In the '80s, Gordon Gecko—a reptilian stockbroker played brilliantly by Michael Douglas in Oliver Stone's movie Wall Street—extolled greed thus: "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works… Greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." Like it or not, in the market-oriented world of today, Gecko might just be stating the obvious.
The word greed is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'intense or inordinate longing, especially for wealth or food; avarice; covetous desire'. It is the inordinate desire for wealth and affluence that has made material evolution possible. At least in terms of trade. Had we not wanted money, would we have got it in the first place?
But even if one accepts Gecko's argument as factually true, it may not necessarily be ethically correct. "Money is functional as it sustains life. Human beings have certain basic requirements. Once those are fulfilled, then we begin thinking of comfort. We don't condemn that because anybody who is working hard is entitled to a certain amount of comfort. But anything beyond that falls under the category of greed."
"A person who desires money, "desires it for a purpose. If you are greedy, you will forever covet, irrespective of how much you have. And this has nothing to do with your social or monetary status. A millionaire can be as greedy as a daily wage earner."
In fact, in one of political science's greatest ironies, the twin concepts of communism and socialism-which arose from a desire to overthrow greedy capitalism-also gave in to greed in their practical application.
"The government," says Nathan Newman, "transfers wealth to business in indirect ways—society pays to educate and train workforce, takes care of their workers when they are sick, pays for transit system maintenance and provides a whole range of public goods extracted through the public purse. This is a transfer of wealth that is not purely zero-sum, but raises the whole question of whether average folk are getting their fair share of this deal."
Fair share! This is a topic that keeps cropping up each time we talk about money. Somehow, fair share is often taken to mean equal share, where, irrespective of your capabilities, you get as much as everybody else.
"Why is it," "that people should eye what others have earned? Isn't it against the very basis of religion to covet? Then why should it be considered okay for a 'have not' to covet what a 'have' has? And isn't this greed the very basis of communistic and social welfare philosophy?"
Gecko equated greed with ambition, with the desire to better your own self. Actually there is a subtle difference between the two, and one can easily be transmuted into the other. The difference, most often, lies in the motive.
Dan Sullivan, a US-based personal growth trainer, notes: "Ambition is the desire to have more, but greed is the desire to have more at the expense of others. Ambition is natural and rational, but greed is a product of fear. Where there is no fear, there is no greed."
So, if you want money without being attached to it, you remain free of greed in spite of being in the rat race. But when you let money dictate your life, you become its slave, and in the end, money begins to rule you.
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