(Why) We Should Think of Greed as a Form of Insanity

[Javaman]

https://eand.co/why-we-should-think-of-greed-as-a-form-of-insanity-1ba65f16de90

Greed Isn’t Good. It’s a Mental Pathology That Destabilizes People, Societies, Economies, and Democracies.

You read, as I probably read, that Trump wants to buy Greenland. LOL. And yet there’s a theme I’ve seen repeated over and over in life. Greed. It never being enough. I’ve seen it over and over again, up close and personal. There were all my classmates — who imagined they’d become investment bankers and CEO and retire after five years, ten years. They never did. There was the founder of this startup, that startup, who made a hundred million, a billion dollars overnight. And they’re still at it. What exactly is the point?
Imagine that I gave you ten million dollars. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. What would you do? If you were sane, here’s what you should do. Pick a nice little town in France, Italy, Spain. Somewhere close to a beach, maybe on one. Buy a nice house. Not a grand mansion — they’re a pain to maintain — just something comfortable. Spend your life there playing with your kids, grandkids, your puppy, reading books, painting, writing, thinking, walking. Just being. Living and loving and relating and knowing. Why would you want to waste your life making more money? Isn’t the point of the money freedom to do all the stuff that matters in the first place?
But have you noticed that it never works out like this? Invariably, those who make ten million, twenty, fifty, a hundred…don’t stop there. Something happens. They change. They need — they feel a burning need — to pile up more and more. They can’t stop themselves. Nobody points it out — but they’ve developed an obsession-compulsion and a mania both — an obsessive compulsion with money, and a kind of addictive mania to having more of it (followed by crashes and severe depression, invariably, if there’s not.)
But — again — what exactly is the point of having more money than you can ever, ever spend in a lifetime? Than your whole family can spend in ten lifetimes? Can anyone really spend a billion dollars? Isn’t even having fifty million more than anyone or their whole family can reasonably ever spend?Sure, you say: “but what about all the megamansions! The penthouses in the sky!” How many can you really live in? What about all the yachts? How many can you really sail? What about all the planes, cars…etc? The story’s the same. Amassing things you can never use. Are the super rich planning to bury themselves like pharaohs, surrounded by loot?

Much more at link…

[BigmanPigman]

1. The greedy are obsessed

and most obsessions aren't good for you.

[iemanja]

2. Greed is a feature of capitalism

Not a mental illness. Pretending it isn't endemic to capitalism, as the writer claims, is false. Capitalism depends on greed. It's at its essence about exploitation.

Everyone who disagrees with the writer is not "insane" or mentally ill. And the mentally don't deserve to be saddled with that shit.

I would submit that greed goes beyond the wealthy and that most Americans are in fact greedy, since we are in fact socialized into capitalism. What is the culture of consumption all about if not greed?

Capitalism is by its nature a corrupt system. Why can't people acknowledge that?

[2naSalit]

5. +1

[tblue37]

3. I think the same psychological glitch that leads to hoarding drives such people to obsessively

amass more and more wealth, more and more things.

[FoxNewsSucks]

8. I agree.

If they had as many cats as they do dollars, they'd be called crazy.

It also is a sign of societal sickness that hoarding money is admired, almost worshipped.

[onecaliberal]

4. Greed is killing the planet.

[2naSalit]

6. Yes it is!

[applegrove]

7. It is an addiction to corrupt your country, destroy the democracy

that gave you such success and pull the ladder up behind you.