Greed

[OneBlueSky]

an essay by Julian Edney . . . quite interesting . . .

http://www.g-r-e-e-d.com/GREED.htm

(snip)

Competitive acquisition for the sake of exhibition is again in vogue – and it seems television repeatedly flaunts that on the way to wealth, there are no principles competitors won’t compromise. Besides hunger and fear, lack of health care, decent education and housing shortages, which make living hard, the poor live with brash opulence in their faces. People in decaying buildings daily watch glittering television scenes of shining cars, ocean yachts, and overflowing parties of the rich and famous. Owned by these images, a poor person cannot but feel the differences, and year by year these images add a sedimented frustration, resentment, sense of failure and inferiority which they cannot avoid.

(snip)

Recently, psychologists have provided a decimating argument against Smithian theory. Ryan and Deci (39) have summarized a whole literature in psychology on the antecedents of human well-being. Psychologists have always wondered what makes people feel good, and for decades they have quizzed people on the intricacies of happiness. The general answer, all the more reliable because it is based on voluminous and cross cultural research, is that money is not a reliable route to happiness. Happiness is based on other, internal factors. The relation of wealth to well-being is tenuous; only below the poverty line does money bring well-being, above it, increases in personal wealth do not bring increased happiness. A corollary finding is that the more people focus on financial and materialistic goals, the lower their feeling of well-being. Finally, certain people tenaciously believe that money does bring happiness; they are the unhappy. Together, these findings largely dismantle Smithian theory of human motivation. For the present essay it also means that the motivation behind greed, pursuit of material wealth to extremes, cannot be for the happiness it brings. There is nothing heroic about greed. It is closer to obsession.

(snip)

Roughly there are, I suppose, two kinds of people. The first divides the world into Good versus Bad. The second divides the world into the Strong versus Weak. These two types never can communicate. Among the latter, the concern is never to be caught weak because hell takes the hindmost, and among them all talk about goodness and ethics is irrelevant, and every effort is given to staying strong. This second type infests corporations. They are refractory to talk of humanity and you can shout all you want and they will not listen; every ounce of their attention is given to their competition. Their rules of engagement are Darwinian. Large scale competition among these massive corporations is what upgrades greed from whimsical excess to lethal force.

(snip)

In a free society, some people's greed inevitably means deprivation for others. This does not require environmental limits, it only requires persistent and competitive self-promotion, and in a vast nation whose economy is two hundred years devoted to these principles, we now inhabit a society with a small fraction of astronomically wealthy individuals towering over a growing mass in poverty. America is arguably now more unequal than any of the original European cultures, yet we cling to and proselytize a horribly outdated economic theory which implies equality but actually delivers more inequality. Greed is the outstanding wrong because it reverses the utilitarian ethic. It produces the greatest good for the smallest number. Democracy's founding virtues are freedom and equality, so greed without restraint, producing great inequalities, becomes an undemocratic force.

- much more . . . well worth the read, imo . . .

http://www.g-r-e-e-d.com/GREED.htm