Greed 1.1

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.