Richard Hammond
Dear Friend,
Greed is not half as bad as it's cracked up to be. Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines greed as "a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed." If you own a baseball cap, a smartphone, or a dog, your desires exceed basic needs. In case you have $72.51 left in your bank account and $6 in your wallet, you have more money than you need. Had you needed the cash, you would have spent it by now. Do you have access to a computer? Most homeless people do. Can you read this? Dumb question! Obviously, and therefore you must be greedy. If you own a laptop, a PC, and perhaps a tablet, your "desire for more of something" is indeed excessive.
No worries, though, you are in good company: "Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating," said Ben Stein. And Milton Friedman: "Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed?"
Is greed good, as Gordon Gecko, Michael Douglas' infamous fictional character in the movie Wall Street claimed? Reality isn't that simplistic. Is skin good? Electricity? Knives? How about the weather? Fire? Water? Are people good? Jupiter?
Greed just is.
Like the color crimson, greed is neither good nor bad and yet it is both and everything in between. Why are people so obsessed with answers? Perhaps they are suffering from Schoolmaster's Syndrome. That's the inane idea that when two or more people fail to agree on the same truth, at least one of them ought to feel uncomfortable in the other's company.
I have met people who believe they can be objective. I have witnessed individuals pretending to know what's good for other individuals, even for a society or, God forbid, for the entire world. There are busybodies who are so confident about their shoddy truth, they want their version to become law.
What if greed just is? Like glass or hair? Hair can be awesome on one's scalp. Found in a bowl of lentil soup or when it grows out of ears, not so much. Still, mobs don't eagerly assemble and start Occupy Nose Hair movements over it.
What's so wrong with freedom? Why are people afraid somebody else may enjoy vices that aren't blessed by all? Since when have people become frightened of their own freedom to live as they please? Out of the blue, people invent random opinions, declare them to be perfect rules, and then they go out judging the world accordingly. As Nanny Bloomberg did when he outlawed salt in New York City and banned food donations to the homeless. When the homeless starve to death in NYC, at least their cholesterol level and their blood pressure are excellent.
If you miss Nazis thugs and the killer bureaucrats of the Soviet Union so much that you believe individual freedom can't be thoroughly enjoyed unless you work for authoritarian employers and vote for authoritarian politicians, the most unholy of alliances that tells you what to do, what to wear, and what not to eat, then the proverbial American brand of freedom has deteriorated to a scam. For centuries, U.S. soldiers have been swindled out of their lives by the Bloombergs who will trade this country's hard earned freedom for a grain of salt. Beware of those who know what's best for you. Servants of The Greater Good disregard real people's lives and freedoms. When you know what's appropriate for others, they know what you ought to do.
That's the moment when freedom dies.
People become well-meaning moms and they do so in droves, treating everybody else like 4-year-old nincompoops. America used to be a cocky guy, a "Rebel Without A Cause" like James Dean or John Wayne. That was then. Now, America has become like octomom on food stamps.
During the Cold War authoritarian regimes were considered enemies. Today, college graduates can't wait to work for one. Start a business and you'll be perceived as greedy and ambitious. The same folks who pipe up about the evils of outsourcing, are busy outsourcing ambition and greedy behavior to sales crews of the companies they work for because, neutered and spayed as employees are, they rather sell their souls to the man instead of becoming greedy entrepreneurs themselves. Naturally, they'll get their church's dispensation for Poker night and the purchase of their lottery ticket. Such activities can't possibly have anything to do with greed.
Can you afford to talk bad about greed?
How generous can you afford to be and for how long without being seen as greedy and selfish, without asking for more money than you need? Altruism cannot exist without selfishness. Greed is a prerequisite for sustained generosity. People who liberally display their disdain for greed are often stingy, self-righteous, and patronizing fellows. They aren't necessarily as open about their true motives as outspokenly greedy people. I trust the intentions of greedy bastards. They tend to be honest. On the other hand, the slime bag who insists on getting paid but claims, "Oh, I'm not doing it for the money," is highly suspicious to me.
I promote blatant lust for life and voracious hunger for more of all that's desirable in your perspective. More discovery, awareness, even love (if you insist), more beauty, an aesthetically pleasing world, more friends, more of a society in which people make it easier for each other to live with joy. Yeah, I am greedy and I grant you the same.
Other people's perceived greed and their desire for more money than they may need is exclusively a problem for individuals who have fallen for the zero-sum fallacy, for the factually wrong idea that the money supply is limited: "If you have it, I can't have it. If evil rich people have it, that's the very reason the poor don't have it. The existence of the rich is the cause for poverty. When the government buys fighter planes, there's no money left to build new kindergartens and schools. And so on..."
That, my love, is rubbish. It's as false as the idea that the healthy must be the cause for the sick to be sick.
Can you be thrilled for GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt to have made $19,776,716 in 2013 and for Laurence Fink who pocketed $75,751,665 as CEO of BlackRock? If that's a challenge for you, don't ever expect others to get excited about you generating more money than they do. Frowning upon greed may be worse for the poor than being greedy. If you don't support those who make more money than they need--the grabby and the greedy--you are an enemy of the poor, condemning those who barely survive on what they need to remain forever in that wretched state of making precisely what they need and spend. Can I tempt you to promote abundance? How about experiencing joy over other people's abundance first, before you'll make it? Could you bring yourself to bless a random stranger's wealth and the riches of a friend or family member (without asking them for a loan a week after they strike it rich)?
Welcome other people's greed. Develop guilt free lust for more and more money! If you think you have enough, give more of it away.....and make more and give more money to other people. Goodness, the real issue is that people who speak out against greed don't like to give money to other people. Hatred of greed is synonymous with the hatred of limitless generosity.
Popular witch hunts try to identify a deed of greed, attempt to catch the greedy in the act, wish to bring these notorious evil doers to justice, or stop them from future greeding and deeding. What a frivolous waste of time. Hatred of greed and the greedy is an obnoxiously silly expression of societal hypocrisy.
Introduce me to an altruistic person and he will prove in no time how greedy he truly is, desiring an excess of attention, approval, and growing stockpiles of emotional food for his self-righteousness. Show me a pure altruist and a fascist won't be far. Also, I suggest we outlaw water. That stuff kills thousands of innocent people every year. Water, dear friend, is more dangerous a vice than greed. The sun gives people cancer. What is greed compared to that?
For hundreds of years we have been told that greed, avaritia, is one of the seven deadly sins. Wanting more is bad and deadly. Meanwhile, we have built a society that functions exclusively on producing more of everything. More is the foundation of maintained economic health. Extract the sins from our economy and you kill its engine.
Individuals have been methodically neutered, spayed, and declawed. That's what made them perfect for corporate consumption. Now, corporate entities employ behavioral psychologists, so artificial and controllable incentives can be re-introduced into the process that substitute for people's amputated raw ambition. Employees need to be taught how to want more, how to strive for improved quality and quantity, without wanting and asking for more money. How can they be injected with toothless greed? Pretty insane, non?
I am not telling you what to do or what not to do. I don't give advice. I don't answer questions. My job is to deprive you of worn-out answers and of ridiculous cliches that have never served you. I am here to ask new questions that instigate you to discover new answers. Your individual answers.
Greed is not the problem of this ailing economy. Apathy, lethargic mediocrity, and despondency come closer to describe these energetically malnourished people who are dragging themselves through their work week. Admit it, there is zero excitement in the stuff you need: toilet paper, tooth paste, diapers, and three pairs of new socks. Need is dull and not the fabric of goals and dreams. Desire and the ideas that make your heart beat faster are all beyond need. They all come alive in the greed department, above the gray reality of needed things.
Go ahead, let the people drown in a sanctimonious morass of virtue. Or be joyful and greedy, and show this society ways out of gloom and doom that come straight out of your personal treasure chest of fun.
You choose. Do something this week that you have never done before and ask yourself, as Jim Morrison did, "Where's your will to be weird?"
Shalom,
Egbert
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Money is neither cause of nor solution to your money problems.
Oh, and visit EndWages.com too!
"I am one of those for whom superfluity is a necessity."
Theophile Gautier (1811 - 1872)
