Greed and its fixes
Summaries and links to 3 essays on Greed –
GREED
An essay concerning the origins, nature, extent and morality of this destructive force in free market economies. Definitions. Paradoxes and omissions in Adam Smith’s original theory permit – encourage – greed without restraint so that in a very large society over two centuries it has become an undemocratic force creating precipitous inequalities; divisions in this society now approach a kind of wealth apartheid, and our values are quite unlike Smith’s: this is an immensely wealthy society but it is not a humane society. Wealth and poverty are connected, in fact recent sociological theory shows our institutions routinely design inequality in, but this connection is largely avoided in texts and in the media, as is the notion that greed is a moral wrong. Problems created by greed cannot be solved by technology. We are also distracted by environmental rhetoric, arguments that scarcities and human suffering follow from abuse of our ecology. Rather, these scarcities are the result of what people do to people. This focus opens practical solutions More
GREED II
This is not the first time the nation has produced dramatic economic inequalities. What are very wealthy people like? The everyday world of work vs. values of democracy. How assumption of self-interest leads to fear in the workplace. Freedom, the illusion of freedom, coercion. Exploitation. Credit cards. Meritocracy. Sociopaths. Corporations and the economic justification for the damage they do. Historically we are emerging from an era with no clear ideology, but an era in which materialism and business has expanded powerfully and internationally, and out of the vacuum two old, discredited ideologies, laissez-faire and Social Darwinism appear to be rising again in modern guise. These ideologies are still flawed; the first (contained in modern Libertarianism) vigorously promotes freedom but ignores justice and is indifferent toward democracy. The second is supported by science, is disinterested in humane values and accommodates exploitation as part of the nature of things. The search for a modern economic theory closer to reality. Is this a society of individuals rationally maximizing happiness? Andrews’s view: at least among the disadvantaged, it is a political economy of hope and fear More
GREED III
Cheating and corruption widespread and widely accepted today. Mandeville’s theory, inspiration for Adam Smith, argued crime and corruption are good for the economy. Is a society ever under control? Ferguson’s theory: societies cannot be steered; but greed and love of luxury always predict national decline. Malthus’s essay, with contempt. Inspiration for Darwin, it established the suffering of the poor as a good. The modern disappearance of the common good: Ayn Rand in our crosshairs. She vigorously campaigned for selfishness and for the demolition of the common good, and her ideology saturates modern policy making. Materialism: research establishes its threat to family values and to the individual. The zero-sum debate. An American theory explaining how the wealthy enrich themselves at the expense of the poor: Henry George explained how progress produces poverty. Recent research shows that social inequality kills. In cities or nations with marked social inequality, there is less happiness, more violence, shorter life expectancies. The discovery of a class living sub-poverty. The rich now retreating into gated communities More
6 Comments »
Leave a Reply
.
.
Home
— Archives below —
Keeping the pilot light on
Since the late 1970s and Ronald Reagan’s inauguration we’ve seen supply side economics, deregulation, an explosive growth of free markets, the sapping of union power.
The Left’s objective is still vague. Liberalism gets its spirit from equity, justice, and collective action. That spirit is all but broken, witness the precipitous inequalities in America, witness the virtual disappearance from our language of terms like “the common good,” witness unions at their all-time low memberships, witness the Supreme Court retreating from enforcement of anti-trust laws.
During the Bush administration, the Left’s tolerance melted into passivity. Energetic leftists of the 1960s, once in the media spotlight, grew wealthy and cautious.
Not just that. Any spirit on the left was also broken down into fractions. Watch a peace march, a good place to find leftists, and you saw a sea of different banners, for as many different causes. All of them good. But there is no center.
The left reached another crisis point. Since then, an agitated search for what’s to blame.
It’s partly the money. The left needs to find something else besides wealth. Today, everybody in America sleeps safe under a star, the idea that one day, they will be rich. Americans navigate their whole lives by that star. So commercialism dominates everything – and it has saturated even the left. Commercialism everywhere. Lefties worry about their credit score and worry about security.
Sold out.
This President has abandoned any serious atteempts at facing up to the banks. It looks like loss of nerve.
Which way to turn?
After Obama took the presidency, the first order of business was the economic collapse – undoing the money mess created by the Bush administration. Rebuilding our infrastructure. Rebuilding our schools. – But all of those had the tone of cleaning up somebody’s old wreckage. Fixing health care. Job by necessary job. But all that is not ‘forward.’
It’s partly that Liberals have lost their ‘forward.’ This is as deep a crisis as our submission to Wall Street. It is a collective loss of nerve.
There’s no fallen flag to grab up in the Liberal movement because there is no longer any flag.
Congress has no unified ‘forward.’ The American people have no unified forward. Once, we had the Occupy Movement. It suffered from lack of any forward agenda, and caved to police action. So now liberals talk about their frightening college debts or get fearful about retirement. Since we have no more effective restriction on exorbitant interest rates, they sap anybody’s courage.
The heart of the matter is that there is no new ideology.
There’s few leftist commentators, talk show liberals who churn the air like windmills.
But no coherent new theory, to unify.
Except here.
Only on this blog can you read whetherexploitation is ethical. Only here can you read about the contradiction between the American workplace – undemocratic and authoritarian – and the surrounding democracy. Read why social inequality is a killer (there’s new scientific evidence). About the long shadow of materialism. On widening corruption. Here the zero-sum concept is explained. Read how, in the long run, exorbitant greed may threaten democracyitself. A brief summary of opposing Right and Left philosophies here andhere.
Opinion is power.
But every year for the last 30 years, debate has faded; the left almost became mute. Liberals have avoided theory confrontations. Not in Congress, not at beer parties.
Every time that happened, the left’s light dimmed.
Left ideology. This blog is where we keep the pilot light on.
[Comments: click on ‘Keeping the pilot light on’ in the Header, or in Pages, below]
How the Right dominates
People are fascinated by conflict.
The Right wing is energetically shoving blame for the national economy onto the Left. One of the right’s bullies, Bill O’Reilly, dealt out his thrashings on t.v.
Right wing commentators run an ostentatious tyranny. It is the source of the public’s fascination with the Right.
The Left considers itself too nice for this bruiser style. The Left simply doesn’t have head-crushers like Limbaugh and O’Reilly. There is no Fox News on the left, and right-wing radio shows vastly outnumber left-wing. The Left thinks that being morally good, maybe showing a tolerant sense of humor, should be enough to prevail.
It is not, and the Left has no real idea how to push back. So the Left, with its natural compassion, its collective action, its trust, its usury laws, are all being put through the meat grinder.
Surviving a reactionary
One look at this man and you know you’re dead: here.
Civil war looming within the Democratic party?
The Democratic party has lost its soul. Here’s why.
If our children are being raised on Ayn Rand, we’re in trouble
– here’swhy.
Left Blog
Left Blog 
The “Ten Commandments” from the liberal left. That’s a perversion if ever there was perversion.
How do Christians explain all of this stuff going on in our “economy”?
I haven’t read “The Wealth of Nations”, I tried but couldn’t stick with it. But from what I did read, I found it to be a treatise on how greed works. In the same way I believe that neo-con economics and the associated politics is simply the politics of greed; and greed is one of the classic seven deadly sins. As a Christian I believe we are all connected and society is the manifestation of that connection. We form societies because we recognize that connection and because survival is easier when we work together. Ayn Rand and others who advocate acting only from selfish interest reject that connection. They talk about living outside of society, but most of what they are depending on in their lives was built by society. John Donne (Meditation XVII) wrote that “No man is an island…”
Until we all recognize that we are connected to each other and to God, we will continue to have this conflict between those who are prepared to take what doesn’t belong to them and those who aren’t.
Ok hold on! Greed is a completely subjective concept. Just because you call someone greedy, that doesn’t make it true with a clap of thunder, etched in stone. In any sale between two individuals, the buyer could call the seller greedy for charging what he thinks is too much. The seller can call the buyer greedy for not wanting to pay what it’s worth. Completely subjective.
If you care to read Ayn Rand, you’ll find she makes some great points. One of which is that society doesn’t own the creative endeavors of an individual in that society. The individual should completely own the derivatives of his or her life. Anything less is slavery.
Oh and BrianF, Rand never talks about living outside of society. You need to realize that everything produced in our society comes from selfish action. Science and technology have only advanced through selfish action. Selflessness and sacrifice sound like virtues, but they just don’t produce anything.
I don’t know why Myspace thought it would be smart marketing to put a link to this blog on my homepage, but, here I am. the caption under the ad reads: “After you read this, they’ll be one less of them and one more of us.”
So I’ve read, and I didn’t have any great enlightening experience. Same old left vs. right gobbledygook if you ask me. You people are just one more drop in an ocean of people with political opinions. Get over yourselves.
I found this site using google.com And i want to thank you for your work. You have done really very good site. Great work, great site! Thank you!
Sorry for offtopic