• Lif3r
    386
    Natural selection differs from greed. Some plants are going to have more capability of growth, which gives them a higher survival rate. This is natural selection. This doesn't mean that the rest of the plants shouldn't exist or aren't contributors to the species. And plants don't have the cognitive capability of recognizing this. Humans do. We already know that we are all contributing to society, and that the lives of humans are an asset across the board. Greed gives the notion that it's acceptable to go drastically in opposition to this by dehumanizing other humans as a desertion of the principle of the common welfare of humanity. In other words, we cognitively choose to participate in a cycle that yields negative societal results when we choose to extract the welfare of the common human in an attempt to benefit only a small minority of people in the long run, meanwhile the potential of the rest of them are left fluttering in the wind, when in reality if we increase the common welfare for all of humanity we meet the qualification of retaining as many lives as possible, and all parties included benefit in the flourishing of the intelligence, advances, and societal progressions that are a result of a flourishing community. There's plenty to go around, so how much is enough for you to feel secure, or to belittle the security and the prosperity of your fellow human?

    Innovation is good. The common welfare of humanity is good. Increasing these two things is good. Willingly hindering these things by choosing to exploit them instead is not good.


    Greed is not good. The concept that the security of an individual is more valuable than the security of all of society. What makes someone who is greedy more worthy of existence than someone who isn't? Because you're capable of exploiting people, you are more formidable of a worthy evolution, therefore your existence is more meaningful than the existence of everyone else, therefore you need all of the money to provide all of your own security, and screw everyone else?
    That's the predilection I'm supposed to go with in order to feel secure enough once I have how much wealth? At the expense of how many people? So the 1% gets to exploit how many people across the planet globally all the way up the system in order to maintain this false sense of security that your life and your DNA is more worthy of the security to thrive, when in reality you advertantly risk potential of a fully prosperous species by creating the hindrance of wealth inequality in contributing to this process. Why anyone would think this is acceptable is beyond me. What do you think is the main contributing factor holding back education and development of the vast majority of the planet? It's a result of them not being paid what they're actually producing, and instead forfeiting the majority of their income to a select group of people, and we do this willingly. And people die and the conditions of living are terrible for many, but their only option is to work for a system that barely pays them to survive, and they die young all because they weren't receiving the income in exchange for their value, but instead were forfeiting it to a select group of people who could then manipulate that same market even more in favor of themselves to continue the exploitation process. I mean it's madness honestly. If anyone wants to tell me that the security of generations of your heritage is more important than the common welfare of humanity, then I would say you've lost your ever loving mind. Every human life has value and every human life should have the opportunity to excel to it's utmost potential so that we can all become more capable of a species as a unit, providing potential for the "elite" (let's be real and call them fucking greedy) and the common human to both prosper.


    Is greed a result of the addiction of feeling the need for dominance in an attempt to escape the mortality of yourself, and of your lineage and constituents? Are you insecure if your DNA and the DNA of your constituents aren't the most prosperous, and instead all DNA is prosperous? You would disgrace respect of your fellow human beings because you think you're the only one that's important for prosperity? I'm not asking anybody to share the wealth. Share it? You didn't create it. That's ridiculous. As far as I'm concerned it's a debt to the people who actually produced what you sold for a price well below their production value. You provided them with no other option than to work for this system or starve, at often times merely barely enough, and often times not enough to even educate and medicate themselves? And you're telling yourself you helped these people by ensuring your own interest at the expense of them? Why aren't people paid for what they actually produce? Why is it acceptable to let a small group of people disproportionately profit off of your production? Why does everybody just willingly accept this and continue to willingly do it without demanding a genuine fair and realistic distribution of wealth and prosperity according to their production?
  • Lif3r
    386
    What's the difference between that and slavery? The majority of the planet is succumbed to the toes of this global cast system. What's the difference between slavery, and forfeiting 99% of your production value to 1% of people for rice and a shack? What's the difference? Less whips and hangings and slurs, and more necessity for not dying for opting not to participate at all?
  • Book273
    768
    Every human life has valueLif3r

    No, not really. Unless you mean as a bad example. Something you can point out to others as a "Something to strive to never be like", then....still going with no.
  • Lif3r
    386
    so you think human life is unimportant and disposable?
  • Count Timothy von Icarus
    1.9k
    Couldn't it be both?

    That something is bad, morally wrong, has nothing to do whether or not it increases your chance of reproducing.

    Why so people tolerate gross inequity? Probably something to do with humans evolving to live in hierarchical societies, along with the fact that humans, like most animals, tend to focus on satisfying basic needs, not optimizing. There are generally more interesting and immediate things to focus on that politics. Hence many people in developed nations growing totally detached from politics and not voting. Politics has had to be religiousized, turned into a Manichean struggle, to get the populace fired up for it: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/america-politics-religion/618072/
  • Book273
    768
    I think human life is no more special than any other life. Saying every human life has value is poorly thought out. Every mosquitos life also has value, just check with the mosquito. I still dislike mosquito bites and will kill them as needed without a second thought. I am not saying they don't value their life, nor that their life has no value, however, in the grand scheme of things, I take being not itchy over a happy healthy mosquito. Same approach applies to humans. We aren't exactly rare or anything, so saying every life has value...Meh.
  • Hanover
    12k
    Greed is not good.Lif3r

    The counter argument is that what you describe as "greed" is better described as striving and that those who achieve more for themselves also produce a net gain for everyone else from their hard work. That's not to absolve those who outproduce others of their duty to provide to the common good, but it does challenge the notion that an individual's relentless desire for wealth must equate to others being deprived. It also challenges the notion that those who produce more shouldn't keep more so as to incentivize them to continue their labor.

    It's really a matter of degree, as in how much the greedy may morally stockpile versus how much society can morally extract from them. Justice does not lie at either extreme but somewhere in the middle.
  • 3017amen
    3.1k


    From another vantage point, I agree that Greed has little to do with natural selection/Darwinism/biological advantages and so on, particularly relative to happiness, selfishness and other features of consciousness and the human condition. From a socioeconomic perspective, we see that it's not money that's the root of evil, it's the love of it. We also see this from trickle-down economic policies, that in theory have merit, but the last great recession proved otherwise. It proved that some professionals/CEO's were hoarding their money (in a strange way kind of reminds me of what's happing right now with gasoline--->toilet paper/pandemic).

    Anyway, back to ethics. Hanover is right in that there needs to be balance. And that one should treat like cases likely and different cases differently. But unfortunately partisan politics rears its ugly head again here. There are those fiscal conservatives who complain about gas prices, viz. regulations that prevent companies from taking advantage of people (the current gas price gouging law in NC, and the natural gas/public utility prices in Texas) are having to square the circle of less tax regulations for the rich or just less regulations in general. Some regulations actually do protect people from Greed. We saw that in Texas. So hypocrisy seems to rule the day for them. In other words, if it doesn't benefit them, they don't like it. How selfish is that?

    I wouldn't worry though. They're not thinking things through. History has demonstrated that those who are extremely greedy and selfish don't last. I would say to them, desire what you already have. Alternatively, it begs the question, how much is enough? Or, from the other extreme:

    "The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less" — Socrates

    Do you think we need more moderate's in our social, political and religious institutions?
  • Lif3r
    386
    we are rare. Where is the other earth? Point to that.
  • James Riley
    2.9k


    :100:

    we are rare. Where is the other earth? Point to that.Lif3r

    We are not rare, and we aren't Earth. We are human beings of earth, and there are upwards of 7 billion of us, and we are destroying that which is rare (biodiversity).

    But, if you want me to point to the other Earth, I just did. I stuck my finger toward the sky. Hopefully we don't go there and ruin that too.
  • Lif3r
    386
    Fucking lazy hopeless garbage waste.

    Do something about it and stop bitching and calling it impossible. Fucking whiner. So annoying.

    I don't even have the patience to explain to you how pitiful your perspective is, and how threatening it is to the very biodiversity you pretend to care about
  • Lif3r
    386
    Look I apologize for being rude. You very well might be a nice and helpful human.
    But I'm so fucking over your ideology.
    It isn't insightful.
    It's lazy useless worthless ideology. There are millions of people spouting the same putrid garbage.
    Grow the fuck up and take some responsibility.
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    foolish fearsLif3r

    Yeah, that's what the fools said about the Carrier Pidgeon and et al.
  • James Riley
    2.9k
    Look I apologize for being rude. You very well might be a nice and helpful human.
    But I'm so fucking over your ideology.
    It isn't insightful.
    It's lazy useless worthless ideology. There are millions of people spouting the same putrid garbage.
    Grow the fuck up and take some responsibility.
    Lif3r

    I responded here, stooping to your level, deleted it, and will let it ride out of respect to those on here who try.
  • counterpunch
    1.6k
    Natural selection differs from greed.Lif3r

    Your argument ignores the fact that, on the whole, capitalism produces that which people need and want. You disregard this to construe success as greed, and they are not the same, precisely because success is achieved by - in some sense, serving the common good. (If people didn't need and want it, they wouldn't buy it.) You construe another's success, as a zero sum game - only achieved at the cost of the the welfare of another, and this is not only false, but wicked.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    I don't know, it's kinda hard for me to tell the difference between avarice and envy. Is someone rich and powerful greedy or are those not-so-rich, not-so-powerful jealous? These two alleged evils seem to be related at a deeper level - they seem almost identical from a certain angle.
  • Book273
    768
    Nothing rare about humans. Finding a spot without one is less common than it was before, therefore the idea of rarity lacks strength. Not sure why you are so angry about other people's responses, we are not enamored of human beings as you seem to be, a matter of different opinions only.
  • Book273
    768
    I have never understood the immediate assumption that the rich and powerful MUST be greedy. It is baffling. I have always assumed that those who made this assumption were upset that they were neither rich nor powerful, therefore they felt riches and power must be due to something, being greedy, that they felt they were not willing to do. Apparently I can't get rich or powerful and have morals; again, not sure why that would be.

    I guess at a certain point rich and powerful people are supposed to stop making an acceptable profit and just give stuff away out of an abundance of feeling badly for being successful? Sounds stupid to me.
  • Book273
    768
    so you think human life is unimportant and disposable?Lif3r

    Clearly it is, despite your tirade against it. You can also rage against the Sun, proclaim the injustice of if rising in the East and setting in the West, thereby denying the South and North any place in the path of the Sun except as a bystander. I am fairly certain the Sun won't give damn, much like those whom you are ranting against. Who are they by the way?
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    I have never understood the immediate assumption that the rich and powerful MUST be greedy.Book273

    There seems to be two definitions of greed that say the same thing but in different ways:

    1. Inordinate level of want
    2. Taking more than one's fair share (of the pie)

    Definition 1 would fault the greedy for failing to adhere to the golden mean which is harmful not to others but to the greedy themselves for it's ultimately a character flaw.

    Definition 2 shifts the focus away from the greedy to the harm that they do to others by concentrating resources in the hands of a select group of super-rich individuals which effectively removes said resources from circulation. No prizes for guessing what that leads to.
  • Caldwell
    1.3k
    Is greed a result of the addiction of feeling the need for dominance in an attempt to escape the mortality of yourself, and of your lineage and constituents?Lif3r

    lol. No. One couldn't think like that if they're entangled in a cycle of greed. Greed is an affliction. There should not be a confusion as to what greed is. We know what it is. And you've done well in your post to articulate the problem. That said, let's talk about this: almost everyone wants to get a piece of the pie. But a greedy person not only would resort to deception to get it, but would horde the resources in their possession when they know another person could use it. Greedy people usually hide what they have or if they don't hide it, they make sure it's secure.
  • FrankGSterleJr
    89
    Big Pharma has become morally and ethically corrupt. (Yes, morally; for one thing, the corporate decision-makers would hardly deliberately push their very addictive opioids onto their own children and grandchildren.)

    Whenever a Canadian federal government promises universal medication coverage (the last such promise was made following the last election, October 2019) the pharmaceutical industry reacts with threats of abandoning their Canada-based research and development (R&D), etcetera, if the government goes ahead with its ‘pharmacare’ plan. Why? Because the universal medication coverage would negatively affect the industry’s plentiful profits. Of course profits would still be great, just not as great, which apparently bothers the industry greatly.

    Once again promised universal medication coverage was conspicuously yet quietly missing from the federal budget, released a couple weeks ago. We continue being the world’s sole nation that has universal healthcare but no similar coverage of prescribed medication, however necessary. Recouping R&D costs is typically cited by the powerful industry to justify its exorbitant prices and stiff resistance to universal medication coverage public plans, the latter which it's doing in Canada. However, according to a Huffington Post story (“Pharmaceutical Companies Spent 19 Times More On Self-Promotion Than Basic Research: Report,” updated May 8, 2013), a study conducted by the British Medical Journal found that for every $19 dollars the pharmaceutical industry spent on promoting and marketing new drugs, it put only $1 into its R&D.

    A late-2019 Angus Reid study found that about 90 percent of Canadians — including three quarters of Conservative Party supporters specifically — champion universal medication coverage. Another 77 percent believed this should be a high-priority matter for the federal government. The study also found that, over the previous year, due to medication unaffordability, almost a quarter of Canadians decided against filling a prescription or having one renewed. Not only is medication less affordable, but other research has revealed that many low-income outpatients who cannot afford to fill their prescriptions end up back in the hospital system as a result, therefore costing far more for provincial and federal government health ministries than if the medication had been covered.

    So, in order for the industry to continue raking in huge profits, Canadians, as both individual consumers and a taxpaying collective, must lose out huge. And our elected representatives, be they federal Liberals or Conservatives, seem to shrug their figurative shoulders in favor of the pharmaceutical industry — time and again. Considering it is such a serious health affair for so many people, impressed upon me is the industry lobbyists’ potent influence on our top-level elected officials — manipulation that our mainstream news-media apparently fail to even try to fully expose, let alone condemn — for the sake of large profit-margin interests.
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    The counter argument is that what you describe as "greed" is better described as striving and that those who achieve more for themselves also produce a net gain for everyone else from their hard work.Hanover

    We can bust this capitalist mantra straight away. Egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups that practice immediate return (that is, they immediately get an equal share of whatever the group as a whole has obtained) work far fewer hours and have no lack. Working long hours for future return has typically had no benefit to most people (hence the need for things like workers rights, minimum wage, and the welfare system), but a huge benefit to a few.
  • ssu
    7.9k
    Greed gives the notion that it's acceptable to go drastically in opposition to this by dehumanizing other humans as a desertion of the principle of the common welfare of humanity.Lif3r
    That's a bit of a stretch of the definition. So the notion of "an intense and selfish desire for wealth or power (or for food for or other pleasures)" becomes dehumanizing other humans.

    Innovation is good. The common welfare of humanity is good. Increasing these two things is good.Lif3r
    And many innovators and especially politicians that do want to improve things could be argued to be greedy for power. Their intense desire to reach their objectives will look to others like greed. The fact is, someone that truly wants change and hence wants power will look to others (usually those who are against the persons objectives) as a greedy power hungry person.

    You shouldn't forget that people can also be envious among other things. And envious people likely will see far more greedy people around them as there actually are. Both greed and envy are considered sins, hence that ought to tell something about them.
  • MikeListeral
    119


    greed comes from dopamine

    power comes from serotonin

    dopamine and serotonin come from evolution which comes from the universe which is a million times smarter than human philosophy
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment