From: eeb1@quads.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley)
Subject: In defense of greed
Reply-To: eeb1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 03:20:42 GMT

Greed nowadays has a bum rep.

Let me begin by saying that I'm not claiming that greed is 
*always* good.  It's trivial to produce counterexamples by 
looking at crimes committed for money -- bank robberies, for 
example, whether the old-fashioned "stick 'em up" version or the 
newfangled Charles Keating "buy a bank and loot it" version.  Nor 
am I saying that greed is the best possible motive; someone 
trying to do good for the world is going to help the world more 
than someone trying to do good for himself.  I *am*, however, 
saying that in modern America (this holds true many other places, 
but I'm restricting myself to the one I know best), a basically 
good person will do more good for the world if he is greedy than 
if he wants to relax, Net a little, read some, watch some 
television, and just have decent food and a roof over his head in 
a neighborhood that's safe most of the time.

In modern America, one makes money by trading voluntarily for it.
You trade [x] amount of labor doing [y] to your company, and your 
company trades you [z] amount of dollars and [w] amount of other 
benefits in return.  If the money isn't worth at least as much to 
you as the effort, you can quit; if the work isn't worth at least 
as much to the company as the money, it can fire you.  Similarly, 
the company makes money by trading goods with the consumers for 
the money.  If a consumer doesn't think the company's products 
are worth the money, he doesn't have to buy them; if the 
company doesn't think the consumer is willing to pay enough for 
its products, it doesn't have to sell to him.  In all of these 
exchanges, both parties have at least broken even -- and probably 
profited, or why would they bother?

Now, there are many exceptions to the above.  Theft is the most 
obvious.  Deceit - pretending the goods are better quality than 
they are, pretending one's work is better than it is, hyping a 
benefits packing as worth more than it is, etc. - is another 
major possibility.  Greed in a ruthless person can be a very bad 
thing, because it can motivate him to do evil to others for his 
own benefit.  But a basically good person won't want to hurt 
other people ... and usually all he has to do to reassure himself 
he's not doing that is not lie or steal -- and that's a fairly 
straightforward thing to do.

So, say you've got a basically good person who wants to make a 
lot of money.  The way to do that is to make lots and lots of 
trades with lots and lots of people.  Since these are voluntary 
trades, both parties benefit.  The more trades he makes and the 
larger trades he makes, the more people he's benefited.  I think 
Michael Milken got carried away by a sense of his own power and 
did break the law and deserved to go to jail (though either he 
should've gotten a lighter sentence or Ivan Boesky a heavier one; 
Milken wasn't carrying around suitcases of money to bribe people
for inside information).  This isn't a claim that Mr. Milken was
fundamentally interested in helping people (I could make that
claim, actually, but the fact that he helped people in the
process of making money wouldn't be very good evidence for it);
this is an illustration of the fact that both parties must 
believe they have benefited in a *voluntary* trade, or the trade 
simply won't happen.

There are a lot of complaints about people being paid too much 
money: chairmen of the board and other officials, sports stars, 
entertainers, Michael Milken, etc.  In some companies, the 
officials have a lot of power over their own pay, and that is a 
legitimate problem.  But officials in other companies, and sports 
stars, and high-priced consultants like Mr. Milken are paid by 
somebody who thought they were worth the money ... and we have 
less information than they do and no standing in the matter.

Greed is a motivator.  What it motivates people to do depends on 
their natures.  Someone who's fundamentally ruthless may be 
motivated to steal and cheat people out of their money.  Someone 
who is basically good will help people every time he makes money. 
Someone who isn't a particularly good or bad person and who takes 
the path of least resistance may occasionally deceive people by 
not telling them everything, but by and large will help people 
because in the long run in an economy dominated by voluntary 
trades it's easier and safer to make money that way.

-- 
Pro-Choice                 Anti-Roe                     - E. Elizabeth Bartley
            Abortions should be safe, legal, early, and rare.

Cthulhu for President -- when you're tired of voting for the lesser of 2 evils.