enriches themselves in a way that's a net negative when you look at the whole system.
Here, for example, the guy says he "earned" €3k in a way that was almost perfectly wasteful. I'm not so worried about him; crazies gonna cray, and he knows that this is ridiculous. But there are so many people who have jobs that are equally wasteful but don't know it. E.g., all those people flooding in to the US mortgage industry to help inflate the 2004-2008 housing bubble with dodgy loans.
I want a punchy word or phrase that can a) help the rest of us talk about the problem, and b) at least occasionally puncture the bubble of self-justification that lets this go on. "Quack" and "scam artist" are good examples of what I'm after, but I want one specific to this phenomenon.
Here, for example, the guy says he "earned" €3k in a way that was almost perfectly wasteful. I'm not so worried about him; crazies gonna cray, and he knows that this is ridiculous. But there are so many people who have jobs that are equally wasteful but don't know it. E.g., all those people flooding in to the US mortgage industry to help inflate the 2004-2008 housing bubble with dodgy loans.
I want a punchy word or phrase that can a) help the rest of us talk about the problem, and b) at least occasionally puncture the bubble of self-justification that lets this go on. "Quack" and "scam artist" are good examples of what I'm after, but I want one specific to this phenomenon.