HumanGreed
Definition
'Greed'- excessive or reprehensible acquisitiveness.
Humans have a need to have more of anything, more power. Nothing can change this, it's a part of HumanNature. It wouldn't matter how a new market is set up, a NewEconomy, or anything else. The HumanGreed will fail it, as it has with present workings.
Greed drives economics
Viable economic models depend on greed. People are allowed to be greedy. Our SocialContract must demand that we allow them to be greedy or any other way they want to be while protecting our right to be how we wish to be.
Being greedy is an expression of selfishness. Selfishness is an expression of acting in ones interest. We are each alone responsible for defending our own self interest. While there may be others sharing certain interests, and some of us are lucky enough to have families and others caring for our interests, one cannot expect others to look our for their needs and desires. We are SovereignIndividuals.
Fortunately, values change and life is not a ZeroSumGame. We are not bound by value that exists, we can create value. Having more currencies is just a way of freeing ourselves from a monopoly on value. This does not eliminate greed in the HumanAnimal, it just gives Greed less power over our future.
The present system has not failed. It has been resilient, and evolved to support a great civilization. Yet we are always reminded, the it is a chaotic systems that is inherently unpredictable. PertibationTheory and NetworkTheory prove that small influences can generate global outcomes. What WE do determines whether we have another Great Depression or the economy sustains 20-30% return on investments (like Enron) continuously. People call me an optimist, some people thought Enron could work in a fluctuating market. It is foolish to think you can sustain growth playing a ZeroSumGame.
New economic systems can't eliminate the inhuman treatment of employees greed generates, the most we can do is insure greed does not destroy our planet should we fulfill our responsibility to invest our common resources profitably for humanity in a DeclarationOfInterdependence.
It's just HumanAnimals
Certainly Greed is a way of expression, that's just it. The failure in Enron was the result of humans, not market. While you can argue that the current market is a result of certain occurrences, it would boil down to the humans. Would HumanGreed destroy the planet? That's arguable. Humans may, and possibly through their greed, but you cannot say the root cause of it would be HumanGreed.
As a final note, if Greed corrupts the market, would it also affect people living TheGoodLife? Maybe.
--KenSchry
QualityOfLife is inverse to the effort it takes to have it
My idea of what QualityOfLife is is more or less inversely proportional to the amount of greed that is necessary in order to survive in a given place and time. The harder a bargain you have to drive to break even, the more of a bitch life is. My quality of life has been going down since about 1980.
Is there Greed at the start of a market?
Certainly it is true, you have to have a degree of Greedto survive in the given time, taking the present frame as an example. But what if the timeframe was at the beginning of the idea of marketing, before the Greed. If given the chance, would you put the economy on a track of non-Greed, where people could run businesses honestly? Darn, I didn't mean to get into EconomicGreed......
--KenSchry
Where did Greed come from?
Then stick with HumanGreed. But from where comes the idea that greed was invented at a specific time, before which there was not Greed. Also, what makes you think that marketing predates Greed?
There was no Greed before large markets
Never did say marketing predates Greed, but that there is Greed in the current market. I can argue though, that at a point in time before corporate companies, people sold products entirely based on the quality. And if HumanGreed can morph into EconomicGreed or so, all the better......
Greed existed before HumanAnimal
You may argue it, but Greed predates the HumanAnimal. The earliest forms of life knew Greed. To be Greedy, is to be alive and striving to stay that way. Greed is a LifeDrive, as surely as breathing. All other forms of Greed are merely extensions and shadows of our basic Greed itself, and of our own understanding that we must have, to survive.
Greed is neither good nor evil, just as breathing is neither good nor evil. It is what people do with their Greed motivations that make us view these various Greeds as good or bad. ---StarPilot
HumanAnimals make Greed bad
All of these points..... It really matters the way you look at it. It is true, Greed is a way of expression and survival. That greed is immmenent in the DeclarationOfInterdependence, yes. But those are the reasons Greed is good, but are we overlooking that in some/most cases, Greed is bad? StarPilot is correct, greed is bad when in human use. But that only brings us back to the beginning, arguing that a new economy would not matter because of the greed. --KenSchry
Greed is only bad when it destroys
I consider Greed evil only when it is destructive. VultureCapitalism and DogEatDogCapitalism are counter-productive to growth of the economy, I can't call them bad necessarily, but they are bad generally, as they serve to increase the number of starving babies. Not giving your money to feed the starving babies is not evil or Greed, it is suvivalist, but excuding the families of the starving babies from economic opportunity is stupid, evil, bad, and wrong. WE have a responsibility to engineer the NewEconomy to sustain growth and feed our children. -- JimScarver
Wise Woman traveling (a story)
A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream.
The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food.
The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation.
The traveler left rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime.
But, a few days later, he came back to return the stone to the wise woman.
"I've been thinking," he said. "I know how valuable this stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious.
Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me this stone."
-Author Unknown
Greed is bad?
KenSchry, if you believe that Greed is bad/evil, you should just kill yourself now, and stop playing the game. To live is to be greedy.
Most people do not use their Greed for bad or evil purposes. Is it an evil purpose for a mother to protect her child? Is it an evil purpose for people to cooperate in this game we call society?
Since you seem stuck on Greed=Evil, I'll repeat. Greed is merely selfishness/self-centered. 99 out of 100 uses people's Greed drive them to, are for the betterment of themselves, their family, and their society. It's that 1% that we view as bad.
Remember, it is not Greed that our history looks down upon. It is extreme Greed. Anything taken to an extreme is bad. ---StarPilot
Out of context
Our views are being mixed up. Look StarPilot, I meant to define greed in a VultureCapitalism sense. So as you seem to want to put it, in the market there's VultureCapitalism, in VultureCapitalism there is HumanGreed, and in that situation, Greed is evil.
And for good measure, I'm not going to kill myself, and I'm going to keep playing the game, for now.
--KenSchry