Greed

[BlackFrancis]

Can you guys help me out? I consider myself a seasoned debator... to be honest I kick a lot of ass on it. But I face one problem. I cannot seem to express to people the origins of greed. I can't seem to get it through to them.
Maybe it's because I'm very educated on philosophy and consider greed to be a creation of Capitalist society to be a given.

Ideas?

[BreadBros]

Greed is a fairly unnatural emotion/disposition. Just create an everyday type situation as your argument. If you and your friends were all sharing some food, and the food was plentiful, it would be out of human nature and fairly bizarre to be greedy and try to accumulate all the food for youself even if it were to go to waste. Society has the potential to be like that, if we transcend and destroy class society. However, capitalism engenders greed. It rewards the greedy (well, the rich, but you usually have to be fairly greedy to become rich) with prestige as part of it's structure. It accumulates the majority of wealth in a small fraction of society, forcefully creating shortages of commodities which would not exist if everything was distributed equally. Of course any situation of shortage where your survival or well-being is at stake will engender such emotions. As evidence you can also refer to theories of Marx's. First, human beings are fairly alienated from the products of their labor. Scientific discoveries, material production etc. is valued for its exchange value created in capitalist society, not for it's use value (its practical value as an useful tool, technology or commodity). This isn't the natural state of humans, its artifically created.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

People want to improve their lives. Greed does not always do this. Creating a society where money equates with prestige does. Therefore, greed has been used by the upper class as a way for them to maintain power. If people were not so greedy, or did not take wealth as seriously, the upper class would have much less power.

The important thing to note is that greed and self-interest are not the same thing.

[sanpal]

Originally posted by Dooga Aetrus [email protected] 21 2006, 06:26 AM
People want to improve their lives. Greed does not always do this. Creating a society where money equates with prestige does. Therefore, greed has been used by the upper class as a way for them to maintain power. If people were not so greedy, or did not take wealth as seriously, the upper class would have much less power.

The important thing to note is that greed and self-interest are not the same thing.



The important thing to note is that greed and self-interest are not the same thing.
I not quite agree. You cannot draw the line which divide this two things.

BreadBros

However, capitalism engenders greed.

... and communism engenders love?

Greed, love, kindness, etc - all are from emotional and sensual sphere of the human. By that the human explain for himself some rational actions of people.

[BlackFrancis]

Oh give me a break.
You're not one of these psuedo psychologists who haven't got a clue and assume emotions come out of thin air... or some mysterious human spirit that triggers them for no good reason, are you?

[LuXe]

Greed is the desire to aquire material wealth and theoretical power. Greed is really a side-branch of lust, but lust only wants to satisfy emotional and/or physical needs.

[Hit The North]

Human beings are (amongst other things) [a] rational and calculating; and [b] hedonistic: interested in maximising their pleasure and minimising their pains. Given these two facts, greed is easily explained at the level of an individual calculation of the most effective way of maximising pleasure.

It is no more "natural" or "unnatural" than any other kind of behaviour.

As a concept, "greed" is a product of morality. Also, I don't think it has much application in explaining behaviour in modern capitalist society. The capitalist doesn't accumulate out of greed, but out of economic compulsion - i.e. his/her competative relationship with other capitalists. The poor don't worship "bling" out of greed; but out of an alienated attempt to transcend their low status.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

I don't claim to have a PhD in psychology or anything, but I have always believed that greed is a product of capitalist society.

Humans, before anything else, will work to survive. In a capitalist society greed, self-interest and competition is the only way to survive. If you attempt to share you wealth amongst society as a whole, the vast majority of them will simply take without giving because they think they need the money themselves (due to consumerism, neediness or the illusion of potential upward progression in society) and so you will be left with nothing, and therefore you will starve and die.

And so it is not greed that is human nature, it is the desire to survive, and to further oneself, which in a capitalist society takes the form of greed. Under Socialism, the government will use the power of the state to manipulate social conditions so that the survival of the individual is the survival of society, the furthering of the individual is the furthering of society. Once this is the status quo, there will no longer be a need for government (as God knows you don't need a government to tell people to work for their own ends) and so it will wither away, leaving a Communist society.

[BlackFrancis]

Exactly redstar...


Do I have to get into the science for you all?

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

You don't need to deny greed to negate the virtues or capitalism.

What is greed? Wanting more and more stuff.
There is no reason why that needs to be suppressed in socialism. To begin with, the egalitarian ownership of capital would inherently give a great majority of people more than they currently have. Even in wealthy Western European countries, the GDP per capita is greater than the average income. This means that there is more capital being generated by the people than what is allotted to most people... obvious Marxist economic principle.

This means that a communist revolution could potentially be in some cases spurred by "greed".

Furthermore, when the people attain the desire and need to overthrow capitalism, they will surely have realized that work in capitalism doesn't result in material enrichment... something most of us know. This would mean that capitalism isn't satisfying their supposed greed.

And if the social product is owned socially, people will have the "greedy incentive" to work for the growth of their collective patrimony.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

I think the problem, RedZep, is the link, be it real or perceived, between greed and self-interest.

[Dr. Rosenpenis]

If someone says to you in a debate, "I am against communism because it goes against my self-interest in owning goods", then you know this person is bourgeois and the Marxist paradigm stands true.

[sanpal]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2006, 11:40 PM
I think the problem, RedZep, is the link, be it real or perceived, between greed and self-interest.
A proletarian, a peasant, a capitalist, a gangster all have their self-interest. The link is in personal appraisal (emotion, ethic, moral) to each others.

[Dean]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2006, 04:10 AM
Can you guys help me out? I consider myself a seasoned debator... to be honest I kick a lot of ass on it. But I face one problem. I cannot seem to express to people the origins of greed. I can't seem to get it through to them.
Maybe it's because I'm very educated on philosophy and consider greed to be a creation of Capitalist society to be a given.

Ideas?
greed results from external authority which encourages one to define their own existance by measure of possession. This works because people, as social creatures, want to become one with their fellow man. Greed is a disease of private property.

[red_che]

I would like to share my own analysis of the social and historical roots of greed. I believe that greed is not just a product of capitalist society. If we look back even during the primitive times (during the later part where society is developing into class society), men (I mean human) already displayed greediness.

I believe that greed is a product of a class-based society. Whenever there is private ownership of things, greediness would always be a part of it, cause whenever an individual owns a thing, he/she will never be satisfied with that for as long as he/she sees other men owning more than what he/she has.

I believe that society influences greatly the behavior of an individual. And because a class-based society is always dependent on the ownership of things, individuals, naturally, would crave for more things to be owned.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 12:05 AM
If someone says to you in a debate, "I am against communism because it goes against my self-interest in owning goods", then you know this person is bourgeois and the Marxist paradigm stands true.
I never said the person in question would not be bourgeois.