Origins of greed

[Thewhitesea]

Greed is a very rotten thing. Many libertarians would probably agree with that, but then argue that it's a part of human nature and that people need capitalism as their outlet for their natural greed. While we, on the other hand, say that's bullshit and that greed is actually not inherited in human nature and that we could all work together if the idea of working together was more present.

The question I have though is, where did this thing come from? "Greed"? Is it just a mistake of nature or what? And how do we plan to get rid of it for our kinds of visions to work? How do we make sure something like capitalism doesn't come up again?

[cyu]

I would say that capitalism (ie. "property enforcement" regulations) is actually a contributing factor to greed, though that may not be the original intention, but rather more of an unforeseen side-effect.

From http://cjyu.wordpress.com/article/unlimited-wants-and-limited-resources-gcybcajus7dp-14/

Wants are fairly subjective. You might like one thing and your partner might want something completely different – and thus begins the arguments that strain relationships. (But that’s another story.)

Anyway, I submit that it isn’t really logical to assume wants / needs are infinite. I would say wants / needs are often determined by advertising, which often preys on the “irrational” aspects of human behavior, just as Buddhism may “prey” on the same aspects in order to dispel a person’s wants / needs.

One of the problems is that once capitalism had set property ownership in stone, then other people are forced to produce more and more useless things in order to make a living.

For example, say some agribusiness owns vast amounts of farmland and is already producing more than enough food for everybody. Maybe there isn’t enough farmland left for anybody else to use, or maybe the agribusiness can simply outcompete any other small-scale farmer trying to enter the market. What’s left?

Well, there is no other recourse than to find a non-farming related occupation. Maybe it’s entering a factory producing plastic toys for people’s dashboards. However, as you can see, this job is really pretty useless – nobody really needs plastic toys on their dashboards. So how is the entire sector of useless industries sustained? Advertising. The goal is to convince the people in the agribusiness to trade you their stuff for your plastic toys.

All the major media in some societies are funded by product advertising. What kind of people are those kind of messages likely to raise? Most people don’t want to admit you’ve been brainwashed by consumerism – just as the followers of the world’s religions won’t say they’ve been brainwashed by the religious messages their societies give them.

The people of the various religions may make the argument that their religion is good for society. Can the same be made for consumerism? It’s not even like people have an intrinsic need to advertise products – they are only forced to do so because if they don’t, their company may go bankrupt and they’ll be forced into economic hardship – which is only a problem in capitalist society.

So you’ve got overworked plastic toy makers and you’ve got overworked agribusiness employees. This is measured as an increased GDP and considered “increasing prosperity” by some idiots.

So after the bubble pops, of course, the plastic toy makers would be among the first to go – it’s much easier to cut back on spending for toys than on spending for food. Maybe the remaining plastic toy makers would redouble their efforts at advertising, trying to convince the food producers that they should buy more toys.

The food producers meanwhile think, “why should I help you unemployed toy makers? I have to work for my living, so you should too.” So they go back to working their 80 hour weeks, while the unemployed go back to “working” their 0 hour weeks. “Brilliant”, eh?

As I see it, either there are industries that still need people working in them, in which case the economy should train as many of the unemployed that it can to fill those industries… or there aren’t any more industries that still need people working in them, in which case the economy should let the people take a f**king break.

[Atilla]

Greed is indeed a strange thing

[Rafiq]

Capitalism necessiates "greed". Conditions which require greed will create greed. But it is normal for people to want more, in this sense greed is natural. But insofar as it being able to determine or undermine modes of social organisation, no, of course not, no social order was ever founded or destroyed by 'greed'. These are individual, personal characteristics.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Sky Hedgehogian Maestro]

Greed is a very rotten thing. Many libertarians would probably agree with that, but then argue that it's a part of human nature and that people need capitalism as their outlet for their natural greed. While we, on the other hand, say that's bullshit and that greed is actually not inherited in human nature and that we could all work together if the idea of working together was more present.

The question I have though is, where did this thing come from? "Greed"? Is it just a mistake of nature or what? And how do we plan to get rid of it for our kinds of visions to work? How do we make sure something like capitalism doesn't come up again?

At its very root, it actually is. It's present in all higher apes because it's used for survival, which, may I state, was never guaranteed. As I keep saying though, society and civilization cultivates these things, exacerbates them, and brings them to the forefront. If our survival could be eternally guaranteed (i.e. all needs met), then the nature of greed would be evolved out of our genes. But that would take tens of thousands of years at least, if barring transhumanism, because macroevolution is a... slow process. To say the least. Nevertheless, with proper and sweeping change, the most blatantly obvious examples of it would be eradicated. The more survival based elements would remain for some time.

[cyu]

no social order was ever founded or destroyed by 'greed'.


I agree with the rest, but not so sure about this part. The segment of our current social order that constitutes the financial sector is founded in large part on greed, and ever since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, I have a feeling that historians of the future will see the bursting of that bubble as eventually bringing down the whole of capitalism (with a little help from the internet ;)

[Decolonize The Left]

Greed is a very rotten thing. Many libertarians would probably agree with that, but then argue that it's a part of human nature and that people need capitalism as their outlet for their natural greed. While we, on the other hand, say that's bullshit and that greed is actually not inherited in human nature and that we could all work together if the idea of working together was more present.

The question I have though is, where did this thing come from? "Greed"? Is it just a mistake of nature or what? And how do we plan to get rid of it for our kinds of visions to work? How do we make sure something like capitalism doesn't come up again?

In the first place, I wouldn't assume that there is such a thing as "human nature."

In the second place, "greed" is nothing other than the desire to possess more than one needs. We, as a species, have devoted much time to accommodating and encouraging this desire. I do not think that one can get rid of it, nor am I sure it's necessary to do so. The real question is who defines what each person needs and how.

[Skyhilist]

Greed, like anything else is a result of material conditions. Look at crime that's often based on greed such as stealing (whether it be a poor person steal a TV or an employer stealing surplus value). It's based typically on things like private property and monetary incentives. Even under capitalism, we don't find this type of greed to such an extent in those still in the process of capitalist indoctrination. A 4 year old who wants to be a doctor, for example, doesn't want to be one because "they make a lot of money and I can have more stuff", but because he/she wants to help people. Of course, there's always the "mine" stage for most kids prior to that, because they're so reliant on other people bringing them things when they're so young and not capable of producing on their own. In reality, humans are hard wired to rely not on greed but on mutual aid. This is because when humans first evolved, we didn't have time to worried about who got what, and since everybody had different skills, everyone had to rely on everyone else's labor without worrying about who did what (and it was more efficient that way than if hunter-gatherers had tried to institute a monetary system where access could only be gained through wealth). So mutual aid and cooperation, not individual greed became ingrained within our genetics. Capitalism, unfortunately, has overvalued greed extremely perverting natural human instincts towards mutual aid and instead favoring greed, and subsequently alienation, poverty, and a wide variety of other ills that only breed more greed-driven behaviors.

[goalkeeper]

greed is a concept we created so makes no sense really

[Madame Ennui]

Greed is a very rotten thing. Many libertarians would probably agree with that, but then argue that it's a part of human nature and that people need capitalism as their outlet for their natural greed. While we, on the other hand, say that's bullshit and that greed is actually not inherited in human nature and that we could all work together if the idea of working together was more present.

The question I have though is, where did this thing come from? "Greed"? Is it just a mistake of nature or what? And how do we plan to get rid of it for our kinds of visions to work? How do we make sure something like capitalism doesn't come up again?

I think we're all monkeys with greed (because real monkeys do show subtle signs of greed) but capitalism makes it worse which is why, while I believe it's there inherently, culture fosters its development to a point where it is damagingly noticeable. I read this one time about a wild kid who was raised entirely outside of human society and he had so few 'human' characteristics (of character) and apparently he still showed signs of "greed", but it was animal like greed more rooted in survival than anything, not "I'm naturally inclined to take all of your money."

[Sotionov]

Root of greed is irrationality. With dissappearance of misunderstunding one realises that not being selfish and greedy is in fact in one's (enlightened) self-interest. Seriously, google it :D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest

[GiantMonkeyMan]

It's definitely a capitalist phenomenon that selfish behaviour and society's response to selfish behaviour has changed. One article worth looking at is Greed was different in the Middle Ages (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/greed-middle-ages-080212.html).


In another, more dramatic, example of the community rejection of selfish business practices, murder was seen as the only response severe enough to deal with a pompous businessman, Uly Mörnach. He was a property owner who insisted he had the power and the right to do what he wanted with his property. As Stokes found by sifting through the archives of the city of Basel, "He insisted on a kind of individualistic … perspective on his own life."

Although his impressive property holdings might be admired in today's culture, he was seen as downright despicable by his medieval peers for the way he threw his financial weight around. In one instance, Stokes found, he beat an old woman when he discovered her taking water from his meadow. When the woman pressed charges, Mörnach lied about the matter in court, and laughed about it later to his friends.

In medieval society, his disregard for the rules of social responsibility and the value of community honor was a misstep that disturbed his neighbors deeply, so much so that they collectively conspired to murder him – with many of them escaping legal repercussions.

[cyu]

Ultimately social norms like culture, law, and religion are there because they are meant to benefit society. If murder is seen as "wrong", it is wrong because people running around murdering everybody else will result in a society that is unfit to survive. Similarly, if a capitalist is using his property claims as a weapon that in effect is similar to destroying everyone else in society, then society would tend to forgive actions that eliminate this threat.

[nizan]

A construction of the spectacular, like most anything else, 'greed' fails to assert the evidence I would demand for its existence to be recognized. Greed exists in the same manner of form as the latest Citroen, particularly in the regard that none are worth speaking to as static entities, rather, they are only worth noting as symptoms of a dying epoque.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Squirrls horde food as do many animals but they are never considered "greedy". When I feed my cat wet food once or twice a month rather than dry food, he immediately begins to beg for more. I tell him "don't be so greedy" but I don't really mean it, I just like to apply human charateristics - including complex language - to him. Really, I think he just knows that he has no control over when he gets wet food so he really goes for it when it becomes available.

The instability of gathering from nature makes "greed" rational in a sense. Poverty making someone a tightwad or not want to give money to people poorer then themselves (though I've read that actually, people without a lot of excess money tend to be more giving) probably wouldn't be considered "greed" by anyone but the most morally superior jerks out there. Most people would consider it at least a little rational.

From the perspective of the rich capitalist, to amass as much profit as possible is not considered greedy, it's a dictate of the market - like a shark they must keep moving and eating or die. So from their perspective it's rational. They only (sometimes) consider the greed of the rich to be irrational when it's personal wealth, not capital.

For workers who can barely keep above debt to demand more wages is considered "greedy" by the bosses (or "entitled"). But from our perspective, and more or less the perspective of a lot of people, doing things like increasing oil production even while destroying the environment or producting outlandish luxuries or drving down wages or cutting corners to make more profits is "irrational" and can be seen as "greed".

In short I don't think there is such a thing as "objective greed". What we call greed for most regular people (and not to downplay the nastyness that manifests itself as personal greed in society) is IMO the result of instability of life and inability to produce for yourself that comes with wage-labor. For capitalism as a system, accumulation for accumulation is just the way the system works. For "greedy" capitalists, well, they have the opportunity to do this, they have the power, and even their own economic ups and downs allows them to personally enrich themselves at our expence systematically and even at some business' expence on occasion. Not to mention, the more personal wealth someone has in capitalism, the more power they have over their own lives and others which makes even this greed sort of rational from a narrow perspective.

[cyu]

the more personal wealth someone has in capitalism, the more power they have over their own lives and others which makes even this greed sort of rational from a narrow perspective.

The underlying assumption they have is that they will be operating within capitalism, which isn't always the case. Their personal wealth will not buy them much security if capitalism is in the process of being overthrown.

It's kind of like the paranoid kook in town who thinks everyone else is out to get them. So they start amassing weapons in their home for protection, thinking this actually makes them more secure. However, to the rest of the townspeople, it just seems like the kook is becoming more and more dangerous, and something would have to be done about him soon, before something tragic happens.

So in effect, sometimes what you think is making you more secure, is in fact making you less secure.

[nominal9]

subsistence / work........ greed /steal

(logical square here in the middle)

subsistence/ steal..........greed / work

[nominal9]

survival / cooperate...... sport / compete

(logical square in the middle)

survival / compete.........sport / cooperate

[nominal9]

democratic / socialism..... totalitarian / capitalism

(logical square in the middle)

democratic / capitalism......totalitarian / socialism

[nominal9]

altruism / do for another..... selfishness / do for oneself

(logical square in the middle)

altruism/ do for oneself.......selfishness / do for another

[nominal9]

I think we're all monkeys with greed (because real monkeys do show subtle signs of greed) but capitalism makes it worse which is why, while I believe it's there inherently, culture fosters its development to a point where it is damagingly noticeable. I read this one time about a wild kid who was raised entirely outside of human society and he had so few 'human' characteristics (of character) and apparently he still showed signs of "greed", but it was animal like greed more rooted in survival than anything, not "I'm naturally inclined to take all of your money."


nature / fit individual.... society / fit group

(logical square in middle)

nature / fit group...........society / fit individual

[Karlorax]

I am not sure of the origins of greed, perhaps scarcity?

But I am convinced that greed is not part of human nature. Greed is capitalist nature projected onto the universe.

Humans are not naturally greedy. For most of their existence, humans have lived in more communal and egalitarian ways. Soldiers sacrifice themselves for their comrades. Parents sacrifice themselves for their children. Martyrs sacrifice themselves for their cause. Leading Lights sacrifice themselves for the liberation all of humanity and the Earth. Humans are naturally empathetic. We are social animals.
The reason that there is a widespread belief that humans are individualistic and greedy is because we live under capitalism. Capitalism teaches people they need to be individualistic and greedy to get ahead. This society teaches people that it is good to get ahead at the expense of others. This society teaches people that endless consumption is good. The reason that people think everyone is greedy is because so many people are greedy in this society. People are projecting the nature of the capitalist onto human nature. They are projecting the nature of the global bourgeoisie, of the First World, onto humanity.
Even if it was the case that humans were naturally greedy in some way, this does not mean that society should encourage this. Humans have the ability to change. Human nature is very malleable. Humans use society to modify their behavior. So, even if there were bad traits that are currently part of our nature, then we should use society to eliminate these. Society should be used to help perfect humanity, not encourage what is bad in us. from: http://new-power.org/frequently-asked-questions-part-1/


Currently reading, dare to join me? I am no Leading Light Communist, but I am studying their work for my MA thesis

Leading Light on Conspiracy Theory is Intelligent Design (http://llco.org/leading-light-on-conspiracy-theory-is-intelligent-design/)
Was Lin Biao guilty plotting a coup? Part 1 of 2 (draft) (http://llco.org/draft-was-lin-biao-guilty-plotting-a-coup-part-1-of-2/)
Revisiting Value and Exploitation (http://llco.org/revisiting-value-and-exploitation/)
What about the Gulag? Mao’s errors? Stalin’s? (http://llco.org/revolutionary-history-initial-summations/)