Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
A One-Word Explanation? Try 'Greed'
The secret to capitalism's success is its ability to take one of mankind's most powerful emotions - greed - and harness that emotion to drive economic progress. By greedily pursuing our own individual self-interests, the theory goes, each of us contributes almost accidentally to greater prosperity for everybody.
And for the most part, that's how it has worked. The innovation and risk-taking encouraged by capitalism have given billions of people a quality of life and security that would otherwise be unimaginable. If there is a better, more productive system for meeting the physical needs of human life, we haven't found it yet.
But then comes a year like 2008, a year in which capitalism has faltered and the security of millions of Americans is threatened. Trillions of dollars of wealth has disappeared in a remarkably short time, along with millions of jobs. Fear rather than optimism dominates the landscape, and everyone from economists to hairdressers to members of Congress is wondering just what went wrong and how to fix it.
There are technical explanations, political explanations and folk-wisdom explanations. There are explanations that attempt to get down into the nitty-gritty details and those that offer a big-picture analysis.
My own one-sentence assessment? Capitalism works by getting the best out of greed; it fails when we let greed get the best of us.
And that is a constant, never-ending problem. We have always known that greed is dangerous. Going back into time as far as the written word can take us, every major religion, every major culture has warned against the dangers of greed.
In a capitalist system, the knowledge of greed's dual nature - its power when harnessed, its danger when it is not - sets up a permanent, enduring tension. The trick is to give greed enough play to reap its benefits while minimizing greed's danger. In that sense, a greed-powered economy is like a nuclear-powered submarine. Both are driven by a potentially boundless but destructive source of energy that must be kept within bounds to operate safely.
But greed by its nature is seductive. Greed always seeks more, a little more, just a bit more, please. And greed can cause us to rationalize things that cannot and should not be rationalized.
(As one measure of its power, for example, greed has helped to transform a religious celebration of the birth of a poor, humble baby in a manger into a festival of consumerism and consumption. But I digress.)
As the economic crisis continues to play out, a lot of attention is being focused on the failure of legal and regulatory controls on greed. How can a $50 billion Ponzi scheme go undetected for years? How can rating agencies give their most-secure rating to high-risk bonds? How can Wall Street financiers collect hundred-million-dollar bonuses on profits that weren't really profits in the first place?
The short answer is that people who know better begin to not know better. They convince themselves - or allow themselves to be convinced by others - that a little lighter touch on the reins will produce even more riches, that previous controls on greed are really unnecessary or counterproductive.
And in the end, legal and regulatory controls on greed will always be subject to manipulation. That's because laws and rules are merely formalized expressions of the underlying and unwritten cultural, moral and ethical attitudes toward greed.
And it is those attitudes that have changed so profoundly in the past generation or so.
Left unchecked, greed overwhelms any sense of proportion, fairness or morality. We as a culture and as individuals came to believe that if greed is the engine that drives progress, any attempt to curtail greed thus curtails progress. We thought that since greed is good, unrestrained greed must be an unrestrained good.
What we've discovered - yet again - is that when properly harnessed, greed makes an effective, productive servant.
But it makes a terrible master.
113 Comments so far
Show AllI once saw a headline that stated we were going to pull out of Iraq due to the recession. Whatever happened to that?
I am truly amazed that we are not seeing headlines that state how the war has done the opposite of what wars used to do to the U.S. economy.
It is sad that there are humans that choose greed over human lives. Gotta love a disposable economy with made up rules that keep the greed alive. Zeitgeist: Addendum gives an interesting perspective about money and how it was created in our lovely country(http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/).
Greed as a servant? How about hypocrisy as a servant?
"Greed is good" is a new concept as an historical "truth" and strictly self-serving, even in its tamed form. (Brand new in the wide perspective of history.) Greed has always existed, of course, but most societies have seen it as an evil within their own cultures, not as a useful servant. Capitalism has created a bizarre and very anomalous concept of greed and we'll never reach a healthy and sustainable culture until we see it for what it is.
Todays vocabulary word is usury which is loaning out money at interest profit and it is at the root of all the problems we see in capitalism for the following reasons:
1. Interest free "investment income" including bank interest, rental properties, "currency derivative trading," commercial paper like ISVs, are all variants on usury and all ways people can accumulate vast fortunes with no mental or physical labor by gambling with OTHER peoples money in the long run leading to an arrogant over class whose hubris and missteps lead to disastrous business cycles like we are seeing now. Usury is at the heart of the class system engaged in by all races and genders throughout the world.
2. Interest banking assumes infinite growth is possible to pay off loans with interest. The ideology of infinite growth is at the root of the environmental crisis that threatens the entire planet.
"Todays vocabulary word is usury which is loaning out money at interest profit "
Obviously very few loans would ever be made without the possibility of collecting interest. Is this what you want, that there would only ever be interest free loans between freinds and family?
" Interest banking assumes infinite growth is possible to pay off loans with interest. "
Not really, it in fact assumes that some loans might be defaulted on, be forgiven, or renegotiated.
Wrong AGAIN Jake Newton. Muslims for example have interest free banking, and credit unions could be easily modified to fund cooperatives to function in the same way. And cooperatives can be quite large the Mondragon region of Spain does over a billion dollars worth of cooperative business per year. Of course it does mean the end of "investment income" parasitism and that people who are able to work will have to work for a living and not just live off labor free investment income which is welfare for the rich.
"Muslims for example have interest free banking,"
You think for a second there are no strings attatched in that system? That you don't have to have a certain status and connections?
"and credit unions could be easily modified to fund cooperatives to function in the same way."
If coerced by rule of law they would just drop out of business.
I've been saying for over a quarter century that this was going to happen. The instant that Reagan decided to give the rich even more and to let them "trickle down" on us, I knew we were heading for a fall. Ever since, our wages have gone down, our jobs have disappeared, our health care has gone away, and the rich have gotten richer, paying themselves in bonuses and salary what would have been the company's profits in previous years. They for some reason think that they deserve to be rewarded for destroying the country.
I've seen articles in other places that talk about our loss of influence being due to the economic emergfence of India and China. WE are the ones who made that possible, by shipping OUR jobs over there to increase THEIR bottom lines at the cost of the country. If WE hadn't allowed this to happen, it would still be US that had the major influence in the world. By allowing this greed to build up the capital of other countryies, we destroyed our own standing as well.
That is the thing about greed. It is incredibly short sighted. The current situation, if allowed to continue, will send the whole world back into the middle ages. We might even kill ourselves off as a species. But those at the top of things will consider themselvews to be "winners", whatever that means when you have destroyed the game, the game board, the players, and everything else in your attempt to "win".
The most annoying part of all this is that it was foreseeable. I saw it coming, I can't figure out how those in the economic field didn't. I guess that they aren't bound by real world conditions to make their little forecasts. What a shame they were all blinded by the foolishness of greed and lack of thought.
Second most annoying is how W and crowd all seem to think that this was just not of their doing. They drove it to being in a plush lined limo. It was all the doing of those who wanted to destroy the middle class, not even thinking that it was that very middle class that made this country so great. In thier rush to profit from everything, they destroyed the very cow that gave the milk. They get the meat, and there is no milk left for anything else. In so doing, they have destroyed the whole farm.
Only the middle ages?
Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I was thinking much farther back than that....
No, they aren't bound by real world conditions. The main one being "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." You cannot have a system based on infinity in an finite world.
The RICH hate the middle class much more then they hate the poor. The rich feel much more secure in their castles and gated communities with masses of poor in cardboard hovels with private militias too keep them at bay.( Brazil in the 70's) Hungry starving wretches do not start revolutions because they have no energy to start them. So, BV$H has been the greatest Pres. ever for the wealthy. In only 8 yrs. has reversed decades of progress by millions. Now America is much closer to what it once was, a country of two classes. Today we still have three classes but the middle class is largely those who work for the various Gov't entities. The private sector has largely gotten rid of it's middle class employees. If your lucky enough to work for Gov't u get benefits and decent pay in most of the country. This is no longer the case in much of the private sector because unions are almost non-existent now.
Fear rather than optimism dominates the landscape . . .
And anything Obama might try to do to help ordinary people will be labeled by the Republicans as communistic, socialist, pinko, degenerate, unAmerican, etc. And what will ordinary Americans think and do?
Mordechai, unfortunately, I believe Americans have fogotten how to think. They have been reduced to obedient consumers who faithfully follow the instructions of that handsome dude or sexy woman on television and run out to buy whatever they happen to be selling with their trusty Visa or Mastercard.
I find it amazing that people chronically complain about welfare for those who genuinely need it because they are so poor they cannot afford to put food on the table or a roof over their head. Same with universal healthcare. The talking heads on television say it's SOCIALISM (ie. communism, they don't know the difference between the two thanks to our education system here in the US.) so natuarlly, they oppose universal healthcare, even if they themselves don't have health insurance. Meanwhile, the multi-millionaires/billionaires on Wall Street fuck up and lose a couple of hundred billion or a few trillion. depending on how it finally washes out (mostly money that wasn't theirs to lose in the first place) and want billions (possibly trillions) of our hard earned tax money to "bail them out" in order to save the economy. Well, as it turns out, that money being given away to save the ecomony (our money) seems to be going to buy up smaller banks (thus reducing competition and making the problem of "too big to fail" even worse, and to executive salaries and bonuses for those who already have more money than they could spend in five lifetimes. In other words, welfare, socialism, the only difference being is that it is going to those whose very last need in the world is more money rather than those who are wondering where their next meal is coming from.
Just a thought. I wonder if the economy might have perhaps faired better by taking one third of the money being given to the "financial geniuses" on Wall Street, divided equally and given to every American citizen over the age of eighteen. The money would then be spent, rather than "invested or just stashed away" by some rich fuck who doesn't need it in the first place. People could get out of debt, start businesses, etc., which seems to me at least would be a tremendous stimulus to the economy. Why it would even "trickle up" to the rich people rather quickly, making even these greedy scum happy. Then, with another third of the bailout money, invest it into repairing our crumbling national infrastructure, then invest the final third into research to develope clean, renewable, efficient energy sources. Not only would our roads, water/wastewater systems, electric grid, etc, receive some badly needed attention, hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs would be created as well. As I said, just a thought, I will be the first to admit, I am no financial genius.
This situation as it stands should be more than enough for the average American to be marching down every street in the country with torches, pitchforks, guns, you name it, in rage, but nope, instead they are sitting home in front of their television sets awaiting the next command for whatvever product to buy while they await the return of American Idol. How sad.
As Geroge Carlin said, "If you stop to consider how stupid the average American is, just remember that half of them are even more stupid."
It is funny how we can look at aristocracy and feudalism and agree that it was an unacceptable system and justifiably overthrown, but then recreate the exact same conditions under the guise of democracy and capitalism and we all go just go along...
Yeah, THIS.
Or how it was completely okay to have revolutions in the past, throw the tea off the boat, take to the streets, etc, but it's completely "terrorism" to try those very things today.
Sioux Rose
Years ago I used to attend Unity of the Keys Church because I appreciated the metaphysical interpretation of passages in the Bible. Unity, like many churches, was teaching a version of prosperity as God's will, that I regarded with ambivalence, but there was a very interesting discussion given on the Great Depression. And it bears mentioning now due to its parallels with present events.
The minister pointed out that all the same human labor and tangible resources existed from one day to the next, but what altered was a massive emotional wave of panic. I was thinking about that now. What has really changed? We are a nation with enormous resources, a vast labor pool, a perhaps untapped intellectual reservoir. What the problem is concerns how we MEASURE wealth through the ABSTRACTION of paper currency/gold standard.
Because the bankers & Wall st gambler-speculators instigated this crisis by redefining instruments of worth on the basis of their inflated conjecture, why should not THEY pay the price? And by that I mean, some form of council made up of a true cross section of income sectors/employment niches should get together and redefine the consensual price we place on things. And within such a meeting, there should be caps on pay scale, bonuses, etc PARTICULARLY in those industries and companies where loss has been massive, jobs cut, individual savings eviscerated.
My point is (and economics is not my strong suit), that everything that existed prior to this Depression/recession still exists, all that wealth is based on. What is clearly not working are the artificial INSTRUMENTS used to redefine who owns what. Out of every crisis comes the opportunity to reconstruct circumstances, and if ever necessity knocked inviting the Mother of invention, that would be now.
Sweetheart, it's a good thing we don't live close to each other. My ex-wives tell me I'm rather rough on the people I love.
Sioux Rose
NIETZSCHE: Is that a pretzel or a compliment? Am I allowed to choose, like the Whitman Sampler my neighbor brought over for Christmas, knowing I like chocolate?
a compliment, I assure you.
It's simple...money = the most massive scale of a psychological experiment.
It always interesting how various Evangelicals pick and choose passages from the Bible so as to impose their belief systems on the rest of us.
Here are some passages regarding usury. I am hardly a Biblical expert but I always wonder why they are not decrying the banks as abominations in the eyes of God.
5 " If you lend money to any of My people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a moneylender to him; you shall not charge him interest.
26 "If you ever take your neighbor's garment as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down.
27 "For that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin. What will he sleep in? And it will be that when he cries to Me, I will hear, for I am gracious. (Exodus 22:25-27)
36 'Take no usury or interest from him; but fear your God, that your brother may live with you.
37 'You shall not lend him your money for usury, nor lend him your food at a profit. (Leviticus 25:36-37)
19 " You shall not charge interest to your brother -- interest on money or food or anything that is lent out at interest.
(Deuteronomy 23:20)
10 Woe is me, my mother, That you have borne me, A man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent for interest, Nor have men lent to me for interest. Every one of them curses me. (Jeremiah 15:10)
7 If he has not oppressed anyone, But has restored to the debtor his pledge; Has robbed no one by violence, But has given his bread to the hungry And covered the naked with clothing;
8 If he has not exacted usury Nor taken any increase, But has withdrawn his hand from iniquity And executed true judgment between man and man;
9 If he has walked in My statutes And kept My judgments faithfully -- He is just; He shall surely live!" Says the Lord GOD. (Ezekiel 18:7-9)
---------
13 If he has exacted usury Or taken increase -- Shall he then live? He shall not live! If he has done any of these abominations, He shall surely die; His blood shall be upon him. (Ezekiel 18:13)
17 Who has withdrawn his hand from the poor And not received usury or increase, But has executed My judgments And walked in My statutes -- He shall not die for the iniquity of his father; He shall surely live! (Ezekiel 18:17)
12 "In you they take bribes to shed blood; you take usury and increase; you have made profit from your neighbors by extortion, and have forgotten Me," says the Lord GOD. (Ezekiel 22:12)
I have read that ancient Jewish laws called for the abolishing of all debts every seven years...that would be good for the world right now. Except maybe for China.
Remember, America is Usure Friendly.
Hahahahaha
Ever heard of the Reverend Dollar? He's a preacher that believe that monitary success is a sign of the Lord's rewarding you. If I'm not mistaken, he drives a Rolls Royce that was paid for by his congregation. Then of course we have the good preachers such as Pat Robertson, John Hagee, James Dobson, etc. who throughout their sermons ask for money to help make possible all of the tasks the Lord wants to see done, presumably tasks such as adding a new room to their mansion, buy them a new car, increase their salary that God knows they deserve for doing his work so faithfuly, etc. Oh, and let's not forget the Salvation Army. They will help you if you are down on your luck IF you will pray a Christian prayer with them first, even if you happen to be Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, etc. No prayer, no help.
Just a side note, since Bu$h initiated his abstinance only sex education program, which was adopted by the schiool system here in the Bible Belt town in which I happen to live, teen preganacy has increased by 700%.
greed will eat the soul of it's host.
It already has in Jake Newton's case.
… perhaps it only swallowed it whole ?
It's that slow digestive dissolution, and acid wash out that we experience so joyfully with the Jakster.
Namaste
"Namaste"
Great to see you again, glad to see they let you back in!
Greed has turned Appalachia into a toxic third world wasted dump with third world health care. http://www.wisecountyissues.com
and without an apology or even a second thought.
I have seen the photos shown on your (I assume) blog and find them appaling. It is simply amazing to see what people will do so they can stick an extra buck in their pocket. I know Appalachia is a very economically poor area to begin with. To subject those who live there with this enviornmental rape is absolutely inexcusable. To make matters worse, Bu$h, in one of his final midnight law changes is relaxing what rules do exist on mountaintop coal mining. He is changing Clinton's regulations (which realy don't amount to anything remarkable in themselves) into what amounts to zero regulation. I simply cannot fathom how our government can allow this kind of rape and destruction of what used to be a beautiful part of the nation. It's simply unbelieveable what people can justify in the name of making money, especially when you consider that the ultimate end purpose of money is to allow one to live in more comfort and luxury...to have a cushy, easy life for THEMSELF. If our own "representatives" in government weren't filthy rich themselves, perhaps eventually a law could be imposed that limits the things people can do in the name of greed (in other words selfishness)...an example being that for whoever the CEO's of the coal mining companys that ravaged the mountains in Appalachia in order to make a easier life for themselves and the few wealthy executive below them at the expense of the people who live in that area (ie. a few people benefitting far beyond their needs at the expense of many people who are exceptionally poor and were probably there long before the coal companys even laid eyes on the area) the ones who became wealthy by destroying the lives of the residents of the area should be forced to live there themselves, and their enormous profits reasonably garnished (not confiscated, they did do SOME work some go ahead and compensate them for what their actual work is worth yet still guarantee adequate compenstion to be used for the damage caused to the region, if that is even possible) and divided among those who now suffer so as to provide them at least a bit of compensation for their losses. If you or any of your loved ones live in this area, I am so very sorry that you have to endure this blight on your home region. I used to work as a surveyor for a coal company that was a subsidiary of a major oil company and we did very high order accuracy geodetic survey work along with locating everything that existed, including hills, valleys, etc. via remote sensing and aerial survey work in oder to comply with federal reclaimation laws that apply to strip mining. I still disliked the idea of strip mining to began with, but great care was taken to make sure the terrain was returned to its original state after mining. To futher reassure anyone concerned, the coal company portion of this oil company was closed down becuase the price of oil dropped to $18/per barrel. No mining ever actually ever took place.
If Bu$h and his criminal cabal are ever investigated, tried, and convicted of the endless crimes they have committed (and I intend to do everything that I can legally and humanly do to see that they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as it is literally impossible for me to describe my rage and disgust at this administration's blatent disregard for the rule of law and the principles upon which allow this as well as other CIVILIZED nations to even exist), if they are imprisoned rather than the alternative punishment prescribed for treason, murder, and war crimes, it would be more than fitting for their drinking water to be piped in, unfiltered, from the streams that remain in this area and the prison that they are confined to be located next to a coal burning power plant (an old nuke plant would be a reasonable second choice.)
"What we've discovered - yet again - is that when properly harnessed, greed makes an effective, productive servant."
ARE YOU KIDDING???
Working for the COMMON GOOD is the only productive action we can ever take. The sooner we discard this ridiculous notion that it's okay to try to grab everything for yourself, the better. Jay Bookman has been viewing the film "Wall Street" too many times. You are nothing without your connection to other human beings. What you give to them, you receive yourself. What harms them harms you.
WAKE UP before it's too late to save this world and every creature in it. You only have to look back at far as last month, where a Walmart employee was trampled to death because a crowd of people cared more about big-screen TVs than about human life. And the economic mess the USA is in right now is due to greed. Greed isn't just about money, by the way; it's also a lust for power which is causing the deaths of innocent people around the world.
It disgusts me whenever anyone calls greed the most powerful emotion people can have. Love is more powerful by far, but some people are so brainwashed that they don't know it.
Anybody who lived one month in cooperation and for the common good would never go back to this I'll-get-mine-no-matter-what-mentality.
"Working for the COMMON GOOD is the only productive action we can ever take."
Defining what "common good" means is a matter of personal opinion. Unfortunately only those with political power can act on what is ostensibly the common good.
Not true. You can work toward the "common good" with every action you engage in, especially when interacting with another person.
*sigh* We may disagree on what is "common good". It's a value judgement made by individuals. There is no common good save for the aggregate of what individuals think it is.
"If there is a better, more productive system for meeting the physical needs of human life, we haven't found it yet."
-----
What an outright shameful lie! There WAS a better way that existed for thousands of years, but capitalism ran roughshod over it, destroyed all it's remnants, and continues to destroy it wherever it still manages to exist. (ie, Amazon rainforest right now)
The real joke is that they try to knock something together in capitalism that worked nearly as well. Then, they go on and say "THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE."
Something better was waiting for us before capitalism and civilisation and something better is still waiting for us. It's still there. We just have to realise there IS an alternative. And it's a good one.
Yeah, that's an odd statement, considering human civilization has existed (and in quite a few cases flourished) for a hell of a long time before capitalism came to be.
"innovation and risk-taking encouraged by capitalism have given billions of people a quality of life and security that would otherwise be unimaginable. If there is a better, more productive system for meeting the physical needs of human life, we haven't found it yet."
What the fuck, Bookman? Maybe millions have been given a quality of life that would otherwise be unimaginable. But billions? Again, I ask, what the fuck? BILLIONS live in grinding poverty so that a few million can live in luxury. Pull your head out of the sand, man, and take a look around. Half of the US lives in luxury, the other half in near or abject poverty. Most of Europe is fairly well off. The rest of the world PAYS for this in terms of hunger and thirst and pollution. Keep on kidding yourself in order so that you can enjoy your cushy lifestyle. Don't try to kid the rest of us.
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw
Universal Law No. 1 :
You can be greedy until you have $1,000,000.00 in your kick; then you have to stop it and start doing something helpful.
Such as:
Teaching art to kids
Writing poetry
Cleaning up beaches
Housing for the helpless
Stuff like that. But, no more greedy stuff.
Not enough, how about $2 mil. after taxes? ;) snark snark
Paul Siemering
Greed huh? yeah right. some human frailty run amok is that the problem? It is true that greed drives capitalism. but it's capitalism itself that is the problem.
Global capitalism is methodically making the hungry billions in the Global South still hungrier, and poorer.
It is also consuming every last piece of our planet for its nefarious ends. What North Americans like to call our "needs".
We are just crawling out of capital's biggest holiday the Feast of Consumption, when we all honor capital as if it were the one true god. Which in fact it is until we can finally overthrow it and try to discover our humanity again.
Another world really is possible. When it comes it will necessarily include another economic systam
"Global capitalism is methodically making the hungry billions in the Global South still hungrier, and poorer."
"It is also consuming every last piece of our planet for its nefarious ends. What North Americans like to call our "needs"."
Precisely. How in the world can Bookman claim that capitalism has given "billions of people a quality of life and security that would otherwise be unimaginable."
What planet does this Bookman live on?
-- ekaton aka d.k.shaw
this thinly hidden paean to greed has a number of problems, chief of which is that its central assumption is a lie. people do their best work when they do it because they like to work. the idea that greed is good is propaganda used by the takers to justify their robbing of the makers, something which the makers tolerate as long as they're allowed to do productive work without the distraction of financial worries. takers, you are now in deep sh*t.
Is this the same Jay Bookman who wrote the wonderful column several years ago, and brought us warnings,as the future war on Iraq was being promoted, about the neocons and their writing, The Project of The New American Century? He listed them all, with brief bios.
Yes, but hard to figure. This concept is so simplistic:greed can be harnessed for good. And unreal. Did I read it wrong?
NYCartist -- Seems to me there is a lot involved here. I don't remember the article, but Bookman may believe the neocons and free traders "harnessed greed for the bad". On the assumption that capitalism has created the wonderful world we live in and is the best system ever devised, one may have great antipathy toward those who would divert its wonders.
Unfortunately, the great age of capitalist greed has been the most violent and destructive (not to mention hypocritical) age in history and is clearly taking us over the edge. A few bad unregulated apples? All the wisdom tradition of the world starts at the assumption that the only way to live is to begin at the beginning. There are certain human attributes that must be kept in check from the beginning or they vitiate all that follows. Greed is one of those elements.
Is this the best of all worlds...minus the neocons and "free traders"? What a benighted and attenuated viewpoint.
What a crock!
Greed is the undoing of all cultures.
And what is good about a free market that yields power and expensive toys for a few people?
This article makes me sick. It's just another example of how we, as a society, have completely lost the sense of community, family and respsonsibility to the common good of the people.
Because of the unbounded complexity involved, there are innumerable models one could reasonably create of past and present economic systems, and the model chosen drives the diagnoses of faults and shortcomings in the past and present economic systems. Bookman's model appears to be based on the myth of the value of greed, which is longstanding as it served as the earliest justification for capitalist systems. But it seems going further back may provide the basis for richer and more useful models.
For tens of thousands of years homo sapiens survived in small communal groups which engaged heavily in sharing. The development of agriculture contributed to the evolution of more specialized economic activities and to the creation of larger groups, which must have contributed to the creation and popularity of social rules regarding private property. Private property allowed those who worked their land the hardest to save the most for the winter and the coming year (rewarding productive behavior and creating positive feedback loops with utilitarian value) and discouraged free riders, those who would live off the labor of others, a form of behavior likely to become prevalent in larger groups with many anonymous members whose parasitic activity could go unnoticed. On the down side, the existence of private property encouraged bullies to threaten and manipulate others to accumulate great amounts of property, usually with the help of accomplices and sycophants. The bullies accumulated more and more power as they either joined with or defeated competing bullies to the point they became kings and emperors. But this then led to the creation of a new class of parasitic free riders -- those with hereditary wealth or with wealth derived from intimidation and force.
Though after certain intellectual and cultural developments in Western Europe most in the population came to doubt the legitimacy of royalty and hereditary wealth and began to reject that form of bullying, a new class of more sophisticated bullies arose comprised of members who could use their connections, privileged education, and assertiveness, often accompanied by dishonesty and ruthlessness, to accumulate capital that could be used to form enterprises that would exploit the labor and property of the less fortunate, such enterprises to serve in accumulating ever greater amounts of capital. And the actions of this new class of bullies created a new class of parasitic free riders, including those who would benefit from hereditary wealth as well as those well-connected to these capitalists who could easily accumulate their own capital. And all these capitalists could join together to control governments in their efforts to ensure the availability of resources and cheap labor to exploit.
Cheap simplistic justifications, such as that of the article, flow from primitive models of human motivation and productive activity. Certainly any number of sophisticated models of motivation and behavior can be developed and analyzed and argued over incessantly. But that would not be consistent with the interests of the "masters of the universe" I guess, and I do not expect to find such analyses and arguments in any mainstream publications.
Good post kivals! Best mini history of western hierarchy and capitalism I''ve seen on here.
Thank you for your wonderful essay!
"What we've discovered - yet again - is that when properly harnessed, greed makes an effective, productive servant."
Is Bookman channeling Gordon Gekko now?
I don't think greed ever makes a productive anything. It is a base corruption and once harnessed, will always win out. Always.
Self-interest can be harnessed, not greed.
Bad choice of words, Bookman.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope