Joel Stein: Why I'm Investing in a 23-Year-Old

Corporations are impersonal. I'm betting on the future salary of an aspiring videogame designer

Illustration by Tomasz Walenta for TIME; Getty Images (3)

Capitalism is soft. We organize employees in companies, stress teamwork and enjoy profit sharing. What is this, Cuba? We live in 2013. Everyone is his or her own company. The only time I'm not a company is when I'm expensing something, in which case I'm a Time Inc. employee.

So I don't want to buy stock in corporations anymore. I want to invest directly in an individual, preferably a rugged one. Luckily, I can now do this on the Internet. Upstart.com lets people invest in recent college graduates in return for part of their future salary. The debt-laden grad...

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