When Aspiration launched with its unique "Pay What Is Fair" fee structure that trusts our customers to pay us what they think we deserve, Wall Street analysts lost their collective minds -- or at least were convinced that we had lost ours.
In The New York Times, Joshua Brown, a financial advisor at Ritholtz Wealth Management, described it as asking "What’s a
profitable thing that we can give away for nothing?"
In the same article, Josh Charney, an analyst at Morningstar, was similarly skeptical: "I can’t imagine this working very well in the financial world unless the fund manager feels it’s necessary to donate his time as a public service."
The idea that we could actually trust our customers to do the right thing and treat us fairly without being legally locked in to a fee was a concept that many Wall Streeters just could not get their minds around.
But the fact is that humans are wired for goodness, for decency, and sharing. That's what we're reminded of by a group of children in this video by Action Against Hunger:
At Aspiration, we like to think that we're not just appealing to people's better angles, but letting them be the honorable individuals they truely are.