Everyone I have talked to agrees
that greed is bad but I would strongly disagree. To me greed is a natural law
and cannot be broken as gravity is a natural law that can also not be broken.
We can fly planes which seem as if they are breaking the natural law of gravity
but in reality they are using other natural laws to create this allusion that
gravity is broken. This example of gravity is similar to greed in the fact that
people think they can overcome greed but in reality are just delusional and
have not overcome greed but are just playing into greed unknowingly. Greed
comes in five degrees and matches Maslow’s Hierarchy.
The first level of greed is
physiological needs. Every living thing has a desire to live and therefore seeks
to obtain food, shelter, and/or the basic needs to live. If one was selfless
they would just give away all the food and shelter they found leaving them to
die. Therefore everyone must be selfish at the base level during their lives.
Suicide would be the exception to this rule. Those that commit suicide are
giving up life because in one way or another they feel that they are unable to
obtain what is needed (needed is used in a lose sense) to live.
The
second level is safety and security. People are greedy and seek to obtain
safety and security through health, employment, property, family, and social
stability. These needs are always taken to the furthest extent to help secure
the physiological needs and make life easier. Being healthy is a way to make
sure that you can fulfill the physiological needs to the highest capacity
(meaning excess or in what is required to live one more day). Employment
ensures that a person can afford to buy physiological needs such as food,
clothing, and water. People will always look to maximize their earnings as well
as find a stable job so they can attempt to maximize their needs at all levels
of Maslow’s Hierarchy as well as fulfill the need of security. Property is not
needed to live but, when talking about land, it is wanted to help protect their
other property in the form of things that are needed such as food and things
that are not needed such as toys or tools used to meet their physiological
needs. Family and social stability are maximized by individuals based on the
amount of money that they can obtain. I would argue that many people don’t have
kids or have small families because they evaluate their time and money and
spread it so they can maximize their personal pleasure. Families and social
stability bring pleasure to the individual through feeling needed or through a
parent taking credit as to raising someone like themselves. Many parents feel
they have failed when their children have chosen a different life path than
what the parents have chosen for themselves. Social stability or, as I view it,
having friends makes individuals feel needed or important since friends are
people who support you emotionally and/or physiologically. Safety and security
are not needed but everyone seeks to have safety and security as a way to make
life easier which is obtaining things that are in excess, meaning greed.
The
third level is love and belonging. All humans seek friendship and love. We seek
to be accepted by others as it is needed for psychological well being. Can one
define how many friends, family, or lovers one needs? I would argue that humans
constantly seek more in all three categories. It is nice to have friends and we
are always seeking the acceptance of those around us. The more people that
accept us the better we feel about ourselves. Family acceptance is also sought
after. An example is when children imitate their parents and want to be like
them since similarities can lead to acceptance by others. The category of
lovers can be quite complicated since this varies from society to society. In
the United States some seek many casual partners and some seek a mate for life
to fulfill acceptance and sexual intimacy. Either way people are seeking to
gain more partners or are seeking deeper emotional connection. When humans feel
that a connection no longer exists many of us seek new partners and new
relationships. Over time in the United States divorce has become more
acceptable and people move on from one relationship to another seeking “more”
of a characteristic within a relationship. We are all greedy in either the
quantity and/or quality of intimate relationships.
The
forth level is esteem. The last level of love and belonging, I believe, is tied
to esteem in the fact that acceptance (similar to respect) builds self-esteem
and confidence which is also obtained through achievements. Humans want to feel
as if we have value and we define our value through achievements and acceptance
of others. All humans have different achievements but as we achieve our goals
we gain satisfaction and feel we are valued. We gain pleasure from the feeling
of being accomplished and valuable, and seek more of this feeling by setting
new goals or planning new ways to gain greater acceptance from people we know
or by looking for new people to gain acceptance from. Depending on your
beliefs, humans are either designed from God or from natural selection to seek
pleasure, and gaining esteem is one of the many pleasures we seek. Why would
someone stop after a small amount of pleasure is gained if they can gain more;
the answer is that humans are greedy and usually will seek more pleasure as
long as there is a positive net gain to them.
The
fifth and final level is self-actualization. This includes morality,
creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, and acceptance of
facts. This last level in my opinion is mental stimulation. When someone finds
something that stimulates their desire to reach self-actualization they feel as
if they are better than others which gives them a feeling of accomplishment or
self-actualization. Once we experience success through self-actualization we
seek more because it is pleasurable. There is no limit to how much pleasure we
should gain which means that humans are greedy.
This last level is what I consider
the Greed Block. The Greed Block is my theory on why people think greed is bad.
People think greed is bad because they feel they have moral obligations to
mankind and/or God. They feel that if they follow these morals and defy the
natural instinct to be greedy that they rise above the natural human impulse
and are better people because they can put the whole above the individual. The
fact that they are trying to defy a natural law is illogical and makes society
worse off. To prove society becomes worse off can be seen in the Invisible Hand
theory by Adam Smith that describes how individuals must be greedy to make the
whole (society or the economy) better off by creating an equilibrium.
Example: For this example we assume more is better which, by
definition, greed is. I would argue that all humans would prefer more of a good
thing and less of a bad thing. The best example is a game of tug of war between
two people. To measure how well off each person and society (the two players in
the game) are in each scenario we will use utility. Utility is an economic term
used as a unit of measure for happiness. The higher a person’s utility, the
happier they are. Utility is not an exact measurement and is only used for
theoretical problems.
Scenario A: If one person has the Greed Block and just takes the
very basics of food and shelter they will allow the other person, who follows
the natural law of greed, to take more than their fair share. The Greed Block
person will be pulled over the line and will be much worse off than the greedy
person. The Greed Block person was attempting to be selfless which would help
the society of two to become better off. The end result is that the utility of
the greedy person is very large and the utility of the Greed Block person is
very small. Now this end result is neither good nor bad but logically seems
wrong if both parties and their society could have been better off as a whole.
A mathematical example of Scenario A would be that the Greed Block person had a
utility of 10 while the greedy person had a utility of 90 which would be a
total of 100.
Scenario B: If there were two Greed Block people playing tug of war
then they would both slightly pull at the rope but realize they were happy as
is and would let the rope go limp. The mathematical example of Scenario B would
be 10 for each person for a total society utility of 20.
Scenario C: Now if both people in the tug of war were equal and
were both greedy people there would be a struggle and a more even distribution
of utility. A mathematical example of Scenario C would be 60 on both sides for
a total utility of 120.
The mathematical examples of the
three scenarios show that a society of greedy people would yield the highest
utility. (This has not been proven through research at this point but I would
like to conduct research to support this theory. There could be research out
there that supports this but I have not found it thus far.) The Greed Block
people’s goal was to create a society where we all benefited by not being
greedy. Their end goal made society worse off and was not successful since
society could have been better off and their goal accomplished if they would
have followed the natural law of greed. I view society as a web of ropes that
all intersect at the middle. As each person pulls on their end we as a society
maximize our personal utility as well as the total utility of the society. I
will continue this tug of war example in future writing about the concept of
greed. I know not everyone has the same strength in tug of war and in life which
will be discussed in future writings.
In conclusion of this section on my
Greed series I see a strong connection between Maslow’s Hierarchy and the
concept of greed as being a good and a natural law. Maslow’s Hierarchy has
different levels of needs for humans which can be viewed as levels of
greediness. The more greed each individual has the better off the society will
be. Each human should experience all levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy to the
fullest extent possible through their greed. Through the theory of the
Invisible Hand and my example of a tug of war, greed makes a society better.
The goal of an individual should be to maximize the well being of one’s self
based on the natural law of greed. Based on greed we should maximize utility to
the greatest extent possible. The next paper will be on why laws are required
within a society and how government and greed go together hand in hand to
create a better society.
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