Greed is the opposite of indolence in that greedy people set goals and strive to make their lives more worthy and more financialy sound, while lazy or indolent people lack the basic human tenets to strive for excellence. Mother Teresa was greedy--she had an unquenchable thirst for serving the poorest of the poor. Missionaries are greedy in their quest to spread their religious beliefs. All forms are greed are not necessarily good, i.e. Bernie Madoff and John Edwards. Would you be called greedy if you accepted a raise from your boss? I don't think so. Where I think people get confused or get misinformed about greed being this evil entity in our society is from their own envy of others or their own inadequacies in setting or striving for goals. John Stossell's program tonight is titled 'Is Greed Good'? He seems to think so--tune in to see why. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vscG3k91s58
Greed: Yep, greed is good. I especially like the 'rapacious' part. Say, is there a committee in the RNC that is tasked with taking very simple words and spinning the definitions of those words until they all mean "take as much as you want, you're entitled"?
You didn't bother to check a dictionary before making up your own definition of greed, did you? Greed is not ambition. Greed is a selfish desire for excess wealth and/or power. Greed is bad. Greed causes BP plants and oil rigs to explode. Greed destroys our forests, rivers, and oceans. Greed gets people killed. Greed causes scummy billionaires to undermine democracy and destroy the environment and economy. Greed makes politicians rule for their own wealth and power and not for the people or the environment. Screw greed.
Let me pose some questions to you. Do you consider it greedy for a man to strive to climb the ladder in his business or his job by wanting and getting pay raises? Do you think that it is wiser or perhaps morally safe for a factory worker or a businessman to just settle for a base pay that has zero chance to rise just so he doesn't look greedy? Do you think that America would be the #1 economic power in the world had it not been for these so-called 'greedy' people who strived to increase their net worth and the net worth of America's GDP? Wouldn't America become a socialist nation having no people with incentive to grow, no inventors, no entrepreneurs if we were to have no greedy people?
exactly, well said, people like the op just simply dont understand the meaning of the word, then talk about things that arent greed at all as justification for greed.
Socialism =/ lazy. Greed =/ ambition. Again, go check a dictionary. Your definition is not found in there. I can't have a conversation about a term that the other person doesn't even understand. It seems that some people want to confuse the term with something more respectable, but then they interchange that definition with the real definition without telling people. So, they try to pass "greed" off as "ambition," but then, they try to convince us that people who are ACTUALLY greedy - the ones who desire excessive wealth and power at the detriment to others - are just being ambitious. You also have created a false dichotomy. It's not simply a black and white difference in goals and character, where everyone either has to be ruthlessly driven to accumulate wealth and power, or they're just a lazy, worthless leach on the backs of those god's of commerce. This is an ignorant or deceptive view of reality. Corporations can be ambitious about success, but it doesn't mean they have to cut every corner they can, putting the lives of others at risk. Corporations can be ambitious and yet not greedy pieces of trash that abuse the environment, their employees, customers, and others.
Nope...doesn't help and isn't accurate. Just like Mother Teresa was greedy in her quest to help the poor--so is an entrepreneur greedy in his quest to succeed in his particular endeavor(s). Naturally, Along with his quest to succeed comes barrels of money; perhaps this is where you and others are getting confused. Money and success go hand in hand, and so if the term 'greed' is also a part of that equation...then so be it, but greed when taken in the aggregate cannot nor should it ever be seen as a negative ideal, and in fact should be seen as a necessity for the goal setter.
America's command economy collectivists forever cry and whimper about the evils of private sector "greed".... while using "you didn't build that..someone else made that happen" propaganda to twist their covetously greedy demands for authoritarian central planners to confiscate and redistribute the fruits of another's accomplishments into moral high ground.
---There is a difference between selfishness and greed. Life requires you to be selfish sometimes, otherwise you won't eat. Greed is beyond simply procuring for yourself first and foremost. ---A simple example will illustrate this: You have four people and three cookies. One by one, each person is allowed to take as many as they want. In the first scenario, the first three people take one cookie each, leaving the fourth without one. Each person acted selfishely, but who says the fourth guy was entitled to anything? ---In the second scenario the first person to take, takes all three cookies. That is greed, and that person is an (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*). ---Mother Teresa was not greedy. She was selfish. She put what she wanted first, and it happened to be altruistic.
Everybody deals with excess in one form or another, problem being what really is excess? Wife too pretty? Kid's too smart? House too big? If you are normal you strive for better, just don't let your ''better'' hurt another individual,,that said...GO FOR IT!
Really? So disabled people that can't work deal with excess? Excess of what? Bills? I already said it's about wealth and/or power. Again, ambition =/ greed. I don't know how many times it has to be said - it's not just about wanting more - it's the amount and how you go about it. Like, say you want a billion dollars and you're not going to share it. That's greedy. If you want 10 million and you're going to get people killed and the environment seriously damaged, that's greedy. Simply wanting nice things and living well while being responsible in how you go about it is not being greedy. So when right wingers try to frame it as if liberals hate all rich/successful people, this a strawman built off of a false definition of what "greed" is.
I see you're finally coming around to agree with my premise in the OP. Ambition=Greed. Liberals don't hate all rich/successful people...they only hate the rich/successful Conservative people like a Rush Limbaugh or a Mitt Romney. Surely you remember all the attacks on Romney's off shore accounts or of his tax returns while managing Bain Capital. But a liberal would never question the tax and money laundering shennanigans of rich people like a Charlie Rangel, a George Soros, a John Kennedy or a John Kerry.
I see you're finally coming around to agree with my premise in the OP. Ambition=Greed. Liberals don't hate all rich/successful people...they only hate the rich/successful Conservative people like a Rush Limbaugh or a Mitt Romney. Surely you remember all the attacks on Romney's off shore accounts or of his tax returns while managing Bain Capital. But a liberal would never question the tax and money laundering shennanigans of rich people like a Charlie Rangel, a George Soros, a John Kennedy or a John Kerry.
I believe I said,,as long as you dont hurt anybody......and I disagree, you do NOT have to share,,although most conservatives do. What would make you think [if you do] that Liberals are not greedy? Look at Hollywood.....Biden and Obama are cheap...is that alright?
Liberals don't hate successful people. What they hate, is when successful people complain about having to pay a little more(dollar wise, not percentage of income) than less successful people, even though they're still left with more than most people have a the end of the day. It's not about income equality. It's not about wealth envy, that's for Republicans. It's simply about how the fruits of your labor would not have been possible without the country you live in and the opportunities it has allowed you to pursue. It's about how stupid it is when someone complains that they are paying too much in taxes while still maintaining a lifestyle well above most others. I don't want your tax money so that it can be redistributed to me, I want it so that it can be used for the things that this country needs, like investments in science, industry, and alternative energy, infrastructure repairs, a good working military, and yes, even welfare. Everyone like to think they made it on their own, it's a pride thing, but it's easy to ignore all the contributions that others have made when you've got an understandable bias because it was you that has put a lot of work into it too. Greed can indeed be born of, or in turn, drive ambition, but it really doesn't matter if the two are connected. It's the actions that greed leads a person to do that is the problem, not greed itself.
I have never heard of a rich successful person complaining about paying taxes. All I ever hear of are poor or middle income people (always liberals) complaining that the rich aren't paying their fair share or aren't paying enough in taxes. All we hear coming from the libs is 'tax breaks for the rich' or the top 1% continue to screw the little guy, when in reality its the rich that pay upwards to 80% of all the taxes paid in America while most of the poor working stiffs pay little or no taxes at all. You have a strange idea that these rich don't already reinvest their monies in our economy. What they do with the money is to reinvest in their particular businesses to in fact hire more employees and produce more goods for the betterment of our economy. Many of these reinvestment projects you mentioned such as in science, our military, industries etc are already being funded from the exorbitant taxes that have been levied on these rich successful people.
Really? That's basically the entire Republican party platform as well as the TEA party. That's because things are out of whack. The rich keep getting richer while everyone else is getting poorer. And, while that's happening, you have some of those rich people complaining that taxes are preventing them from getting even richer(they don't say that directly, but it's the gist of the argument). Not all complain, some do the exact opposite, like Warren Buffet. Bill Gates is a pretty decent rich guy too. Not true. Those people still pay taxes, especially if they are employed. They just earn it back because they don't make enough of that money to actually make it into black ink when it comes to paying income tax. They still pay all the other taxes, like sales tax, and payroll tax, and very likely the gasoline tax, as well as all the taxes that are on various products. The problem is actually exactly that those people aren't paying taxes, because it means they aren't making enough money to do it, and yet, the rich keep getting richer. This isn't greed. It's resentment that the system is out of balance. Nobody expects that there will never be rich people, or that there will never be poor people. There will always be both, and everything in between, except that the in between is drastically shrinking. This is more along the lines of what small businesses do, and generally, small business owners are not rich. The other thing is, money reinvested in your company is a tax write off as a business expense, meaning they aren't paying taxes on that money spent to begin with. Couple that with the various subsidies and tax write-offs for investing in certain products or procedures, and it's still largely profit that's being taxed. I've worked for a small business for just about 7 years now, we have 7 employees, and will probably be adding a second shift here soon, which will add another 2 guys to our employment rolls. We are not rich, my boss is not rich. We don't have shareholders, and therefore, my boss is able to reinvest more money back into the company, and back into us as employees, because he doesn't have a group of greedy investors screaming for every last cent to be squeezed out of what we do, regardless of it's impact. Good. We need more. I'd like to see more investment in space, and not just exploration, but for the commercial benefits. I'd definitely like to see more investment in our infrastructure. And, I feel it's nothing short of disasterous that we are not investing more money in alternative energy. I don't care if we have 20 more Solyndra's, alternative energy is the future and it needs to be invested in right now. Waiting for the private sector to come around is like waiting for the heart attack to actually start before going to the hospital, instead of going when you start feeling the warning signs. We're feeling those warnings signs right now. The high cost of oil should be a wake-up call to everyone that it's not a sustainable means of producing energy for our economy. If the private sector refuses to do this, or if they have and are just sitting on it, it's time for the government to step in and do what's right, because the implications of not doing so will affect every single person in our country.
I appreciate all of your responses here, but I don't have time right now to respond with justice, so I'll just leave you with one question for the time being. Do you consider it to be greedy of the poor people or for the liberal policy politicians to seek a redistribution of wealth from our rich people? Just trying to get a more thorough understanding of your definition of 'greed'. I will respond to you later on when I get the time.
The difference between a greedy person and you is that more of the greedy persons desires have been satisfied.
sigh you people must have gone to crappy schools the whole point of greed is that a greedy persons desires will never be satisfied, thats what makes them greedy
What Republicans and Tea Party members want is to lower the tax rates on 'everybody' so as to bring some sanity back to our government. Surely you agree with the original Tea Partiers led by Sam Adams when they dumped tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of the king's harsh tax laws? Perhaps you're okay with sending more and more of your hard earned monies to a government that spends it willy nilly on many useless and or broken entities. The rich keep getting richer while 'everyone' else keeps getting poorer? Wow, where or how did you come up with that brilliant statement? I detect a little bit of envy in your tone here. If people are indeed getting poorer (as you suggest) then they have only themselves to blame. You seem to be saying that its the fault of the rich and or successful people that these people are getting poorer. Sure would like to have you give me an example of that being the case. I was once a minor league baseball player who never seemed to make it to the pros, but you won't see me complaining or whining that somehow those multi million dollar salaries of the pros has led to or have been responsible for me becoming poorer or just staying mired with a mediocre pay day. Btw, I was 11 years old while playing for that minor league baseball team. Who would have known at that age I was getting screwed by these millionaires. Bottom line is that the rich and or successful have absolutely nothing to do with your ability to become rich or to become poor. What you're saying here is that those people pay taxes throughout the year, but come tax day on April 15th--they either get it al back or they get a refund check. So in essence...they aren't paying any taxes to the federal government. Can you say the same of those millionaires? I don't think so. Your envy is showing again. Look, if these small business owners etc have found ways to beat the tax system then why on earth would you begrudge them that little relief in their strive to grow their business? We've already determined that the poor don't pay any taxes, so why all this angst for the small business owners in their quest to lower their own tax burden? I just don't get it. Good, you seem to be catching on here. Who are these greedy investors? The last thing we ned to do right now is to invest in 'green' or alternative energy sourses while we're in this financial mess. Look, the fact is that America has more natural oil and coal then the rest of the world combined. We need to start developing our own resources on our private lands. This is where obama has put the cuffs on driling etc from our private lands. Instead of investing our govt monies on failed industries like Solyndra etc--we should be investing it in coal, oil and natural gas, period.
Of course you are talking about greed in our economic life. You are ignoring those six other places where we might want more than a fair share. We have Sex Lives, for instance. In that life we have become greedy in wanting more sexual promiscuity as a nation. We don't care that the Welfare costs are now $1 Trillion dollars every year, which is 1/4 of the present budget and twice the cost of our Military every year. We don't care that Single Mothers are half of the families today, living in poverty in order to qualify whil raising fatherless kids that are responsible for 70% of all violent crime in America. In our Cultural Life, we want pleasure which we argue hurts no one, but even if it does, we still want Drugs, and we want them legalized, and cheap, and easy to obtain, and we want it "yesterday." We don't care that billions of dollars go out of the country, competing with the oil import drain on the economy. We don't care that poor kids, in poor neighborhoods, are decimated by these drugs. Drug Deaths 38,371 people die of drug-induced causes yearly. Drugged Driving In 2009, one in three drivers killed in motor vehicle crashes who were tested for drugs and the results known, tested positive for at least one medication or illicit drug. Acute Health Effects In 2008, an estimated 2 million visits to emergency departments in US hospitals were associated with drug misuse or abuse, including close to one million (993,379) visits involving an illicit drug. Nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals was involved in 971,914 visits.15 Cocaine was involved in 482,188 visits, marijuana was involved in 374,435 visits, heroin was involved in 200,666 visits, and stimulants (including amphetamines and methamphetamine) were involved in 91,939 visits. Children Annual averages for 2002 to 2007 indicate that over 8.3 million youth under 18 years of age, or almost one in eight youth (11.9%), lived with at least one parent who was dependent on alcohol or an illicit drug in the past year.8 Of these, About 2.1 million youth lived with a parent who was dependent on or abused illicit drugs, and almost 7.3 million lived with a parent who was dependent on or abused alcohol. School Performance Significantly fewer youth in school who are current marijuana users report an average grade of A (12.5%) compared to those who are not current marijuana users (30.5% report an average grade of A).10 College students who use prescription stimulant medications nonmedically typically have lower grade point averages, are more likely to be heavy drinkers and users of other illicit drugs, and are more likely to meet diagnostic criteria for dependence on alcohol and marijuana, skip class more frequently, and spend less time studying. Economic Costs The economic cost of drug abuse in the US was estimated at $180.9 billion in 2002, the last available estimate. This value represents both the use of resources to address health and crime consequences as well as the loss of potential productivity from disability, premature death, and withdrawal from the legitimate workforce. Next we need to examine Feminism and the greed for power and its effects on our Social Life.
The reason greed is bad is that it will allow the desire for more to overrule moral considerations. The company that dumps toxic waste into the environment (putting people's lives in danger) is greedy; the slumlord who does the absolute minimum to maintain his property in order to maximize profits is greedy; the tobacco company who participates in a decades-long coverup of the dangers of smoking is greedy; the guy selling crack cocaine who hands out free samples to addict more people and thus increase sales is greedy; and the investment firm that turns sub-prime mortgages into junk debentures is greedy. Wanting to profit and grow is not greedy; it's what you're willing to do to get that profit and growth that makes you gredy or not. If you were told you could make 100 billion dollars by doing something, but that something would reduce the average lifespan of every American by a year, are you being greedy; yes you are.
