A Word More On "Greed"

As I began to say before my finger slipped:

I was speaking to a reader of this blog, who asserted that I had said that "wanting more was a sign of greed." What I had actually wanted to say was that there was some ambiguity regarding the word, "greed." I should have made it clear that "wanting more" was, for me, not a sign of greed. I would describe it as a sign of "ambition."

The phrase "greed is good" takes a poke at the ambiguity surrounding the word "greed."

"Well, don't greedy people cheat?" I was then asked.

They may well cheat, but that is the sign of a cheater. It is not necessarily the mark of an overly ambitious person. (I'm not sure I know what it means to be "overly" ambitious, other than perhaps that the person being described as overly ambitious is more ambitious than I.)

I previously offered the suggestion that "greed" had to do with ethics (cheating a worker, or selling contaminated food); behaviour so egregious that in many cases laws have been enacted prohibiting such behaviour.

There was once a movie about ruthless stock brokers who amongst themselves used the phrase "let's go and paint lipstick on the pig." The meaning of that phrase was to call potenial customers and point them to a stock that had serious financial flaws but fail to describe those flaws, Instead, they would tell the person they were calling what a great investment this particular security was. In the meantime, they would be selling the security short. This is something that might be described as greed. I would describe is as the gross dishonesty of con artists.

Dishonesty is bad for capitalism. If one deals with "equals" there is nothing terribly wrong with "gilding the lily," or perhaps "drawing lipstick on a pig," But that's because you're dealing with an equal. Even though you describe the product in the finest possible light, your listener has the capability of seeing through any false claims.

That, of course, raises the question of when is one "gilding the lily," and when is one offering a blatant falsehood. Professionals guard against blatant falsehoods by (1) having all terms of the transaction, especially important claims, written into a contract, and (2) restricting themselves to doing business only with people whose reputation for honesty they've had a chance to ascertain.

For nonprofessionals, the best advice is to avoid doing business with anyone calling you "cold."
If you don't know the people well, don't do business with them. If you fall for a con artists line, it doesn't mean you're greedy. It means, you have failed to properly assess the risks of dealing with someone you don't know.

In the course of our conversation, we came upon another word, "covet." Clearly, you shouldn't covet; it's one of the Ten Commandments. But, what does it mean to covet? And, what does it mean to covet your neighbor's wife? You may think your neighbor's wife is a really hot number. Is that coveting? And, if so, why?

It would seem to me that you could covet hot babes all day long provided you took no inappropriate actions and said nothing that would strike anyone as inappropriate. I guess here we get into a cultural thing. Among the very religious (Jews and Muslims) women should dress according to certain codes of modesty. Among the Orthodox Jews it means being covered beyond your elbows and wearing a dress, or skirt. that goes down beyond your knees. The Muslims cover their women from head to toe. I guess they see coveting a bit differently than I.

To conclude: Be ambitious -- even very, very ambitious, but don't be greedy.