Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal (Ethical Economy, 58) 3030700860, 9783030700867

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Ethical Economy. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy

Michael S. Pritchard Elaine Englehardt   Editors

Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal

Ethical Economy Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy Volume 58

Series Editors Alexander Brink, Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Bayern, Germany Jacob Dahl Rendtorff, Department of Social Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

Ethical Economy describes the theory of the ethical preconditions of the economy and of business as well as the theory of the ethical foundations of economic systems. It analyzes the impact of rules, virtues, and goods or values on economic action and management. Ethical Economy understands ethics as a means to increase trust and to reduce transaction costs. It forms a foundational theory for business ethics and business culture. The Series Ethical Economy. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy is devoted to the investigation of interdisciplinary issues concerning economics, management, ethics, and philosophy. These issues fall in the categories of economic ethics, business ethics, management theory, economic culture, and economic philosophy, the latter including the epistemology and ontology of economics. Economic culture comprises cultural and hermeneutic studies of the economy. One goal of the series is to extend the discussion of the philosophical, ethical, and cultural foundations of economics and economic systems. The series is intended to serve as an international forum for scholarly publications, such as monographs, conference proceedings, and collections of essays. Primary emphasis is placed on originality, clarity, and interdisciplinary synthesis of elements from economics, management theory, ethics, and philosophy. The book series has been accepted into SCOPUS (March 2019) and will be visible on the Scopus website within a few months. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/2881

Michael S. Pritchard  •  Elaine E. Englehardt Editors

Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal

Editors Michael S. Pritchard Willard A. Brown Professor of Philosophy Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI, USA

Elaine E. Englehardt Utah Valley University Orem, UT, USA

ISSN 2211-2707     ISSN 2211-2723 (electronic) Ethical Economy ISBN 978-3-030-70086-7    ISBN 978-3-030-70087-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Hugh LaFollette, who got us started and helped along the way. To our children: Scott Pritchard, Susan Pritchard, Tim Brady, Rich Englehardt, Amanda Bucheit Englehardt, Kellie Englehardt Bhattacharya, and Gautam Bhattacharya. To our grandchildren: Ryan and Kyra Pritchard, Daisy Brady, Eli and Ava Bhattacharya, and Adelyn Englehardt.

Preface

What is greed? In 2017, we set out to try and answer this question through an essay in less than 3000 words. This was to be our response to an invitation from Hugh LaFollette, editor of The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, who was undertaking the second edition of this distinguished publication. Greed, he realized, was one of those important topics that had not been addressed in his first edition. Given its familiarity to everyone, it seemed a relatively short presentation should suffice. However, we soon discovered that our task was quite formidable. Our article on greed ended up being nearly 4000 words in length, but it was only a beginning.1 Although mention of greed in the religious literature of the world, both past and present, is plentiful and substantive, we found secular discussions to be bold but largely disappointing. Most conspicuous is their failure to clarify what greed is, despite displaying an eagerness either to condemn, condone, or even to praise it. Greed has been widely condemned for centuries by the world’s organized religions. Often listed as one of the “seven deadly sins” and as a leading factor in the corruption of the spirit, it is also commonly regarded as a feature of human beings that can at best be reasonably constrained, not eliminated. Phyllis Tickle’s helpful Greed (2004) succinctly surveys much of the vast literature on greed from religious perspectives. In contrast, in this volume we focus on more secular aspects of greed. What our book presents is a set of reflections resulting from a seminar that we offered to an outstanding group of Western Michigan University M.A. students in philosophy in the summer of 2019. In Part I, the editors address some issues in depicting greed in our everyday world. Chapter 1, “The Unavoidability of Greed?” focuses on problems in understanding what greed is. Chapter 2, “Tales of Greed and the Search for Remedies,” discusses prominent, contemporary examples of excessive harms brought by greed and explores some current attempts on the part of businesses to pursue constructive alternatives to greedy practices.

1  Part I of this book draws from and further develops our article, “Greed,” in The International Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2nd ed.; Hugh LaFollette, ed.; Blackwells, 2018.

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In Part II, six students in our class wrestle with challenges in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of greed. Each of the essays in Part II significantly advances our understanding of and ability to evaluate greed in our everyday world. Alexander Hoffman’s “Understanding Greed as a Morally Neutral Term” advances the view that, before evaluating its strengths and weaknesses, it is important to analyze “greed” in a way that gives both advocates and detractors room to advance their views. Once this is done, he argues, we will be in a better position to see why greed has historically received so much moral criticism by religions and the secular world. Chance Lacina (“Against the Necessity of Greed”) presents a series of imaginative thought experiments that are designed to help us see that greed is not necessary for human lives to flourish. Kaleb Terbush (“The Irrationality of Greed”) argues that, insofar as greedy desires are insatiable, they exhibit irrational features, as does their pursuit. Chad Watson (“Greed and Social Context”) discusses greed’s negative impact in our social world. Ian Everitt (“Greed and Addiction”) suggests strong parallels between various forms of addiction and greed. Finally, Rebecca Cobern Kates (“Good, the Market, and Human Flourishing”) explores a number of ways in which the absence of greed can contribute to forms of human flourishing that all of us should recognize and appreciate. As this book was in its final stages of preparation, a lengthy publication appeared in The New York Times Magazine entitled, “Greed is Good. Except When it’s bad” (Sept. 13, 2020, pp. 1–6). It provides 22 commentaries on Milton Friedman’s “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits,” published by the Times exactly 50 years earlier, on September 13, 1970. Looking back, the 2020 article characterizes the earlier Times publication as “a landmark essay … that changed the course of capitalism.” The current Times article presents the views of more than 20 well-known “corporate leaders, Nobel Laureates and top thinkers” who were invited briefly “to debate and dissect what Friedman got right—and wrong.” In many respects, this is what we have undertaken in Parts I and II of our book. Of course, we have had the privilege of dwelling much longer on the complex issues raised by Friedman’s reflections. We hope that our contributions are helpful to those seeking to better understand and normatively assess the significance of greed in our everyday world. Kalamazoo, MI, USA

Michael S. Pritchard

Orem, UT, USA

Elaine E. Englehardt

Reference “Greed is Good. Except When It’s Bad.” DealBook/The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 2020, 1–8.

Acknowledgments

In the course of working on this book, we have benefited from the research assistance and advice of Adam Griffin, former graduate student in philosophy at Western Michigan University. We are indebted to the fine editorial and research assistance of Utah Valley University graduate Chandler Christensen. We have also learned much from audiences at annual meetings of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum, the Association for the Advancement of Practical and Professional Ethics, PLATO, the Vincentian Society for Business Ethics Conference, and the Society for Business Ethics. Finally, thanks to the many friends and colleagues with whom we have had fruitful conversations about greed, among whom we especially include: Brian Birch; Sandy Borden; Leslie Simon; Cindy Keller; Don Keller; Keith Snedegar; Linda Potter; Patricia Werhane; Lisa Newton; Charles Cannon; Claudia Cannon; Bert Dugan; Jeane Dugan; Molly Fairbanks; Jim Hood; Mary Hood; Jim Jaksa; Sarah Renstrom Jaksa; Richard Pulaski; Lisa Potter; Van Potter; Mary Tift; Shannon Mussett; Michael Shaw; Pierre LaMarche; Chris Weigel; Deborah Mower; Jean Lyman; John Lyman; Gayle Reiber; Steve Reiber; Gwen Church; Gary Church; Lonnie Eliason; Karlene Eliason; Peggy Vandenberg; Bob Ladenson; Joanne Ladenson; Tom Murray; Setsuko Matsuyama; Collin Tew; Malorie Tew; Wendell Wallach; and Randall Curren.

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Contents

Part I Identifying Greed in Our Everyday World 1 The Unavoidability of Greed?����������������������������������������������������������������    3 Michael S. Pritchard and Elaine E. Englehardt 2 Tales of Greed and the Search for Remedies ����������������������������������������   25 Elaine E. Englehardt and Michael S. Pritchard Part II Normative Assessments of Greed 3 Understanding Greed and Wrongness ��������������������������������������������������   45 Alexander Hoffmann 4 Against the Need for Greed��������������������������������������������������������������������   55 Chance Lacina 5 The Irrationality of Greed����������������������������������������������������������������������   69 Kaleb TerBush 6 Greed and Social Context������������������������������������������������������������������������   83 Chad M. Watson 7 Greed and Addiction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   99 Ian Everitt 8 Greed, the Market, and Human Flourishing����������������������������������������  111 Rebecca Cobern Kates

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Part I

Identifying Greed in Our Everyday World

Chapter 1

The Unavoidability of Greed? Michael S. Pritchard and Elaine E. Englehardt

Abstract  At the outset of a critical examination of everyday greed, two basic challenges must be faced. First, there is a need for a clear and determinant enough understanding of greed to enable one to make a reliable assessment of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. This is particularly so when presented with claims by some that, suitably constrained, greed can be good. Does this mean that, at least to some extent, greed can be good as such? Or does it mean that, even if greed at its best has fundamentally undesirable qualities, it can still sometimes serve as an acceptable means to good ends? Second, at the personal level, greed can enter our lives in ways that are morally troubling, if not corrupting. All of us have had some first-hand acquaintance with greed, either through being lured by its charms or through being harmed by the greed of others. Beginning in childhood, we are chided by others when it seems to them that we are being greedy. However, as adults we are sometimes chided for allegedly not seeing that in some contexts greed actually can be good. We may think that the greed of some is responsible for the impoverishment of others. However, some argue that, suitably constrained, greed is an essential feature of any economic system that holds out hope that even the least well off can prosper. Still, little is said about what constraints on greed might be needed, or about how they might best be obtained. Further, largely absent from this conversation is a substantive analysis of what greed is. This absence has not prevented the emergence of sweeping appraisals of greed. However, such appraisals need to be supported by more clarity about what greed is. A major aim of this chapter is to advance this end, not by offering the last word on how we should understand greed, but by presenting a solid basis from which we might gain greater clarity.

M. S. Pritchard (*) Willard A. Brown Professor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] E. E. Englehardt Utah Valley University, Orem, UT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. S. Pritchard, E. E. Englehardt (eds.), Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal, Ethical Economy 58, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4_1

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Keywords  Free market capitalism · Milton Friedman · Greed · David Hume · Justice (fairness) · Monopoly · Prototypes · Sensible knaves · Adam Smith

1.1  Greater Clarity? It might be thought that there is no lack of clarity in our understanding of greed. We were taught as youngsters that greed is to be avoided. “Don’t be greedy,” is a familiar refrain, especially from adults, but sometimes even from other children. The message is often reasonably clear. “One piece of candy is enough.” “Leave some for others, too.” “Don’t take more than your fair share.” We should restrain ourselves— by sharing, by not taking too much, by leaving enough for others, by limiting what one wants if possible, and the like. But what is the like? Greed seems to be some sort of excess, an unseemly “too much.” What makes it an excess, and what makes it unseemly? What is commonly objected to is the greedy person’s desire for more-more than others have, more than one has a right to in the present circumstances, more than one needs or can put to good use, or more than one’s fair share—often at the expense of others. At the outset of his Greed and Injustice in Classical Athens, Ryan K.  Balot (2001) concisely characterizes greed as “acquisitiveness or an excessive desire to get more.” The ‘more’ that greed typically seeks can be in the form of money, material goods, or power. From the classical Athenian perspective, says Balot, this excessive desire for ‘more’ was regarded as a vice that typically amounted to an unfair distribution of goods among individuals or groups in the Athenian community. Today, discussions of greed are commonly global in their reach, and they include broad concerns about the environment and the well-being of both present and future generations here and around the world. However, Balot’s focus on greed in Classical Athens directs our attention to some fundamental moral concerns about greed. Balot cites political theorist Judith Shklar’s (1990) comments on Aristotle’s views about the relationship between greed and unjust persons. Shklar remarks: If Aristotle is to be our guide, the unjust person is no victim of any kind. He is dominated by only one vice, greed. That is why he breaks the rules of law and fairness. He just wants more of everything, material goods, prestige, and power. And the impact of his greed falls entirely upon others, who receive less than they deserve thanks to his grasping conduct.

Philosopher Peter Singer (2000) notes that many of our desires are “created needs,” where individuals may desire luxury items for the sake of a brand, not merely to have what is needed. He ties this into the notion of conspicuous consumption in which individuals easily can lose perspective in their daily choices. Consumers experience an unhealthy quality of life in working too hard for expensive items or for a lifestyle of luxury. Singer holds that a more meaningful and ethically justifiable life would focus on what could be done for others, including future generations of

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humans and animals. He concludes that dispositions that run counter to this type of fulfillment can, and should be, discouraged. Philosopher Alan Cottey (2013) suggests ways in which we might move in the direction Singer urges us to go. In “The Moral Equivalent of Greed”, he characterizes greed as “a commitment to possessive individualism and unlimited accumulation.” Cottey notes that affluent societies privilege those who have honors, prizes, celebrity, power and even the custody of treasures. He concludes that this can move us in the direction of excessive individual pursuits rather than caring enough about others, the environment and the future of the earth. However, taking a cue from philosopher and psychologist William James’ classic essay, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” (James 1910) Cottey suggests that we should try shifting our attention and energies toward honoring pursuits that benefit others and the environment.

1.2  Economic Systems “Run on Greed”? However, economist Milton Friedman (1979) is widely known and celebrated for his view that, like it or not, all economic systems are “run on greed.” Still, he asserts, a free market, capitalist system shows the greatest promise for benefitting the poor as well as the rich. A widely publicized defense of greed by Friedman was made during a 1979 interview with then popular TV host Phil Donahue. In response to Donahue’s question about whether he is ever bothered by free market capitalism’s apparent contribution to large pockets of poverty all around the world, Friedman asserted that greed in business is unavoidable. However, he added, the most economically successful societies are founded on capitalism--and free market economies best serve the vast numbers of people in poverty around the world. “The world,” Friedman concluded, “runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests;” but this works best for the most in free market, capitalist systems (Donahue 1979). This view may remind many readers of eighteenth century Scottish philosopher Adam Smith’s (1976) famous assertion: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

But those who interpret Smith as equating the pursuit of self-interest with greed here overlook a fundamental feature of the context of his statement. Smith is focusing on bartering, a form of social cooperation in which trust among those bartering is essential. This is the pursuit of mutual, not separate, interests. The customer has something to offer the baker (money) in exchange for something in return (bread). Money can support the baker’s business, and bread can provide the customer with food—but not as a gift (benevolence).

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Both merchant and customer have a stake in the exchange. But neither need be greedy in acting from self-interest. The baker is in business and can be expected to place a price on the bread. The customer wants bread. If the price seems unreasonably high to the customer, he or she can try to negotiate for a lower price, with the aim of convincing the baker that settling for less is still in the baker’s business interest. Notably, Smith does not say that the self-interest of the Baker requires obtaining the maximum price that the customer might be willing to pay. Depending on how desperately the buyer might want the baker’s bread, the buyer might be willing to pay an exorbitant price—this time. However, next time the buyer may be unable or willing to pay so much. Should the baker now seek another (more affluent) buyer? Perhaps the baker would like the buyer to be a long-term customer, thus offering to sell the initial loaf of bread at a more affordable price. Or perhaps the baker wishes to be perceived as a fair-minded baker. In fact, it may be that being perceived as fair-minded is a fundamental desire of the baker—along with being perceived as a good baker. That is, it may be that the baker is more motivated by self-love than making as much money as he can. When Smith says we (the customers) should address ourselves to the baker’s self-love, he is not saying that we should address ourselves to the baker’s greed. Just as we should not expect the baker benevolently to provide us with a free loaf of bread, we should not feel a need to address his or her greedy desires, or even assume that the baker has any such desires in business transactions. Most importantly, to receive Smith’s approval, the butcher, brewer, baker, and their customers must also operate within moral constraints grounded, not just in “individuals pursuing their separate interests,” but in fairness to one another. Smith does say we should address the self-love of the baker. But this self-love is achieved by deserving the approval of others, not just by somehow acquiring it (even if by deceptive, exploitive means). Smith (1790) insists: In the race for wealth, and honours, and preferments, [a person] may run as hard as he can, and strain every nerve and every muscle, in order to outstrip all his competitors. But if he should justle or throw down any of them, the indulgence of the spectators is entirely at an end. It is a violation of fair play, which they cannot admit of.

This passage’s appeal to fair play, or justice, is quite distinct from a reliance on “the soft power of humanity,” or benevolence. Fair play, for Smith, is a reciprocal relation. Thus, it is quite distinct from simply appealing to self-interest, even though Smith could agree that, at least in the long run, it is also in the baker’s self-interest to be constrained by considerations of fair play. Fair play, Smith would insist, is something that the baker, butcher, and brewer need (morally) to embrace, even as they pursue their business self-interest. Firm commitment to this, says Smith, is “the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters”. This is the mark of self-love. So, this is the love of a good (a virtue) that opposes the acquisitiveness of greed, but without abandoning the strongly self-interested pursuit of (some) material goods. Smith does not attempt to draw a precise line between acceptable ways of pursuing what one wants for oneself and its greedy excesses. But he is committed to making such a distinction.

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1.3  A Need for Greed? Despite Adam Smith’s opposition to greed, many contemporary discussions insist that some greed is essential for the success of free market economics, and even for the prospering of the poverty-stricken. However, typically they fail to offer any clarification of what greed is and when it goes too far. Consider how greed is introduced in Nicola Horlick’s Forward in a recent book of essays entitled Greed (Brassey and Barber 2000): Ultimately, the desire to make money is what pulls people out of poverty. Charity is important when dealing with deprived areas of the world, but in a way, it is like feeding wild birds. It is not a long-term solution. The only solution is to enable people to help themselves by teaching them how to establish small businesses and nurture them. Without an element of greed, the world would not function. We just need to work out how to temper it and keep it in check.

Horlick’s contention that learning to establish and run small businesses is a reliable way of escaping poverty is well taken. But could she be suggesting that merely having a desire to make money in business (even if only to rise out of poverty) is evidence of greed? Surely more than this is needed to establish a role for greed among those living in poverty. As noted above, greed is commonly thought to involve some notion of excess. A modest desire to acquire enough money to support oneself and one’s family hardly seems excessive. What should count as excessive may not be a settled matter, but desiring to be able to put food on one’s table, afford modest clothing, shelter, and medical care for oneself and one’s family is minimal, not excessive. Why, we might ask, does learning to run a small business require some degree of greed, over and above these more modest desires? Furthermore, learning how to establish a successful small business may be done for the benefit of one’s immediate family and for the sake of one’s larger community, as well. This need not involve greed on the part of anyone, especially if the profits are used to help uplift others out of poverty. However, Horlick’s basic point is that the best way to assist those who are mired in poverty is to help them learn ways of helping themselves. Treating them like “wild birds” is at best benefiting them only in the short term. At worst, it may extend their dependency on such “help” (Horlick 2009). This point is consistent with Smith’s emphasis on the importance of individuals attaining self-love, self-esteem, and self-command. A further point, one not made by Horlick in her brief introductory comments is that, insofar as the poverty-stricken may be victims of the greed of others, the beneficiaries of that greed (who themselves are not necessarily agents of that greed) have some responsibility to assist those victims in attaining the ability to help themselves. This, we might say, is a matter of fairness that Smith can support.

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1.4  Friedman’s Moral Stance It is important to note that Milton Friedman’s endorsement of greed in a free market economy is not bereft of moral considerations. He holds that corporations and their managers are morally obligated to do their best to help the corporations’ stockholders maximize the value of their investments. Anything less than this is, he thinks, to deprive stockholders of some their entitlement. Unfortunately, Friedman says little in response to Donohue that clarifies how greedy efforts to satisfy this obligation might eventually contribute to the well-being of the poor, or how any alternative practice can be expected to make matters worse for them. Neither possible consequence is offered as an aim of those seeking to fulfill the obligation to maximize the profit of a company’s stockholder. He simply asserts that the free market capitalist practice of attempting to maximize the profits of stockholders does a better job of uplifting the condition of the poor at home or around the world than any other system that we have discovered. Here is Friedman’s (1979) response to Donohue’s concerns about greed coming at the expense of the poor: Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under orders from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-­ enterprise system.

Insofar as this is offered as an argument in support of greed, Friedman seems to be suggesting that for Henry Ford and other successful innovators success was tied to personal greed in a free enterprise system rather than to the pressures of government. However, even if this is true, it would not show that only a free enterprise system could benefit the masses in the way that it might be said that the innovations of, say, Ford did. Nor does Friedman tell us how greed played a critical role in his success. Adam Smith, too, was an advocate of innovation and free trade; but we have already seen that this was to be subject to the constraints of justice, most particularly, fair competition. Greed has no obvious place in Smith’s advocacy of free markets. Nor does governmental control of society’s innovative enterprises. So, Friedman’s endorsement of greed needs much further explication. Unclear as Friedman’s response to Donahue is, it is important to note that, in seeming contrast, elsewhere his commendation of greed is not unqualified. He, too, places moral constraints on market competition. This can be seen most clearly in Friedman’s 1970 New York Times essay on the social responsibility of business:

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There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

Although Friedman says that there is only one social responsibility of business, this in itself does not preclude an obligation to adhere to “open and free competition without deception or fraud.” This constraint would seem to provide Friedman with ample room to speak out against many forms of greed that have manifested themselves in recent years. However, he offers no elaboration. Unfortunately, although he lived to be 94, his long life ended just a couple of years before the economic crisis of 2008. So, we can only guess what he might have said about this set of events.

1.5  Sensible Knaves To offer some clarity on what Friedman could have said that would be consistent with what he actually did say, we can turn to one of Adam Smith’s best friends and philosophical allies, fellow Scotsman David Hume. Like Smith, Hume was concerned to discourage greed’s excesses in a system of free trade. In doing so, he employed his notion of a sensible knave. In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morality (1751) Hume characterizes a sensible knave in this way: [A sensible knave,] in particular incidents, may think, that an act of iniquity or infidelity will make a considerable addition to his fortune, without causing any considerable breach in the social union and confederacy. That honesty is the best policy, may be a good general rule; but is liable to many exceptions: And he, it may, perhaps, be thought, conducts himself with most wisdom, who observes the general rule, and takes advantage of all the exceptions.

Hume introduces this notion as he is putting the finishing touches on his account of morality in his Enquiry. A sensible knave is someone who publicly endorses law abiding and moral behavior generally, but who is prepared secretly to make himself an exception to the rules whenever it reasonably seems to be to his personal advantage to do so. Hume notes that, should the knave’s tactics become known, the public response would be that such a knave lacks moral integrity. The complaint is not that the sensible knave is prepared to act contrary to his own self-interest—quite the opposite. Possibly this sensible knave actually is acting contrary to his self-­ interest. However, the public outcry is not about this. It is, as Smith makes clear, about the injustice done to the knave’s victim. As a practical matter, in his “Political Essay #6” (1994), Hume suggests that, as a guard against the moral mischief that even a few sensible knaves could cause, we should presume something that he concedes is clearly false—viz., that everyone is such a knave. Given this supposition, to keep everyone in check, it would seem that we need some rather strict and enforceable laws and regulations. Friedman might object that Hume is too ready to rely on strong governance here. But notice that Hume’s advocacy of constraints is quite distinct from Friedman’s

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worry that a strong government might order entrepreneurs what to do. Still, Friedman might reply that we can have a more trusting understanding that those who engage in free market enterprise will, on their own, largely comply with Smith’s moral constraints, thus making a strong handed, punitive government unnecessary and actually oppressive. However, the record of near economic collapse shortly after Friedman’s death could possibly have shaken his confidence somewhat had he witnessed it. What needs to be borne in mind is that, whatever specific stance Friedman might have taken on the appropriate role of government, he offers moral arguments for his position on free market capitalism. Those leading our corporations, he holds, have a moral obligation to undertake profitable ventures and to watch over profits in such a way that stockholder investments are not only protected, but gain maximally. They have this obligation, argues Friedman, because they have been entrusted by stockholders to try to maximize the corporation’s profits; and this obligation has been willingly accepted. Friedman does not say that it is permissible to compromise morality in the name of profit-maximizing. Like Smith, Friedman does not allow self-interest to run unchecked over morality. This is also the case for Hume. However, Hume’s practical concern about the moral mischief an unchecked sensible knave could bring about leads him to advocate strong enough laws to discourage most would-be sensible knaves from taking the chance of being apprehended. Still, the success of a sensible knave is dependent on the good behavior of most others who are, with Smith and Hume—and apparently Friedman-- already genuinely committed to avoiding deception, fraud, and other morally questionable actions in the world of free trade that depends on mutual trust in business relations. Why, then, does Hume advise, contrary to his what he actually believes, that we should assume that those in governmental positions actually are sensible knaves? It is to be prepared for the worst—viz., the possibility that there are enough sensible knaves who, in the absence of sanctions, will actually succeed in their knavery—at the expense of social order and a flourishing society. It does not take the misbehavior of everyone to foul up a society. To succeed in defending society against the willingness of even a relative few to jeopardize the well-being of that society, government must ready itself to exercise its strong arm against the attempts of knaves. But to be wholly successful, it must operate in a society in which most are not morally hospitable to knavery. What does Friedman offer that will assure the readers of his 1970 New York Times article that the economic and governmental system he advocates sufficiently guards against the sort of knavery Hume worries about? Friedman (1970) says: In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.

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What is especially noteworthy in this statement is its assertion that corporate executives have a responsibility, not simply to try to maximize profits for their business owners, but to do this “while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.” Where greed stands in this is, it would seem, a fundamental question. Unfortunately, Friedman offers little help in answering it, as he tells us nothing about what he takes greed to be. Perhaps a further look at Hume’s sensible knave will provide some help, at least in understanding what Friedman, in his own terms, should oppose. From the perspective of a sensible knave, what attitude toward greed prevails? It would seem that a sensible knave is receptive to using deception or fraud insofar as he thinks it is to his advantage to use it. Of course, as sensible, he will use great caution. But as far as he is concerned, the only concern he has is to avoid getting caught while getting away with his misdeed. In particular cases, a successful knave may get away with his “iniquity” without anyone, not even the victim, noticing. Or, if the victim realizes he or she has been wronged, a particular knave will do his best not to be identified by anyone as the wrongdoer. But this does not mean that Hume would say that such success should be viewed as moral success. Friedman’s opposition to deception and fraud seems to side with Hume on this. So, in their public statements, Friedman, Hume, and sensible knaves themselves, can be expected to condemn knavery. Unfortunately, Friedman, unlike Hume, offers no suggestions about how such knavery might best be discouraged. He can only hope that existing law, plus the fear of being caught, will suffice. If a capitalist system can be devised to meet Friedman’s moral demand, and it is also the case that, as Friedman maintains, such a capitalist system shows the only hope for uplifting the poor and oppressed in the world, then we would have a strong moral argument for aligning ourselves with such a system. But Friedman’s belief that all societies are run by greed raises a concern about the sorts of constraints on greed that he supports. Unconstrained greed leaves open the door for some to make enormous profits at the expense of the many (and, most especially, the impoverished)—and at the expense of the moral capital of the greedy. Admittedly, Friedman says that pursuit of profit is to be constrained by law and “ethical custom”. For these constraints to be sufficient, however, we need some assurance that the prevailing law and “ethical custom” can themselves survive critical scrutiny. The fact that both can fail to satisfy this requirement means that much more needs to be said. But Friedman remains silent on such matters. Although many have concluded that Friedman was the clear winner of his 1979 “debate” with Phil Donahue about greed, it is not at all clear that this is so. The question that Donahue asked Friedman was whether, in light of all the poverty in the world (not just in the U.S.A.) that seems at least causally related to free market capitalism, didn’t he have some moral concerns about the role of greed? Surprisingly, this simply triggered Friedman’s defense of unspecified greed, at least as he thinks it best operates in a free market. The question of whether capitalist greed is ever excessive is not addressed. But this was Donahue’s question to Friedman. So, the

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“debate” seems unfinished, rather than won or lost. The next step is to make some progress in clarifying just what greed is.

1.6  What Is Greed? In order to get a better grip on what should count as greed in critical discussions of its pros and cons, one might seek a definition of ‘greed’. However, before taking on such a task, it is advisable to heed the warning of Thomas Reid (2010), another celebrated eighteenth century Scottish philosopher (who was very familiar with the writings of both Smith and Hume): It is well known, that there are many things perfectly understood, and of which we have clear and distinct conceptions, which cannot be logically defined. No man ever attempted to define magnitude; yet there is no word whose meaning is more distinctly or more generally understood. We cannot give a logical definition of thought, of duration, of number, or of motion. When men attempt to define such things, they give no light. They may give a synonymous word or phrase, but it will probably be a worse for a better. If they will define, the definition will either be grounded upon a hypothesis, or it will darken the subject rather than a through light upon it.

Could ‘greed’ be one of those words that we understand well enough (even though less than “perfectly”) but cannot ‘logically define’? If by ‘logically define’ Reid means stating the necessary and sufficient conditions for the correct use of the term, it is likely correct to say that if we attempt such a definition, we are asking for trouble (or darkness). However, it is also likely correct to deny that ‘greed’ is “perfectly understood”. So, it seems reasonable to seek out some clarification of the term, but to settle for something other than a ‘logical definition’.

1.7  A Prototype Approach Noting the relatively scant amount of recent research on greed, Long Wang and J. Keith Murnighan (2011) attribute this to the “enormous difficulties that surround the seemingly simple task of defining greed.” In response to this, Terri G. Seuntjens, Marcel Zeelenbeg, Seger M. Breugelmans, and Niels van de Ven (2015a, 2015b) take a different approach. Rather than seeking a core definition that identifies a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for ‘greed’, they favor what they call a prototype analysis. Taking the concept of a chair as a model, they reject the notion that there must be a core definition of ‘greed’. (This is in contrast to, say, the definition of a plane geometric figure such as a square.) The prototype approach does not assume that all important features of a concept are present in all of its applications. Instead, it seeks a list of representative features of, say, chairs that enables us to identify certain objects as “more or less prototypical

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versions of a chair.” Given the scarcity of empirical literature on greed and the important role greed seemingly plays in daily life, Seuntjens et al. say they “simply want to get a better understanding of what people see as important characteristics of greed”: With this approach laypeople are asked to list characteristics they think to be important to describe the construct under investigation. These characteristics are then evaluated and placed into larger sets of features by independent coders. The features that are identified as being most representative of a construct make up the prototype of the investigated construct.

A prototype approach like this might seem to have somewhat limited appropriateness, relying as it does on the understanding of ordinary persons. Scientific concepts of, say, neutrons, electrons, and genes cannot be reliably approached in this way. Lay persons’ understanding of such concepts is dependent on what they have gleaned from those scientists who are presumed to have the requisite expertise. Greed, however, is a conspicuous feature of our everyday life and our understanding of it is filtered through practical, everyday experience. Further, for most it is a normatively skewed concept, one that commonly (although not always) conveys disapproval. So, we should not expect either scientific precision or a consensus of laypersons to yield a settled definition. Since the outcome of the prototype approach to ‘greed’ is determined by the views of ordinary laypeople, any list of characteristics should have a look of familiarity. And, indeed, the list in Seuntjens et al. does. In addition to the sort of unfairness emphasized by Aristotle, it includes maximization (wanting more), excessive self-interest, materialism, envy, risk-taking (even to the point of recklessness), impulsiveness, lack of perspective taking, anti-social behavior, empathic shortcomings (even to the point of psychopathy), and an exaggerated sense of entitlement. Through various forms of social disapproval by playmates, parents, teachers, and other influential adults, young children are discouraged from allowing such predilections to govern their behavior. Still, to some extent at least, adults as well as children do manifest strong, if excessive, desires for “more” that can be difficult to satisfy completely. That is, greed in some form or other can have great staying power throughout our lives. Money is one of the obvious attractors. But greed’s “wanting more” is not always for money. It can also involve excessive desire for such things as sex, food, power, and status.

1.8  “Modest Greed” Despite greed’s continued influence throughout adult life, most of us do not pride ourselves in its persistence in us. Some, however, apparently do. Perhaps the most notorious recent supporter of unfettered greed is the fictional character, Gordon Gekko, who proclaims in the 1987 film Wall Street, “Greed is good.” Presumably, at least part of what he has in mind is that greed fuels a productive economy that can

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serve us all well. Some will be more successful than others; but, allegedly, even the less well-off will benefit at least indirectly from the achievements of the greedy. (Henry Ford may have become incredibly wealthy and influential, but most of the rest of us are driving cars rather than walking or depending on horses to travel.) But is a greed-driven marketplace the only, or the best, means of benefitting the less well off? And even if it is, does this make greed good? But, more basically, we still need to ask the Gordon Gekkos of this world: What is greed? Gekko does not answer any of these questions. (Instead, before the film ends, he does go to jail for his crimes.) In his A Better Way to Think About Business, philosopher Robert Solomon (1999) offers answers to these questions, but greed does not fare well. Turning first to Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, Solomon (p. 27) remarks. Plato referred to pleonexia, a serious vice that might best be understood as grasping. “Grasping” has a sense of desperation about it, something unseemly, the unmistakable suggestion of “too much.” And that is what greed is, “too much.” In the film Key Largo, Edward G.  Robinson discovers in a word what he has always wanted, what drives his vicious criminal career: “more!” he says with gleeful enthusiasm, “that’s it, more!!” …. Greed (avarice) is an excess. It is like gluttony, an embarrassment, and the explanation, “I wanted more” does not serve as an excuse but rather confirms the unbridled vulgarity.

So, Solomon lays out for us the alleged unseemliness of greed. Gordon Gekko might reply that, although greed involves wanting more, this does not necessarily involve gluttony. Instead, it embraces idealism and ambition, a vision for the future. This, some might think, is what Adam Smith had in mind in his Wealth of Nations. The division of labor results in greater efficiency in production and, with that, in more readily meeting the demands of the market, thereby paving the way to an ever-­ expanding market. Guided by greed, business can flourish; and, without this being anyone’s aim, the greater good of society can result—as if guided by an “invisible hand.” Solomon’s (p. 28) firm rejoinder to this sort of endorsement of greed is: “Greed is not vision. It is a lack of vision. Let us see it for what it is, an extreme form of selfishness, an oblivion to all virtues, and neglect or contempt for any good but one’s own.” Fortunately, Solomon continues, business success does not require greed. As the subtitle of his book suggests (How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success), he argues that personal integrity is quite compatible with business success. “There is a fine line between idealism and ambition, which one might describe as “reaching” and avarice and greed, which are something quite different.” With this, the Adam Smith, author of both The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, would agree. At the same time, the possibility of a successful sensible knave, or even a conclave of sensible knaves sworn to mutual secrecy, sustains a worry that an excessive reach of ambition may sometimes prevail. However, Jason Kawall’s (2012) article, “Rethinking Greed,” introduces a more subtle analysis of greed. Solomon typically treats greed as a vice of individuals, one that is characterized by their unseemly and uncontrolled selfish desires for more. Excessive, if not obsessive, desires for individual gain are emphasized. In contrast, Kawall (p. 223) shifts our attention to a more moderate notion of the greed of individuals as such, but one whose

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implications have potentially dire collective consequences. Acknowledging that greed is commonly associated with individual psychological features such as insatiable and obsessive desires for more and more, Kawall argues that we need to attend to what can be characterized as “modest greed”. This, he says, is not a matter of individuals “longing for material goods or wealth with intense desires.” Instead, individuals can have “quite modest desires, but ones whose satisfaction they pursue excessively relative to other goods.” Greed, suggests Kawall (p.  224), suffers from a kind of disproportionality: “greedy agents pursue objects to a degree that is disproportionate to their value relative to other goods that agents could be pursuing, or to the harms associated with their pursuit.” The idea of modest greed clarifies “both why the globally wealthy may in fact be greedy even when not obsessive about wealth or status, and why greed will be an especially problematic vice for future generations” (p. 226). If we accept Kawall’s analysis of a more “modest greed,” it is not just the globally wealthy who are greedy. Most of us who do not live in poverty are, as well. Dale Jamieson (2009, p. 231) warns us of the devastating consequences that can result from our failure to attend thoughtfully to the collective consequences of relentlessly pursuing material goods that otherwise seem to be quite humdrum and ordinary. Kawall (p. 236) echoes this concern in the concluding lines of “Rethinking Greed”: “It is our thoughtless consumption, our ignoring of alternatives, and our willingness to pass off costs that are now the potentially most worrying drivers of greed.” Given these considerations, the importance of alerting even young children to the moral shortcomings of greed is evident. How this might best be done is a critical matter. At the individual level, the lessons are commonly swift and decisive. However, as children move into adulthood these lessons may lose some of their grip. This is a matter that should be of greater concern than is commonly acknowledged.

1.9  Greed in Children and Adults As we have seen, one problem with Milton Friedman’s response to Donahue is that it speaks so loosely of greed that it is difficult to determine what sort of greed he is talking about. We have already noted that David Hume and Adam Smith are opposed to greed even though they advocate a free market economy. Hume worries that greed threatens social order, Smith that it corrupts those who enter into bartering relations with others. Hume urges us to be constantly on guard against the possibility of sensible knaves lurking among us. Here perhaps it is important to make a distinction. If a disposition secretly to make oneself an exception to the rules is pervasive in a person, we have a true sensible knave. However, someone could be disposed to knavery in a less pervasive way. In contrast to thinking of others as filled with knavish tendencies, think of them as tempted to act as a long-term sensible knave would, but only in this or that situation—perhaps a “once in a lifetime” opportunity.

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This is how we could think of young children. Most are not incorrigibly knavish, but we do think of them as needing guidance and encouragement in not behaving greedily—not because they are always looking for opportunities to behave greedily, but because sometimes they are tempted. So, we look for opportunities to promote their moral character, to discourage them from behaving greedily in such circumstances. Apparently, some economists and businesspeople think that the grip of greed’s moral rejection by children needs to be loosened somewhat as they enter the adult world. This would include Milton Friedman. However, it would not include Adam Smith. His account of the development of the moral sentiments in his Theory of the Moral Sentiments combines the emergence of our rational powers along with the expected impact this can have on moral affect, judgment, and behavior. No need to modify the total rejection of greed is mentioned as one moves from childhood to adulthood is discussed. As with Hume, it seems that greed is consistently opposed.1 Of course, Smith and Hume were writing about economic matters and greed in the eighteenth century, prior to the onset of the industrial revolution. Imagine now a fictional but more contemporary setting. Suppose a used car dealer is failing to do well in his car sales and asks someone for a loan in order to stay in business. The would-be lender says, “I’ll lend you some money so that you can continue your business. But I expect a good return, too. So, let me give you some advice about how to succeed. Secretly change the odometer readings on the cars, lowering the numbers. Also, hide the accident/damage history of your cars as best you can, keeping accident records from would-be buyers. In short, make things look better for the customer than they really are whenever and however you can get away with it. Do the best for us that you can—maximize your profits & give me a big cut, as well.” Clearly Smith and Hume would oppose what is being urged. What would Friedman say about such tactics? They involve deception and fraud and are against the law. So, to be consistent with his expressed views, he should oppose such tactics on moral grounds, if for no other reason. Friedman would agree that the car dealer has no responsibility to maximize his profits in such ways, even though greed might well tempt him to try.

1.10  Learning How to Help Oneself Friedman might well agree with Horlick that the poor need to learn how to help themselves by becoming business entrepreneurs. Those who are failing already in business (e.g., the imagined used car dealer) also need to learn how to make money by more acceptable tactics. But it is not at all clear yet, that anyone needs to be 1  For a discussion of Hume’s opposition to greed, see Stewart Sutherland, 2014. Greed: From Gordon Gekko to David Hume, London: Haus Curiosities. For a clarification of Smith’s opposition, see Jonathan B. Wight, 2005. “Adam Smith and Greed,” Journal of Private Enterprise 21, no.1, pp. 46–58.

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greedy in the process. Children might on occasion think otherwise. Imagine two children setting up a “lemonade” stand on the sidewalk in front of one of their homes. At first they add no sugar to their mix, labeling their drink as “natural”. It does not sell well. They taste it, and find it to be too sour. So, they decide to add some refined, white sugar. Sugar, they convince themselves, is also “natural.” So, they do not change their natural label. Sales improve, but customers are none the wiser. As they think about their success, the two children begin to wonder if they are being dishonest. They then realize that if they were to tell customers that they had added refined sugar, they might well lose some of them. Still, says one child to the other, “We should be honest with customers. If I were a customer, I’d want to know.” “So would I,” agrees the other. “We mustn’t be greedy, you know.” In discussing this situation with their parents, we might well expect them to receive their approval.

1.11  Becoming an Adult So, the question remains: Why should children should be encouraged to accept the view that, as they move into adulthood, greed isn’t really as bad as they were brought up to believe? Shouldn’t they agree that the lender’s advice to the failing car salesperson is unacceptable? But it might be thought that, just as children learn to modify their conception of lying as they mature, this makes room for the legitimacy of some forms of greed. In childhood, lying is generally characterized as wrong. This is not necessarily presented to them as a general theory or principle about the wrongness of lying. Examples of wrongful lying abound, inviting children to generalize—but not carelessly. In fact, exceptional circumstances are not hard for children to recognize. For example, Phillip Hallie’s Lest Innocent Blood be Shed (1978), provides the powerful example of young children joining their parents in lying to the opposition about their providing safe refuge for Jews in French villages during World War II.  Asked later about whether such lying bothered them, they said, no, that they understood innocent lives were at stake. Although generally disposed to regard lying as wrong, even as children they realized that there were exceptions. In this there was agreement with the adults in their communities. Even the classic story about George Washington telling his father that he chopped down their cherry tree need not be understood as the young boy holding that it would always be wrong for him to lie. For example, J. Berg Esenwin and Marietta Stockard’s version of the story concludes: “To the end of his life [George Washington] was just as brave and honorable as he was that day as a little boy.”2 On that day, young George is credited with saying, “I cannot tell a lie, father.” Readers commonly interpret this as meaning something like, “I can never tell a lie, father.” However, the story is actually focused on his bravery and honor, both of which can be given 2  For a discussion of how the George Washington story can be understood as not committing the boy to a more sweeping rejection of lying, see Pritchard’s “Moral Philosophy for Children and Character Education,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy, 14:1, pp. 13–26.

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contextual interpretations. Does lying necessarily conflict with either of these virtues? Young George could have been saying, “I cannot lie about this wrong I have done.” But this allows for the possibility that he could lie about where his innocent father might have hidden in order to prevent a would-be assailant from killing him—an act of bravery and honor. Can something comparable be said about greed in the child’s world? It is not clear that plausible exceptions to the uniform rejection of greed can be so readily found. If, for example, a gifted child athlete insists on being allowed extra turns at batting practice at the expense of less gifted team members missing their turns, it is appropriate to say that this would be greedy—and unfair. If it is claimed that the more able athlete needs these extra turns at bat in order to enhance the team’s performance in the next game, the gifted athlete’s insistence can still be seen as greedy, and unfair. So, although children can be expected to recognize that there are understandable exceptions to the notion that it is wrong for them to lie, can they be expected to recognize that, as children, greed is sometimes acceptable, too--thus easing the transition to an adult world that may be more permissive regarding greed? One complicating factor is that, as a child makes the transition to adulthood, the idea of what constitutes lying may remain basically the same. However, during that same period of transition, one’s basic understanding of greed may undergo significant changes. It may be that ‘greed’ in the child’s world is focused on such things as taking more than one’s fair share of food and on the acquisition and control of more and more toys, whereas for adults it is more focused on the acquisition of wealth, prestige, power, and property. The adult focus, then, may presume a familiarity with nuanced concepts beyond the grasp of young children. So, the question is whether greed as seen through young children’s eyes is complex enough to have significant carry-over into the adult world of greed. If it is, but now they are expected to adopt a more tolerant view of greed, how is this transition to be accomplished without diminishing their moral values, if not their moral integrity? This is an important transitional question, but one that thus far has received little, if any, attention.

1.12  John Rawls’ “Original Position” To explore this transitional question a bit further, the work of contemporary philosopher John Rawls may be helpful. In his landmark book, A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls presents readers with a hypothetical model to generate acceptable principles that could be implemented for in an ideally just society. Our concern here is how greed might be evaluated in such a society. This society would include both children and adults, and it therefore should include an account of how one’s sense of justice develops and would function in such a society. Rawls invites us to imagine an “original position” of persons in which each individual is shrouded under a “veil of ignorance” regarding his or her actual standing in society. In such a condition one does not know one’s age, gender, educational

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background, occupation, level of wealth, or any other information about one’s particular standing in society. Before this veil is lifted so that one can take into account these factors in one’s actual circumstances, participants in the original position are required to decide what basic principle(s) of justice should be employed in determining what should be the social and economic structure of their society. These principles can be expected to be quite general (as those recommended by Rawls are), but they should be substantive enough to make it possible to assess the social and economic standing of the society’s members. Absent knowledge of one’s actual social and economic circumstances, Rawls assumes that rational self-interest alone will urge participants in the original position to imagine, as best they can, what each kind of possible position in society would be like—for any such position could end up being theirs once the veil is lifted. Under these hypothetical constraints, how would considerations of greed fare? Rawls does not explicitly ask this question. But we can. It would seem that, once the veil of ignorance is lifted, at least some of those with greedy dispositions could end up being “winners”. But by what means? If by fraud or deception, then the “losers” (should they become aware of being victims of fraud or deception) understandably will be angered. Still, while the veil is still there, some may want to approve of greed that results in greater overall prosperity—until they imagine themselves as such victims in this process. At that prospect, they might well wish they had rejected any proposed principles of justice that permit this sort of greed. But if they have already approved principles of justice that permit, if not encourage, greedy business affairs, it seems they can hardly complain—for they have approved this state of affairs as just. But as a defender of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative might put it, this means that they have, as a matter of principle (and bad fortune), accepted being treated merely as means to the ends of others. (Kant 1989) But this, Kant argues, is morally impermissible, as it is a denial of their dignity. Rawls shares this view, and his original position is designed with an eye on ensuring that no such principles will be approved. So, implicit in Rawls’ hypothetical situation is that the participants do have dignity, and this must be respected. Insofar as a purported principle of justice permits greedy practices that treat any person merely as a means to the ends of others, it should not issue from the hypothetical situation. This does not mean that defensible principles of justice cannot approve of inequalities. Rawls points out that accepting inequalities among us once the veil is lifted can be approved, provided that those who are the worst off are in better positions than they would be if greater equality were insisted upon—as long as this would not offend their sense of justice, and its underlying value of respect for human dignity (e.g., as being enslaved presumably would). Laws and practices that permit fraud and deception should fail these Kantian moral restrictions. So far, it seems that Friedman could (and does) agree with these moral restrictions on business practices. Nevertheless, he does not explicitly offer Kantian or Rawlsian arguments for such limitations on permissible greed.

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In any case, it is not at all clear that a Rawlsian approach to the development of a sense of justice requires children to loosen their objections to greed as they move into adulthood. At the same time, it would seem fair to object that, if Friedman is right in saying that even the best economic systems are “run by greed,” he should provide Donahue with a more direct answer to his question about whether poverty has resulted from, and continues to be supported by, unavoidable greed.

1.13  Monopoly Although Friedman holds that greed is pervasive in the economic systems around the world, he also says that business practices in systems he favors should comply with law and ethical custom, as well as avoid deception and fraud. This would seem to be a strike against much of the greed that has surfaced over the years in U.S. business practices. So, it is surprising that Friedman completely rejected Phil Donahue’s concerns about greed and poverty in their 1979 discussion. Still, Friedman might contend that if his general position were accepted, some forms of greed would still survive moral criticism. What forms might be defensible? The popular game, Monopoly, might help answer this question. Monopoly is a board game with which most of us are familiar. First commercialized by Parker Brothers in the late 1930’s, its origins can actually be traced back to the early 1900’s. Although it is commonly regarded as a game that celebrates greed, the game’s original designer, stenographer Elizabeth Magie, was trying to use her “Landlord Game” (as she called her early version) to demonstrate greed’s deep flaws.3 Ironically, Magie seems to have been betrayed by a friend who took credit for “inventing” her game. Barely acknowledging Magie’s work in developing the boardgame, he collaborated with Parker Brothers, became a millionaire as a result, and succeeded in obscuring the contribution of Magie (who barely broke even financially in her efforts to introduce to the public this and other games she devised). Magie’s moral and intellectual inspiration came from Henry George, the popular late nineteenth century social critic.4 George advocated taxation for the use of land as an alternative to ownership of land. Capitalism would be grounded in the productive uses of land, not in its ownership. Fair wages were to be earned by those who invested their time and labor in those productive enterprises, and in the exchange of goods produced. The story of Elizabeth Magie’s efforts to raise public awareness of and concern about late nineteenth century monopolists is highlighted in her “Landlord Game,” an early version of Monopoly, which she developed during her spare hours when she was not working as a stenographer. She hoped her game 3  This is discussed in detail in Mary Pilon’s The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game (Bloomsbury, 2015). 4  A popular speaker and prolific writer, among his many publications George authored Progress and Poverty (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1881), which sold millions of copies worldwide.

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would help support George’s progressive ideas about what he took to be appropriate and inappropriate uses of property. In this game, as in the game that Parker Brothers later commercialized as Monopoly, everyone starts out with the same amount of money in their possession. A deck of cards containing properties, railroads, and other assets is shuffled, and each player receives an equal number of face-down cards. The game begins with a roll of the dice. So far, so good—all is “fair and square”. Even so, once the cards are turned over, some players are clearly better off than others. Through “the luck of the draw,” someone might have acquired Boardwalk or Park Place, which charge the highest rent for players who land on them as they move around the board. Others might have drawn low rent properties, or no properties at all. The game proceeds by players rolling the dice and moving their pieces accordingly. Everyone plays by the same rules. However, following these rules has different consequences for the players, depending on their initial resources, their astuteness in managing them, and the good or bad luck that comes with rolls of the dice. Cheating is not allowed. The only deception allowed is in the form of withholding information that is not required to be revealed. So, Friedman’s criteria for acceptable business operations seemingly are met. All acquisitions and financial transactions are “fair and square.”

1.14  Is “Fair and Square” Enough? As described so far, Adam Smith’s conditions of fair trade are satisfied. However, Smith also worried about the formation of monopolies, which pose a threat to free trade. So, a remaining question is how a system of free trade, even one that insists that all acquisitions and financial transactions must be “fair and square,” can prevent monopolies from being formed that actually distort, if not destroy, free trade. As Magie’s “Landlord Game” and its later version, Monopoly, illustrate, Smith’s “fair and square” trade restrictions do not, by themselves, ensure that such monopolies will not form. In fact, ironically, this is how the game is won. A further irony is that, once the game is won, the operation of the economy is frozen. Everyone but the winner is bankrupt, rending the winner’s spoils of no further use. Players can, of course, elect to play the game again; but it is started afresh, with a complete redistribution of original assets. There may be a new winner, but the stalemate results are the same. The final irony is that this is just what Elisabeth Magie was hoping her game would illustrate, and that its players would then apply the lessons learned to their everyday world and call for the sorts of changes Henry George had so powerfully advocated during his lifetime. The fictional story of Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge McDuck, which became popularized during the same era Monopoly emerged for popular consumption, is also instructive. Scrooge McDuck prides himself in acquiring his wealth through “fair and square” methods. Beginning as a youngster in his native Scotland, his path to riches was long and difficult. He was introduced to the hard knocks of earning money in his very first job. His task was to clean and polish a pair of boots caked

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with thick, hard mud. For this he earned a dime. Pleased at first, he then realized that the American coin was worthless in Scotland. Then “little Scroogie” resolved: “This should be a lesson! Life is filled with tough jobs, and there’ll always be sharpies to cheat me! Well, I’ll be tougher than the toughies, and sharper than the sharpies— and I’ll make my money square!” (Rosa 2010). Scrooge McDuck apparently thought that restricting himself to “fair and square” initial methods of acquisition exempted him from the charge of being greedy. However, what this overlooks is the need to examine the assumption that once we are assured that people’s acquisitions have been “fairly and squarely” obtained, the use to which they put them cannot bear the marks of greed. The game of Monopoly seems to challenge this assumption. With the accumulation of wealth comes power. How that power is used has much to say about how wealth is subsequently distributed. Scrooge McDuck is noted for hoarding his wealth, even from his nephew Donald Duck and his three great nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck. They regard him as selfish, stingy, and therefore greedily guarding (hoarding) his resources—however legitimately acquired. As the game of Monopoly illustrates, it seems that the power that grows as one’s assets grow need not involve the violation of laws or the employment of deceptive or fraudulent tactics. Insofar as a capitalist free enterprise system can simulate this game, it would seem that the sort of greed that Milton Friedman endorses could thrive—for a while. But, as in the game itself, it could bring about a deadly collapse that no one should welcome. So, from the standpoint of those players whose greed is rewarded, the challenge would seem to be to figure out how to keep the “game” going. However, as the next chapter will attempt to show, the challenge of economic sustainability poses problems today that were hardly imaginable in the early days of free enterprise capitalism.

References Balot, Ryan. 2001. Greed and injustice in classical Athens. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brassey, A., Barber, S. 2000. Greed. UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Cottey, Alan. 2013. Moral equivalents of greed. AI & SOCIETY 28 (4): 531–539. Donahue, P. 1979. Television interview with Milton Friedman. Donahue, “The Virtues of Capitalism,” Chicago: CBS/Multimedia, Viewed 10 April 2017, from YouTube https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=MQ0-­cDKMS5M. Friedman, M. 1970. The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. New York Times Magazine, Sept. 13, 1970. Hallie, Philip. 1978. Lest innocent blood be shed. New York: HarperCollins. Horlick, Nicola. 2009. Forward. In Greed, ed. Alexix Brassey and Stephen Barber. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hume, David. 1751. Sect. IX. An enquiry concerning the principles of morals. London: Oxford University Press. Hume, D. 1994. Hume: Political essays, Essay #VI, ed. Haakonssen, Knud. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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James, W. 1910. “The moral equivalent of war.” https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html. Accessed 3.21.2021 Jamieson, D. 2009. Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. 1989. Foundations of the metaphysics of morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck. New York: Prentice-Hall. Kawall, Jason. 2012. Rethinking greed. In Human adaptation to climate change: The human virtues of the future, ed. Allen Thompson and Jeremy Bendiik-Keymer. Boston: The MIT Press. Pilon, Mary. 2015. The monopolists: Obsession, fury, and the scandal behind the World’s favorite board game. New York: Bloomsbury. Rawls, John. 1971. A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reid, T. 2010/1785. Essays on the active powers of man, eds. Haakonssen, Knud, and James A. Harris. Edinburgh University Press. Rosa, Don. 2010. Walt Disney’s the life and times of Scrooge McDuck. Vol. 1. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Boom Entertainment, Inc. Seuntjens, Terry G., Marcel Zeelenberg, Seger M.  Breugelmans, and Niels van de Ven. 2015a. Defining Greed. British Journal of Psychology 106: 505–525. ———. 2015b. Dispositional greed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences 108 (6): 917–933. Shklar, Judith N. 1990. The faces of injustice. New Haven: Yale University Press. Singer, P. 2000. Greed. Radio interview with Hugh LaFollette, WETS, viewed 22 May, 2017 from http://www.hughlafollette.com/radio/greed-­ps.htm. Smith, Adam. 1790/1984. The theory of moral sentiments, eds. Raphael, D.D., and A.L. Macfie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc. ———. 1976/1981. An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, In the Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith, eds. Campbell, R.H., and A.S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc. Solomon, Robert. 1999. A better way to think about business. New York: Oxford University Press. Sutherland, Stewart. 2014. Greed: From Gordon Gekko to David Hume. London: Haus Curiosities. Tickle, Phyllis A. 2004. Greed. New York: Oxford University Press. Wall Street. 1987. Screenplay by Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser. Dir. Oliver Stone. Prod. American Entertainment Partners Americent Films, 20th Century Fox. Viewed on 18 January 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF_iorX_MAw. Wang, Long, and J.  Keith Murnighan. 2011. On Greed. The Academy of Management Annals 5(1): 282. Wight, Jonathan B. 2005. Adam Smith and greed. Journal of Private Enterprise 21 (1): 46–58. Michael S. Pritchard is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and founding director of the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society at Western Michigan University. He continues occasionally to teach courses in practical ethics, business ethics, media ethics, the history of eighteenth century Scottish moral philosophy (Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and David Hume), as well as the philosophical thinking of children. He is a founding member of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) and of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum (SEAC). For 7 years he served as co-editor, with Elaine Englehardt, of SEAC’s official journal, Teaching Ethics. Among his many publications are: Philosophical Adventures With Children (University Press of America: 1985); On Becoming Responsible (University Press of Kansas: 1991); Communication Ethics, with James Jaksa (Wadsworth: 1988 & 1994); Engineering Ethics: Concepts & Cases, with C.E. Harris, Michael Rabins, Ray James, Elaine Englehardt (Cengage: 1995, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2013, and 2018); Reasonable Children (University Press of Kansas: 1996); Professional Integrity (University Press of Kansas: 2007); Ethical Challenges of Academic Administration, co-edited with Elaine Englehardt, Kerry Romesburg, and Brian Schrag (Springer: 2010); Obstacles to Ethical DecisionMaking, with Patricia Werhane, Laura Hartman, Crina Archer, and Elaine Englehardt (Cambridge  

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University Press, 2013); Ethics Across the Curriculum—Pedagogical Perspectives, coedited with Elaine Englehardt (Springer: 2018). Elaine E.  Englehardt is the Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Utah Valley University (UVU). For almost thirty years, she has written and directed seven multiyear, national grants in the area of Ethics and Ethics Across the curriculum. One grant founded the Ethics program at UVU, and another funded the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum and the journal Teaching Ethics. She is currently President of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum (SEAC), after serving as a founder (1999) and board member. For seven years she served as coeditor of Teaching Ethics, the official journal of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum with Michael Pritchard. Among her publications are: Interpersonal Communication Ethics: Friends, Intimates, Sexuality, Marriage and Family (Harcourt Brace, 2001); The Organizational Self and Ethical Conduct: Sunlit Virtue and Shadowed Resistance (Harcourt Brace, 2001), with James A. Anderson; Media Ethics for a Principled Society (Wadsworth, 2002), with Ralph Barney. Ethics and Life: An Interdisciplinary Look at the Humanities (McGraw Hill, 2010), with Don Schmeltekopf, 1–4th editions; Ethical Challenges of Academic Administration (Springer, 2010), edited with Michael Pritchard, Kerry Romesburg, and Brian Scrag; Obstacles to Ethical DecisionMaking (Cambridge 2013), with Patricia Werhane, Laura Hartman, Crina Archer, and Michael Pritchard; Taking Sides: Business Ethics, 11, 12 13, 14th editions (McGraw-Hill, 2014), edited with Lisa Newton and Michael Pritchard; Ethics Across the Curriculum, Pedagogical Perspectives, with Michael Pritchard, Netherlands: Springer, 2018; Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases (2019), with C.E. Harris, Elaine Englehardt, and Ray James, New York: Cengage. She has written numerous peer reviewed articles and over a dozen book chapters. She has served in various administrative positions at Utah Valley University including vice president, associate vice president, dean and director. Her PhD is from the University of Utah.  

Chapter 2

Tales of Greed and the Search for Remedies Elaine E. Englehardt and Michael S. Pritchard

Abstract  Examples of greed and environmental beneficence will be discussed in this chapter. The first example involves the crash of Wallstreet in 2008. Subprime mortgages instruments, complex derivatives and overleveraging in investment banks were major provocateurs in bringing down the economy. Volkswagen’s deceptive practices in measuring diesel fuel efficiency follows. The final example of greed is Boeing and the shoddy decision-making processes on the Boeing 737 MAX that led to the catastrophic crashes resulting in 346 deaths. Good news examples comprise the second focus of this chapter. Some corporations have also demonstrated practices of good will, particularly toward the environment. We focus specifically on Interface Carpets, Unilever and 3M. Keywords  Collateralized debt obligations · Sustainability · Greed · Defeat device · MCAS · Engineering culture · Environment

2.1  Introduction The first part of this chapter discusses examples of business and corporate actions that would be categorized as greedy according to our previous chapter. Three examples of greed will be analyzed, beginning with the stock market crash of 2008. Rather than focusing on one particular bank, mortgage brokerage or other entity, the first example will include problems caused by a variety of individuals, firms and government responses. The second example focuses on the greed involved in the

E. E. Englehardt (*) Utah Valley University, Orem, UT, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. S. Pritchard Willard A. Brown Professor of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. S. Pritchard, E. E. Englehardt (eds.), Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal, Ethical Economy 58, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4_2

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Volkswagen emissions scandal that brought this prestigious organization into disrepute, including jail sentences, stiff fines, and automobile buybacks. The Boeing 737 MAX will be the concluding example, with a focus on corporate greed where choices were made to elevate stock prices rather than spending funds on new scientific and engineering projects, especially those that concern life and death issues. The second part of the chapter will focus on corporations that made choices of beneficence relating to the environment. Ray Anderson with Interface Carpets made dramatic changes to his organization in favor of the environment and sustainability. Anderson explains that his corporation would be termed “plunderers” for their environmental practices. The corporation made and kept numerous goals for sustaining the environment through their corporate practices. Paul Polman was an environmental visionary for Unilever. While serving as CEO of Unilever, he developed the Sustainable Living Plan, a long-term strategy designed to make Unilever a better steward of the environment and a more socially responsible business. Joseph Ling was an environmental engineer and manager at 3M. In 1975, he helped formulate a sustainability plan for 3M known as the 3M3P. At the time 3M had a reputation as one of the largest polluters in the nation. The 3M3P has made significant environmentally responsible changes at 3M and it is still in operation today.

2.2  T  he Unraveling of Wall Street: The Market Crash of 2008 Greed seemed to lurk in every corner of the United States financial market that has come to be known as the Great Recession. Where was greed situated as the stock market crashed? In 2008 the US, and the world faced one of its worst economic disasters in history, with many of the problems focused on the selling and buying of subprime mortgages.1 These instruments were turned into mortgage backed securities and then converted into bonds. Rating agencies overestimated the strength of some of these bonds, or derivatives. The derivatives were then bought and sold through investment banks, hedge funds and other entities. These collateralized debt obligations (CDO) became a ticking time bomb. Part of the financial collapse involved millions of individuals defaulting on their subprime mortgages. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, at least ten million Americans may have lost their homes as a result of the subprime mortgage disaster. The Federal Reserve believed the cost to be about $6 trillion in home value and almost $8 trillion in household stock market wealth (Emmons 2009). The collapse was also about individuals who bet these folks would default on their subprime mortgages, and insured these bets. Their gains were multibillions of

1  Portions of this section come from chapter seven in: Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making: Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience, Patricia Werhane, Laura Hartman, Crina Archer, Elaine E. Englehardt, and Michael Pritchard. London: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

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dollars. Wall Street’s losses were in the multi-trillions of dollars (Lenzner 2012) Greedy behavior was rampant. The world-wide economic crash of 2008 took place after both Robert C. Solomon and Milton Friedman had died. So, one can only speculate about how they would have assessed it. Critics have uniformly pointed to rampant greed as playing a significant role in this crash. This greed involved both fraud and deception in large doses. So, given that Friedman accepted some moral constraints on greed, he could well have looked on the events responsible for the crash with critical eyes. Would he have taken back any of his earlier assertions about greed, perhaps coming closer to the position taken by Phil Donahue in their 1979 exchange? Perhaps not. However, conceivably he should have, even in his own terms. Solomon’s earlier definition of greed would epitomize the various individuals who were at the center of the debacles, one that is characterized by their unseemly and uncontrolled selfish desires for more (Solomon 1999, 28). As the path was laid for the market crash of 2008, some of the mortgage brokers, bankers, hedge fund managers and CDO makers may have formed a vision for an incredibly prosperous future for themselves. Solomon would find no vision in their actions, “Greed is not vision. It is a lack of vision. Let us see it for what it is, an extreme form of selfishness, an oblivion to all virtues, and neglect or contempt for any good but one’s own”(Solomon 1999, 28). As markers along the path to greed, some mortgage brokers may have idealized their gains as they “helped” yet another “underprivileged” individual purchase a home with little documentation they could afford the home. They may have scoffed at the notion of being characterized as greedy. As Solomon explains, “There is a fine line between idealism and ambition, which one might describe as ‘reaching’ and avarice and greed, which are something quite different” (Solomon 1999, 28). Countless players involved in the market crash of 2008 crossed the line of idealism and ambition with their greedy choices. Their actions brought about one of the largest financial calamities the United States and the world markets had experienced. Many researchers and analysts of the events that led to the 2008 collapse of financial markets attribute this collapse to greed and ineptness (Chan 2011). This assessment was shared by the US government’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), which detailed numerous warning signs that were ignored. Why were these warnings ignored? Many scholars, government officials, and banking authorities believe that greed was a major factor in the conditions that led to an unsustainable increase in housing prices. The first prong of the collapse of 2008 involved an epidemic in risky subprime mortgage lending (Madrick 2011). This included unscrupulous lending practices, steep escalations in homeowners’ mortgage debt, and questionable activity in Wall Street firms’ trading activities, especially in derivatives, high-risk financial products: Trillions of dollars in risky mortgages had become embedded throughout the financial system, as mortgage-related securities were packaged, repackaged, and sold to investors around the world. When the bubble burst, hundreds of billions of dollars in losses in mortgages and mortgage-related securities shook markets as well as financial institutions that had significant exposures to those mortgages and had borrowed heavily against them. This

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E. E. Englehardt and M. S. Pritchard happened not just in the United States but around the world. The losses were magnified by derivatives such as synthetic securities. (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission 2011).

Mike Collins with Forbes sums up the crash of 2008: The operating principles of the big banks is a cesspool of greed, ethics and criminal intent and they give a very bad name to free market capitalism. During the housing bubble, Wall Street was considered the heart and soul of free market capitalism, but when they were in danger of total collapse they fell on their knees as socialists, begging the government and taxpayers to bail them out (Collins 2015).

In an effort to save several major banks from failing, on October 3, 2008 President George W.  Bush signed the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA). The Bill was used to start the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen and President Bush asked Congress for the funds to buy troubled debt from financial institutions (Herszenhorn 2008). Most of this troubled debt was in derivatives. The TARP plan was designed to clean this toxic debt from some of the wealthiest banks in the world. The use of derivatives is not new, and the fruitless efforts to regulate derivatives is not new. From 1996–1999, Brooksley Born was chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and she tried to devise processes for regulating derivatives. She was opposed by many financial advisors of President Bill Clinton, including Lawrence Summers and Alan Greenspan. She was not able to pass regulations on these opaque instruments during her tenure in this position (Ferguson 2010). Initially viewed as a sensible way of seeking future income, Born warned of a variety of large-scale problems surrounding many of these instruments. Derivatives, often seen as a form of gambling, came under close scrutiny from time to time but have never been removed as an investment vehicle. However, even with the role these toxic instruments played in the crash, little has been done to regulate or correct problems with these opaque securities. Alan Greenspan offered a sad illustration when testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on July 16, 2002: An infectious greed seemed to grip much of our business community…. It is not that humans have become any more greedy than in generations past. It is that the avenues to express greed have grown so enormously (2002 Federal Reserve Board).

Greenspan may not have known this in 2002, but a certain use of derivatives provided one of those avenues. This was in the area of subprime mortgages. On October 23, 2008 Greenspan admitted to the U.S.  House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he had put too much faith in the power of free markets. He believed the markets would self-correct, and he failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of “wanton mortgage lending” (Andrews 2008). Greenspan had not expected the serious effects of greed that had spread across the country and centered itself on Wall Street. “Those of us who have looked to the self-­ interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” said Greenspan (Andrews 2008). During the hearings, lawmakers repeatedly asked Greenspan how he had been wrong, and if he was sorry. Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, who was the chairman of the committee, challenged Greenspan by saying that he had the

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authority to “prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis.” Waxman continued, “You were advised to do so by many others. Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made (Andrews 2008)?” Greenspan explained to the committee, “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact (Andrews 2008).” However, Greenspan refused to accept blame for the crisis but acknowledged that his belief in deregulation had been shaken. Part of the flaw Greenspan discovered is greed. Prominent and trusted individuals gave little attention to long term effects of a variety of risky financial practices. Disastrous and greedy fiscal decisions were pursued by trusted and knowledgeable individuals. Some of Greenspan’s critics blame him for the crisis, contending that he allowed the bubble in housing prices to expand. They claim be did this over a long period of time by keeping interest rates too low. Could Greenspan have predicted the greedy behaviors that would blossom in myriad financial arenas between 2002 and 2008? He claims he was shocked by it. Greenspan also acknowledged that the unregulated and immense practices in derivative trading had gotten out of control. He admitted they were largely to blame for the crash of the market. This goes against Greenspan’s position on derivatives since at least 1994. Greenspan testified that he had warned about the “underpricing of risk in 2005, but that he had never expected the crisis that began to sweep the entire financial system in 2007” (Naylor 2008). Perhaps Greenspan understood markets better than he understood the depth of greed that permeated the crash. He further testified, “This crisis has turned out to be much broader than anything I could have imagined. It has morphed from one gripped by liquidity restraints to one in which fears of insolvency are now paramount” (Naylor 2008). Also, as part of his 2008 testimony, Greenspan said there needed to be restraint in the multitrillion-dollar market for credit default swap instruments, one form of derivatives, which were originally created to insure bond investors against the risk of default. He noted, “This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year” (Naylor 2008). He also testified that much of the blame for the financial crisis lay at the feet of Wall Street companies that bundled subprime mortgages into pools and sold them as mortgage-backed securities. The culture of greed had grown in some of the most respected financial firms on Wall Street, and nearly crashed the entire global economic market. Could the greed be contained? Greenspan predicted that changes would be made in the derivative market (Andrews 2008). This did not happen. The answer to control greedy behavior was produced in the massive restructuring legislation, The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It was passed in 2010 under the Obama administration. Many of its provisions have been gutted by the Trump administration. Greenspan didn’t comment on the importance of the legislation. But Greenspan was wrong when he said, “Whatever regulatory changes are made, they will pale in comparison to the change already evident in today’s markets. Those markets for an indefinite future will be far more restrained than would any currently contemplated new regulatory regime” (Andrews 2008). The derivate

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market has grown steadily since the crash of 2008. However, subprime mortgage lending has changed. In examining derivatives, author Thomas A.  Bass makes analogies between derivatives and the “world’s biggest betting parlor” (Bass 2009). He uses Warren Buffett’s behavior as an example. In 2002 astute businessman Buffett is quoted calling them “financial weapons of mass destruction” (Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report 2002) But Buffett couldn’t stay away from them. In May of 2008 the day before his annual shareholder’s meeting, Buffett disclosed he had lost $1.6 billion in bad bets on derivatives. The news got worse in 2009. According to Bass, in February of 2009, Buffett declared he had suffered an “accounting loss” of $14.6 billion. “$10 billion of this loss coming from his wrong-way bet that global stock prices would rise” (Bass 2009). Still the news got worse. On May 2, 2009, The New York Times reported this number had risen to $67 billion. “After the company’s fourth quarter net income fell by 96%, Berkshire was stripped of its triple-A debt rating by both Fitch and Moody’s, and this was in spite of the fact the Buffett owns twenty percent of Moody’s parent company” (Reuters, New York Times 2009). Although not particularly well understood by most, the use of derivatives as a means of investing in future markets has a long history. A brief account of derivative origins is worth telling. In the end, the story of derivatives could be one of the largest business tsunamis lurking behind the scenes of many business transactions. Derivatives have been around for thousands of years. Aristotle explains one of the first known derivative options in the story of Thales, a poor philosopher from Miletus who developed a “financial device, which involves a principle of universal application” (Aristotle 1885). Athenians were skeptical of Thales, citing his lack of wealth as proof that philosophy was a useless occupation. But Thales knew that his project was valuable and practical and decided to prove his depth of wisdom and wealth in fiscal areas. Unlike others, Thales had great skill in forecasting, and he predicted that the olive harvest would be exceptionally good in the next autumn. Confident in his prediction, he made agreements with area olive press owners to deposit what little money he had with them to guarantee him exclusive use of their olive presses when the harvest was ready (Aristotle 1885). Thales successfully negotiated low prices because the harvest was in the future and no one knew whether the harvest would be abundant or terrible. So, olive press owners were willing to hedge against the possibility of a poor yield. Aristotle tells us, “When the harvest-­ time came, and many presses were wanted all at once and of a sudden, he let them out at any rate which he pleased, and he made a quantity of money. Thus, he showed the world that philosophers can easily be rich if they like, but that their ambition is of another sort” (Aristotle 1885). So, Thales exercised the first known derivative options contracts some 2500 years ago. He was not obliged to exercise the options. If the olive harvest had not been good, Thales could have let the option contracts expire unused and limit his loss to the original price paid for the options. But as it turned out, a bumper crop came in, so Thales exercised the options and sold his claims on the olive presses at a high point. Nothing in Aristotle’s story of Thales demonstrates greed. It describes a

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business practice. However, the greedy use of this practice almost crashed world markets in 2008. Thales and Aristotle would have little patience with greedy individuals. It is a trait that would not satisfy the Golden Mean or their lifelong pursuit of virtue. As we have noted in Chapter One, political theorist Judith Shklar observes that Aristotle would conclude that the unjust person is dominated by one vice, greed. She notes that for Aristotle the unjust person breaks rules of law and fairness. This involves more of everything—material goods, power and prestige (Shklar 1990). And much like the predators of 2008 who caused catastrophic bankruptcies, job losses, and the market crash, the impact of the unjust person’s greed falls entirely on others. Greed on the part of investment bankers, mortgage brokers, hedge fund managers, government officials and others harmed the country for countless years. The Dalai Lama explained “the economic crisis was the result of unlimited greed, a lack of transparency and lies” (Varanasi 2009).

2.3  The Volkswagen Crash Other examples of greed in the business sector are not difficult to find. The VW emissions scandal, for example, is an illustration of fraud and coverup seemingly intended to increase profits, at the expense of its customers, and also at a large cost to the environment. Greed was at the heart of the scandal which some reports date back to 2006. The problems at Volkswagen started when new emission standards in Europe and North America required a redesign of their popular diesel cars. Engineers studied various possibilities and found the options that would decrease fuel efficiency and would make the diesel too expensive for its market. Rather than redesign the engine, VW’s engineering ingenuity was used to cheat the system rather than conform to the new environmental guidelines. The engineers created a “fix” to its diesels by redesigning its software to appear to address the new standards. The “defeat devise” allowed up to 40 times the legally allowable emissions (Ewing 2017). Under all driving conditions, the automobile was polluting at this much higher rate. VW marketed the new vehicles as emissions compliant, and they swore to government agencies including the California Air Resources Board and the Environmental Protection Agency that their vehicles were in compliance (Tabuchi et  al. 2017). The greed adversely affected millions of drivers. The drivers of the vehicles had no idea they were driving a car whose emissions were illegal (Harris et al. 2019). The device was installed on vehicles including Audi, Porsche and VW brands and included SUVs, sedans and crossovers. For nearly a decade (2006–2015), VW’s marketing strategy was to make as much money as possible on a product that was a hoax-- the “clean diesel” vehicle. The greedy plot was working well until 2013 when a team of engineering students and faculty at West Virginia University received a $70,000 grant to test VW emissions for nitrogen oxides. Using a VW Jetta, the team discovered alarming emissions of

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15–35 times the allowed rate (Ewing 2017). The research findings were substantial, and Volkswagen was challenged to explain why their vehicles operated differently on a service test cycle as compared to performance on the highway. By May of 2014 Volkswagen began a significant coverup of the “defeat device” and how it operated in over 11 million cars in the US and Europe (Hakim and Ewing 2015). Reams of documents were produced to defend the lie that the vehicles were environmentally compliant. VW executives and engineers were trying to set up a giant smoke screen to hide the pollution problem. The ruse didn’t last long. In 2015 Volkswagen admitted to using illegal software which included a complex algorithm that produced optimum pollution readings when the cars were being tested. As part of their admission, they also encouraged their employees who knew about the illegal actions to come forward. According to the New York Times, on December 1, “About 50 Volkswagen employees have stepped forward in an amnesty program to offer information about who was responsible for the emissions scandal.” Volkswagen also acknowledged “That the cheating may have been more widespread than previously thought” (Hakim and Ewing 2015). In 2017 VW pleaded guilty to fraud, obstruction of justice and falsifying statements to the California Air Resources Board and the Environmental Protection Agency. For their fraudulent activities, VW has paid about $33.3 Billion in fines, penalties and vehicle buyback costs. Additionally, they have paid a $4.3 billion settlement to the US Justice Department (Ewing 2017). The internal dynamics at VW have not been revealed, but what we do know is that at least 100 engineers participated in the design of the fraudulent software despite the almost universal engineering code of “safety first,” and top management was aware of this design. Criminal charges were filed against six Volkswagen executives. Only one has been arrested and sentenced. Oliver Schmidt, a U.S. based executive who oversaw emissions issues, was sentenced to 7  years in prison and fined $400,000 (Carey 2017). The remaining executives probably won’t be prosecuted because of extradition agreements with Germany. Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the time, explained, “This case is a great example of the fact that no corporation is too big, no corporation is too global, and no person is beyond the law’’ (Tabuchi et al. 2017). Volkswagen also pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to violate the Clean Air Act, customs violations and obstruction of justice: The Volkswagen employees charged on Wednesday were Heinz-Jakob Neusser, 56, who oversaw development of the company’s brand; Jens Hadler, 50, who oversaw engine development; Richard Dorenkamp, 68, another supervisor of engine development; Bernd Gottweis, 69, who helped oversee quality management; and Jürgen Peter, 59, who was a liaison between regulatory agencies and the carmaker (Tabuchi et al. 2017).

In the previous case, the investment banks were seen as “too big to fail.” The individuals guiding these enterprises were not only bailed out, many collected commissions and bonuses after the bailout. None of the executives were charged with crimes, or went to jail. However, large settlements were paid by several of the banks for their greedy behavior. In the Volkswagen case, it is important that individuals

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were charged and subsequently convicted of crimes against the American people. The greed exhibited by Volkswagen is harmful on numerous levels. In an effort to compete in a clean diesel market, they lied to the world about what their product could and could not accomplish. Over 11 million individuals globally were driving cars that contained the defeat devise. The vehicles emitted nitrogen oxides (NOx) at up to 40 times the standard. According to the EPA: Exposure to these pollutants has been linked with a range of serious health effects, including increased asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses that can be serious enough to send people to the hospital. Exposure to ozone and particulate matter have also been associated with premature death due to respiratory-related or cardiovascular-related effects. Children, the elderly, and people with pre-existing respiratory disease are particularly at risk for health effects of these pollutants (www.epa.gov/no2-­pollution).

Jason Kawall reminds us that the damage to the environment is a harm to both our current generation and future generations. The greedy actions of Volkswagen can’t be repaired. The long-term consequences could be dire for a world struggling to contain pollution. Additionally, the greed on the part of Volkswagen almost bankrupted the corporation and sullied its reputation in ways that can’t be repaired. Robert Solomon’s words are also important in this case, “Greed is not vision. It is a lack of vision. Let us see it for what it is, an extreme form of selfishness, an oblivion to all virtues, and neglect or contempt for any good but one’s own (1999, 28).”

2.4  Boeing: Loss of Human Life The third case of greed involves Boeing, a corporation that was long lauded for its engineering and scientific innovations, its large workforce and its business acumen.2 The multi-national company designs, manufactures and sells airplanes, rockets, satellites, missiles, rotorcraft and telecommunications equipment throughout the world. According to some engineers and analysts, for the past 20 years too much emphasis was placed on profits with too little effort placed on designing and creating new airplanes rather than merely reworking old models. Two crashes involving the 737 Max took the lives of 346 individuals. The fatal flights occurred just 5 months apart. Today Boeing is financially and morally struggling with much of the blame on past decisions that many would call greedy. The unraveling of Boeing was clear on October 29, 2018 when Indonesian airline Lion Air Flight 610 plunged into the Java Sea, killing all 189 individuals on board the Boeing 737 Max. Pilot error and inexperience were given as causes of the crash. However, Boeing engineers immediately began to study software flaws that may have actually caused the crash. On March 10, 2019, only 5 months after the

2  Portions of this section come from the paper: “Leadership, Engineering and Ethical Clashes at Boeing,” Elaine E. Englehardt, Patricia H. Werhane and Lisa H. Newton, Sci Eng Ethics 27, 12 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-021-00285-x

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Lion Air disaster, 157 individuals perished when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Boeing investigators looked beyond pilot error and focused on something Boeing was managing to keep under the radar – the 737 Max’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). In the two deadly crashes the MCAS automatically and repeatedly forced the aircraft to nosedive shortly after takeoff. Boeing knew of this problem but believed that any pilot could make a quick manual adjustment to save the aircraft if the sensors were malfunctioning. So, they omitted placing information in the pilots’ operations’ manual about the deadly feature and how to recover the aircraft if the sensors malfunctioned. They had also omitted most simulator training for the 737 Max pilots as too costly. In both crashes, the FAA and Boeing found the MCAS to be fatally involved but also did not rule out pilot error (MacGillis 2019). Only 2  months after the Lion Air Crash, on December 17th, 2018, Boeing’s board of directors approved a 20% increase in the company dividend and a 20-­billion-dollar stock-repurchase program. There was no mention of the 189 lives that had been lost a month earlier. Rather, CEO Dennis Muilenburg had pulled off a larger stock buyback scheme than in any previous year. Muilenburg received a 13-million-dollar bonus to finish the 2018 fiscal year. According to a Boeing press release published on that date: Boeing remains focused and on track with its balanced, value-creating cash deployment strategy. The strength of our business and our confidence in the sustainable long-term outlook are powering investments in productivity, innovation and growth, while delivering on our commitment to return cash to shareholders,” said Greg Smith, Boeing chief financial officer and executive vice president of Enterprise Performance & Strategy (www.Boeing. com 12/7/2018).

The press release details, “With the latest increase to the dividend Boeing has increased its dividend nearly 325% over the past 6 years and repurchased more than 230 million shares over the same time period’’ (www.Boeing.com 12/7/2018). This was not a onetime event. This was a habitual fiscal practice; money was pumped into building dividends and stock prices rather than science and safety. After the second devastating crash, Boeing’s stock and profits began to plummet. One year after Boeing’s financial celebrations, Muilenburg was replaced by David Calhoun, the current chairman of the board, who until recently supervised portfolio operations at the private equity firm Blackstone. Boeing released a public statement to explain the change of CEO: The Board of Directors decided that a change in leadership was necessary to restore confidence in the Company moving forward as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders…Under the Company’s new leadership, Boeing will operate with a renewed commitment to full transparency, including effective and proactive communication with the FAA, other global regulators and its customers (www.Boeing.com 12/23/2019).

The statement doesn’t mention ethics or safety, but rather focuses on better relationships, proactive communications and transparency. These are laudable goals; however, independent investigators and whistleblowers have come to a thundering

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conclusion – Boeing has repeatedly prioritized profits over science, safety and ethics. A culture of greed had been flourishing, and now it was time to pay the piper. Some employees believe that in 1996 Boeing shifted from being a science and engineering firm to a profit centered enterprise. That year Boeing purchased McDonnell Douglass for $13 Billion. With the merger, engineers claim they were no longer on the leadership team. “One of the most successful engineering cultures of all time was quickly giving way to the McDonnell Douglass mindset” (Useem 2019). The mentality was to cut costs, and raise profits, dividends and stock prices with innovative engineering designs being brushed aside. The engineers alleged the new (1996) Boeing President Harry Stonecipher “brought his chain saw to Seattle” to separate the culture of engineering and science from the bottom line of making large profits (Useem 2019). Greed seemed to be a bragging right as CEO Stonecipher claimed, “It will run like a business not like an engineering firm” (Useem 2019). With the Covid 19 pandemic of 2020, Boeing’s bottom line is floundering beyond the problems of the 737 Max. But that doesn’t excuse the giant conglomerate from its culpability in the loss of 346 lives. Boeing’s actions require that they publicly address how they built at least one line of 737 planes that is unsafe – the 737 MAX and explain what changes it will make for the future of this doomed aircraft. Boeing’s desire for profits and postponement of science and safety caused the deaths of 376 lives. Jason Kawall reminds us that “greed is a vice of disproportionality: greedy agents pursue objects to a degree that is disproportionate to their value relative to other goods that the agents could be pursuing, or to the harms associated with their pursuit” (Kawall 2012). Boeing took a gamble by rebuilding the 737 and creating the 737 Max rather than design and build a new plane. The problems with the 737 Max will damage employees, customers, suppliers and additional entitles for many years to come. The Boeing case is the most egregious of the three cases in this chapter. Death caused by a business is an action that can’t be corrected. Death is final; no payments can bring back the lives of the 376 passengers and crew. With these three examples, greed contributed to the potential crash of the global economic system; it contributed to the dreadful environmental damages that can occur because Volkswagen decided profits were more important than the environment; it contributed to decisions that took Boeing down a path focused on profits rather than science. In our present, fast-paced, global economy, to compete successfully, organizations must face greed and make decisions to move from decisions based purely on profit. A re-examination of goals is needed. To survive, business entities must focus on ethical practices involving honesty, fairness, and a commitment to environmentally sustainable practices. A vision for future generations is necessary in the choices that are made today. Fortunately, there are some good examples of corporations making significant changes that address questions of sustainability that take into account the needs of future generations.

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2.5  Interface and Ray Anderson Led by its founder and CEO, Ray Anderson, during its first 20  years Interface Carpets became one of the leading carpet manufacturers in the world, specializing in modular carpet tiles (Anderson and White 2009). In the mid-1990s one of Anderson’s engineers reported that an Interface customer wanted to know what the company was doing for the environment. Anderson had to admit that prior to this time he had not thought seriously about this question. But he then read Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce (1993), which convinced him that he should be examining how much damage Interface was causing through its use of unrenewable resources, its deposits of excessive waste, and its harmful emissions. Looking ahead just a few decades, Anderson concluded that unless Interface dramatically changed its ways, it could justly be viewed as a plunderer of the earth, at the expense of future generations. This, he judged, would be a consequence of Interface’s careless, but correctable, greed. Under Anderson’s aggressive leadership, Interface launched a radical, carefully designed program, “Mission Zero.” This program set 2020 as the target date for eliminating any negative impact the company might have on the environment. As ambitious as this program was, Anderson estimated that Interface was halfway there by 2009—and its profit level was still very high. So, it seems that we need to ask whether, either individually or collectively, we do consume and waste more than we need to. Further, with Ray Anderson, we need to ask whether we are on a track that, unless significantly altered, will justify future generations looking back at us and saying we were greedy—at their expense. Although greed’s worst harms may be caused by adults and the organizational structures within which they work, as we have noted, greed makes its first entry in the lives of young children. This is typically greeted with strong, sweeping disapproval by others, rather than in a manner suggesting that, as they mature children will come to see that greed has its place in the adult world they will enter soon enough. If we must agree with Friedman and others who argue for the necessity of some form of greed in any viable economy, it is important to clarify just what that form is and why it is necessary. The sort of greed that worried Ray Anderson is not marked by an obsessive desire for more and more wealth, goods, or possessions by distinctively greedy individuals. Rather, it is the sort of “modest greed” described by Jason Kawall (Kawall 2012). Although not obsessive, it is pervasive. It collectively endorses lifestyles that suffer from a kind of disproportionality that rewards us for pursuing over-valued objects, not obsessively, but routinely as a part of what is involved in what we take to be a good life. However, as Kawall notes, what may seem sustainable and acceptable now will likely be viewed as greedy by future generations—and as “an especially problematic vice” (Kawall 2012). Ray Anderson’s Interface offers an alternative approach to the future, one that adopts Alan Cottey’s suggestion that we can learn to honor and reward ways of life that resist the sort of disproportionality in valuing that Jason Kawall’s “modest greed” entails. Interface’s dedication to “Mission 2020” even after Anderson’s

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passing in 2011 is impressive, as is the annual gathering of Anderson admirers to celebrate his example. However, impressive as this following is, it represents just a fraction of the effort required to meet the overall sustainability needs of the future. Ultimately (and sooner rather than later) this sort of commitment and imagination of leadership across industry is needed if Anderson’s ideals are to be satisfied. Interface’s strategy in the carpet industry is just a beginning. So, the story of greed begins relatively innocently in the everyday the lives of children. As adults they carry forward the momentum they have inherited from their predecessors, or they offer resistance. If critics such as Singer, Jamieson, Cottey, Anderson, Hawken, Kawall, and so many others are right, this is the time to undertake serious changes in how we operate as consumers and how we treat our environment. Children can be made aware of these needs and be encouraged to do what they can to help us meet them. This suggests that, rather than preparing children to loosen some of their opposition to greed as they move into adulthood, they should be assisted in understanding and resisting greed’s negative impact on both current and future generations.

2.6  Unilever and Paul Polman Of course, Ray Anderson and Interface provide only a small sample of the sorts of endeavors that are needed for environmental sustainability to be a realistic goal. Fortunately, there are others attempting to lead the way. For example, consider former CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman. Polman officially retired from Unilever in July of 2019 after years of advocating for environmental, social and cultural changes. While at Unilever he developed the Sustainable Living Plan, a long-term strategy designed to make Unilever a better steward of the environment and a more socially responsible business. His successor, Alan Jope, has followed up with plans that the corporation will cut its use of virgin plastic in half, by drastically reducing its absolute use of plastic packaging and accelerating its use of recycled plastic. According to the Unilever website, this commitment makes Unilever the first major global consumer goods company to commit to an absolute plastics reduction. Jope states: Plastic has its place, but that place is not in the environment. We can only eliminate plastic waste by acting fast and taking radical action at all points in the plastic cycle. Our starting point has to be design, reducing the amount of plastic we use, and then making sure that what we do use increasingly comes from recycled sources. We are also committed to ensuring all our plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable (www.unilever.com/ news/press-­releases/2019.

Shortly after leaving Unilever in 2019, Polman created the firm Imagine with his own funds. In the spirit of Ray Anderson’s global reach, its aim is to strengthen sustainable development while combating poverty and climate change. Polman’s plan is to help companies pursue the sustainability goals of the United Nations with a collective sense of urgency.

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2.7  3 M and Joseph Ling Business leaders like Ray Anderson are charismatic, highly visible figures. However, less celebrated but equally dedicated individuals are essential as well. For example, 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) adopted its 3M3P plan in 1975 and it is still in operation today. This plan was proposed by 3M environmental engineer and manager Joseph Ling. His response to 3M’s reputation as one of the largest polluters in the USA was that 3M change its ways and adopt an aggressive pollution prevention program (3P) (Ling 2008).3 Hardly a household name in the public, Ling is honored within the National Academy of Engineering, which offers a Memorial Tribute that details his 32-year career at 3M and his worldwide influence on environmental policies and industrial environmental practices. A key to success in pollution prevention, Ling argued, is cooperation within and among industries.4 For Ling, worldwide environmental sustainability was the ultimate end. 3M’s success in making advancements toward this end and saving money in the process sets an example that challenges the many skeptics who think that progress in environmental sustainability can come only at the expense of lowering profits.

2.8  The Promise of Education Interface, Unilever, and 3M are among the most noteworthy large corporations making serious attempts to demonstrate that making significant strides in promoting environmental sustainability is not necessarily incompatible with profitability. Many such efforts can be found on a smaller scale as well, and they can all serve to inspire other businesses to make similar efforts. Such stories are now making their way into the growing number of higher education programs in sustainability in business (Pritchard and Englehardt 2020).5 3  A detailed discussion of Ling’s life and career can be found online under Joseph T. Ling.” National Academy of Engineering. 2008. Memorial Tributes: Volume 12. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/12473. Comments here on Ling are based on that memorial tribute. The success of the 3M3P program is prominently featured on 3M’s website, although Ling’s contributions are not. For a more detailed account of Ling’s career and accomplishments as an environmental engineer at 3M, see Pritchard and Englehardt, “Ethics, Sustainability, and Management Leadership,” in The Sage Handbook of Responsible Management, Dirk C. Moosmayer, Kenneth C. Brown, Carol Parker, and Oliver Laasch, eds. Sage Publishers, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2020, pp. 92–109. 4  In 1976 Ling was elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering ‘For leadership in environmental engineering, specifically in pollution control of air and water. 5  For more on the advent and potential of business management programs that focus on sustainability, see Pritchard and Englehardt, “Ethics, Sustainability, and Management Leadership,” in The Sage Handbook of Responsible Management, Dirk C.  Moosmayer, Kenneth C.  Brown, Carol Parker, and Oliver Laasch, eds. Sage Publishers, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2020, pp. 92–109.

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There also is increased support for the idea that environmental sustainability should have a prominent place in K-12 education, rather than waiting for an introduction at the higher education level.6 If the topic of environmental sustainability is introduced at the earliest levels of education, children will be encouraged to be ­critical of greed’s short- and long-term threats to sustainability as they move into adulthood. That is, they will be encouraged to resist efforts to loosen their opposition to greed as they mature—especially if their understanding of greed deepens in the ways depicted by such thinkers as Singer, Kawall, Anderson, Polman, and the others we have discussed in Part I.

References Anderson, Ray, and Robin White. 2009. Confessions of a radical industrialist: Profits, people, purpose. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Andrews, Edmund L. 2008. Greenspan concedes error on regulation. The New York Times, https:// www.google.com/search?=greenspan+concedes+error+on+regulation&riz=1C1GCEA_ enUS894US894&oq=Greenspan++concedes+Error+on+regulation&aqs=chrome.0.0.7361j0j 7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-­8. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Aristotle. The politics of Aristotle, trans. by Jowett, Benjamin (1885). The Great Books of the Western World, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Vol. 2, book 1, chap. 11, p. 453. Bass, Thomas A. 2009. Derivatives: The crystal meth of finance. The Huffington Post, May 5. www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-­a-­bass/derivatives-­the-­crystalmethoffinance 195221.html. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 2002. Annual report, pp  13–15. https://www.berkshirehathaway. com/2002ar/2002ar.pdf?bcsi_scan_447638299E31E942=0&bcsi_scan_filename=2002ar.pdf. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Carey, Nick. 2017. VW executive gets seven years for U.S. emissions fraud. Reuters, Dec. 6. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-­volkswagen-­emissions/vw-­executive-­gets-­seven-­years-­for-­ u-­s-­emissions-­fraud-­idUSKBN1E01W1. Last Accessed 15 Aug 2020. Chan, Sewell. 2011. The financial crisis was avoidable inquiry finds. New York Times. https://www. nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26inquiry.html. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Collins, Mike. 2015. The big bank bailout. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikecollins/2015/07/14/the-­big-­bank-­bailout/#3dd4dfec2d83. Last Accessed 15 Aug 2020. Curren, Randall. 2019. Sustainability ethics across the curriculum. In Ethics across the curriculum: Pedagogical perspectives, ed. Elaine E. Englehardt, and Michael S. Pritchard, 273–287. Cham: Springer. Emmons, William R. 2009. Housing’s great fall: Putting household balance sheets together again, October 1. https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-­economist/october-­2009/ housings-­great-­fall-­putting-­household-­balance-­sheets-­together-­again. https://www.epa.gov/ no2-­pollution. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Ewing, Jack. 2017. Inside VW’s campaign of trickery, May 6. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/ business/inside-­vws-­campaign-­of-­trickery.html. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020.

6  A leading proponent of making environmental sustainability a prominent feature of all levels of formal education is philosopher Randall Curren. Among his many writings on this topic, especially see his “Sustainability Ethics Across the Curriculum,” in Englehardt and Pritchard (2019), Ethics Across the Curriculum, pp. 273–287.

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Ferguson, Charles. 2010. Inside job. Sony Pictures Classic. https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/hh/2002/july/testimony.htm The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. 2011 The financial crisis inquiry report. https://fcic-­ static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-­reports/fcic_final_report_full.pdf. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Hakim, Danny and Jack Ewing. 2015. Volkswagen’s software was ‘Illegal Defeat Device,’ German regulator says. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/02/business/international/volkswagens-­ software-­use-­was-­illegal-­german-­regulator-­rules.html. Last Accessed 15 Aug 2020. Harris, C.E., M.  Pritchard, R.  James, E.  Englehardt, and M.  Rabins. 2019. Engineering ethics: Concepts and cases. 6th ed, 260–261. Boston: Cengage. Hawken, Paul. 1993. The ecology of commerce. New York: HarperCollins. Herszenhorn, David. 2008. Congress approves $700 billion Wall Street bailout. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/worldbusiness/03iht-­bailout.4.16679355.html. Last accessed 15 May 2021. https://www.unilever.com/news/press-­r eleases/2019/unilever-­a nnounces-­a mbitious-­n ew-­ commitments-­for-­a-­waste-­free-­world.html. Last accessed 21 Aug 2020. Kawall, Jason. 2012. Rethinking greed. In Human adaptation to climate change: The human virtues of the future, ed. Allen Thompson and Jeremy Bendiik-Keymer. Boston: The MIT Press. Lenzner, Robert. 2012. The 2008 meltdown and where the blame falls. Forbes, June 2, 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2012/06/02/the-­2008-­meltdown-­and-­where-­the-­ blame-­falls/#275a4baca72a. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Ling, Joseph T. 2008. National Academy of Engineering. Memorial Tributes: Volume 12. MacGillis, A. 2019. The case against Boeing: Since Samya Stumo’s death in a 737 MAX crash, her parents and her great-uncle, Ralph Nader, have devoted themselves to proving the company put profit over safety. The New  Yorker, Nov. 11. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/18/the-­case-­against-­boeing. Accessed 15 Aug 2020. Madrick, Jeff. 2011 Age of greed: The triumph of finance and the decline of America, 1970 to the present, Rolling Stone, June 16, 2011. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-­news/ how-­alan-­greenspan-­helped-­wreck-­the-­economy-­231162/. Last accessed 26 Sept 2020. Naylor, Brian. 2008. Greenspan admits free market ideology flawed. NPR, October 24, 2008. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96070766. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Pritchard, Michael, and Englehardt Elaine. 2020. Ethics, sustainability and management leadership. In The sage handbook of responsible management, ed. Dirk C.  Moosmayer, Kenneth C. Brown, Carol Parker, and Oliver Laasch, 92–109. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Shklar, Judith N. 1990. The faces of injustice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Solomon, Robert. 1999. A better way to think about business, 27. New York: Oxford University Press. Tabuchi, Hiroko, Jack Ewing, Matt Apuzzo. 2017. 6 Volkswagen executives charged as company pleads guilty in emissions case. Jan. 11. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/business/ volkswagen-­diesel-­vw-­settlement-­charges-­criminal.html. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. Useem, J. 2019. The long-forgotten flight that sent Boeing off course. A company once driven by engineers became a company driven by finance. The Atlantic, November 20. https://www. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-­boeing-­lost-­its-­bearings/602188/ Accessed 15 Aug 2020. Varanasi, Sarnath. 2009. Economic crisis result of unlimited greed, The Dalai Lama News. https:// www.dalailama.com/news/2009/economic-­crisis-­result-­of-­unlimited-­greed-­dalai-­lama. Last accessed 15 Aug 2020. www.Boeing.com. 12/17/2018. Last Accessed 15 Aug 2020. www.Boeing.com. 12/23/2019. Last Accessed 15 Aug 2020. Elaine E.  Englehardt is the Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Utah Valley University (UVU). For almost thirty years, she has written and directed seven multiyear, national grants in the area of Ethics and Ethics Across the curriculum. One grant founded the Ethics program at UVU, and another funded the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum and the  

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journal Teaching Ethics. She is currently President of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum (SEAC), after serving as a founder (1999) and board member. For seven years she served as coeditor of Teaching Ethics, the official journal of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum with Michael Pritchard. Among her publications are: Interpersonal Communication Ethics: Friends, Intimates, Sexuality, Marriage and Family (Harcourt Brace, 2001); The Organizational Self and Ethical Conduct: Sunlit Virtue and Shadowed Resistance (Harcourt Brace, 2001), with James A. Anderson; Media Ethics for a Principled Society (Wadsworth, 2002), with Ralph Barney. Ethics and Life: An Interdisciplinary Look at the Humanities (McGraw Hill, 2010), with Don Schmeltekopf, 1–4th editions; Ethical Challenges of Academic Administration (Springer, 2010), edited with Michael Pritchard, Kerry Romesburg, and Brian Scrag; Obstacles to Ethical DecisionMaking (Cambridge 2013), with Patricia Werhane, Laura Hartman, Crina Archer, and Michael Pritchard; Taking Sides: Business Ethics, 11, 12 13, 14th editions (McGraw-Hill, 2014), edited with Lisa Newton and Michael Pritchard; Ethics Across the Curriculum, Pedagogical Perspectives, with Michael Pritchard, Netherlands: Springer, 2018; Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases (2019), with C.E. Harris, Elaine Englehardt, and Ray James, New York: Cengage. She has written numerous peer reviewed articles and over a dozen book chapters. She has served in various administrative positions at Utah Valley University including vice president, associate vice president, dean and director. Her PhD is from the University of Utah. Michael S. Pritchard is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and founding director of the Center for the Study of Ethics in Society at Western Michigan University. He continues occasionally to teach courses in practical ethics, business ethics, media ethics, the history of eighteenth century Scottish moral philosophy (Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and David Hume), as well as the philosophical thinking of children. He is a founding member of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) and of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum (SEAC). For 7 years he served as co-editor, with Elaine Englehardt, of SEAC’s official journal, Teaching Ethics. Among his many publications are: Philosophical Adventures With Children (University Press of America: 1985); On Becoming Responsible (University Press of Kansas: 1991); Communication Ethics, with James Jaksa (Wadsworth: 1988 & 1994); Engineering Ethics: Concepts & Cases, with C.E. Harris, Michael Rabins, Ray James, Elaine Englehardt (Cengage: 1995, 2000, 2005, 2009, 2013, and 2018); Reasonable Children (University Press of Kansas: 1996); Professional Integrity (University Press of Kansas: 2007); Ethical Challenges of Academic Administration, co-edited with Elaine Englehardt, Kerry Romesburg, and Brian Schrag (Springer: 2010); Obstacles to Ethical DecisionMaking, with Patricia Werhane, Laura Hartman, Crina Archer, and Elaine Englehardt (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Ethics Across the Curriculum—Pedagogical Perspectives, coedited with Elaine Englehardt (Springer: 2018).  

Part II

Normative Assessments of Greed

Chapter 3

Understanding Greed and Wrongness Alexander Hoffmann

Abstract  Due to its history, the word ‘greed’ is often understood as denoting an inherently wrongful act or disposition. This consensus undoubtedly stems from the almost unanimous condemnation greed has received from all societies throughout recorded history. However, in recent years there have been new advocates of greedy action, arguing that greed can, in fact, be good. Due to this recent clash over what it means to be greedy and whether or not it is permissible, our normative appraisal of greed has come into question. In this paper, I offer an alternative conceptual analysis of greed. This new understanding of greed, which builds off Adam Smith’s theory of moral sentiments, will both make sense of the recent advocacy of greedy action as well as the condemnation it has received from almost all known societies. Keywords  Normative appraisal · Condemnation · Excessiveness · Atomistic · Permissible · Self-interest · Disposition

3.1  Introduction: Greed and Goodness There has been substantial disagreement regarding how we ought to apply the term ‘greed’ in our moral discourse. Intuitively, it seems obvious that there is something wrong with greedy behavior, or that we have some good reason not to be greedy. However, despite this common intuition, there have been several advocates of greed, often in capitalist countries with strong economic motives, who adopt the view that “greed is good.” Some more extreme advocates, such as Milton Friedman, argue that there could even be an obligation to be greedy in order to stimulate economic prosperity (Friedman 1970). Given the negative attitude most people have towards greed and its rejection throughout history, it can be hard to make sense of these counterintuitive notions.

A. Hoffmann (*) Western Michigan University, Kalmazoo, MI, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. S. Pritchard, E. E. Englehardt (eds.), Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal, Ethical Economy 58, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4_3

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What could it possibly mean for greed to be good? The imperative which demands of us to “never be greedy” seems so embedded within current and historical cultures that to suggest otherwise, at a glance, seems to convey some kind of deep moral confusion. On the other hand, the advocacy of greed has caught on and there are those who share the intuitions of Friedman and the like. The task at hand is to therefore adjudicate between these contradictory intuitions without dismissing the advocates of greed as confused or prima facie wrong. To take some imperative stance amounting to “greed is always bad” seems to misunderstand the arguments of Friedman and his supporters. In this paper, I intend to offer an understanding of greed that does not contain any moral prescription inherent in its definition. Instead, my goal is to describe greed in a way that is charitable to its advocates while still making sense of the condemnation that greed has received from almost all existing societies. The motivation for this argument stems from the intuition that there is truly some significance to the question “is greed good?” and there is a need for a better conceptual understanding of greed in order to properly engage in a discussion over the utility of being greedy. The argument in my paper will begin by examining the origin of greed, or what is necessary at bottom in order for greed to be possible. By focusing on what conditions need to be met in order for greed to occur, we will be better equipped to ask the question “what’s at issue?” when there is disagreement about the goodness, or badness, of greed. Next, I will spend time contrasting greed with self-interest. Both terms are used to emphasize actions made by an individual for his or her own self-­ gain, but how do we differentiate between the two? I will argue that many, but not all, arguments in favor of greed have made the fatal error of equivocating between these two concepts. Furthermore, by understanding how to demarcate between greed and self-interest we can better reconstruct our understanding of greed to match the intuitions of those who argue in favor of its utility. Finally, I will both show that the understanding of greed I have put forth is not necessarily morally prescriptive as well as explain why I believe greed is commonly thought to be bad or impermissible by pointing out the function of self-interest in society. This strategy will both make sense of greed’s condemnation by almost all societies to date, as well as vindicate it from the charge that it is inherently evil in-and-of itself. I will conclude with a basic reconstruction of an argument in favor of greed in order to pose it in terms that are charitable to its advocates. My argument will not settle the question of whether greed can be good, yet I will be able to explain why greed is thought to be bad or impermissible by pointing out the function of self-interest in society. In addition, I believe the work done here will give one a better conceptual toolkit to engage in debates over the permissibility of greed.

3.2  The Origins of Greed King Solomon warns of the dangers of greed in the book of Proverbs: “The greedy stir up conflict, but those who trust in the Lord will prosper.” (Proverbs) From this passage we can see both an explicit warning regarding how greed affects others, and

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also a contrast between greed and prosperity. In regards to the aforementioned conflict, between what, or who, should we assume the conflict is occurring? The conflict here is likely between oneself and others in the same community when referring to greed. Similarly, in Plato’s Republic, the degeneration of the state from the ideal city, all the way down to tyranny, is directly caused by discord, or conflict, within the state itself. (Plato 1991) Those individuals who choose to seek out their own self-interest, without regard for the well-being of others, are directly to blame for the weakening of society. Therefore, the conflict that is caused by greedy action, according to Plato, is specifically conflict amongst those who are engaged directly in some kind of social cooperation. Additionally, inherent in the idea of social cooperation is the necessary inclusion of beings different from oneself. This point will be important for understanding certain necessary conditions for greedy behavior. Intuitively, it seems right to conclude that one cannot be greedy without the inclusion of some kind of Other who is different from the one performing the greedy action. The injunction “don’t be greedy!” is usually followed by some implicit imperative to consider the wants or needs of whoever is affected by the greedy action. For example, when the billionaires of the world are charged with greediness, the suffering of the lower class or the effects that corporate businesses have on the environment are often cited in order to legitimize the charge. In each of these instances, both a greedy action is identified as well as a negative effect invoked on some kind of being who is different from the one committing the greedy action.1 Therefore, the only case in which greed is not possible seems to be when there is a single referent, or being. For example, an obsessive man who hoards used tissues (assuming there is no one else with the same desire) does not meet the necessary requirements to be considered greedy. His act of hoarding places no negative effect on any other living being because there is no want or desire that is not being fulfilled as a result of his action. Nevertheless, this man’s obsessive hoarding is really no different from the actions of someone who hoards food, money, or land. The missing commonality between the case of used tissues and any of the other examples given is the explicit need or want of these goods shared by others. If it were the case that used tissues became vital to the good life of another, then the tissue hoarder would be rightly charged as “being greedy” if he did not share. Thus, the genesis of greed follows from two or more beings with shared desires for certain goods. When one decides to take a shared object of desire in excess, they invoke a cost on the other who also shares that desire. John Locke recognized this problem when he argued in favor of a right to property. (Locke 1988) For Locke, anything in nature with which we mix our labor immediately becomes ours by rights. However, given the limited amount of resources available in nature, one cannot take so much that there is no longer enough for others. I find that greedy acquisition and retention of resources operates in a very similar way. If it were the 1  I choose to say “some kind of being who is different from the one committing the greedy action” instead of some other referent such as person, sentient being, etc. because I think greed is possible amongst a vast number of combinations of living beings, so long as that being can be negatively affected by the greedy action.

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case that there was only one being alive within a natural habitat, then there would be no set limit on the amount she is allowed to obtain. This view of greed, which necessarily requires the inclusion of some other being that has specific needs, makes greed a social concept. Understanding the function of the term ‘greed’ in society will therefore be vital in order to fully flesh out its conceptualization. The next section will focus on society and greed specifically, and how it differs from the closely related concept ‘self-interest’.

3.3  Contrasting Greed with Self-Interest Comparing greed and self-interest will be vital for understanding the advocacy of greed in society. Perhaps the most commonly cited thinker on the subject of greed and self-interest is Adam Smith. His famous quote about the butcher, the baker, and the brewer is especially relevant: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. (Smith 1981)

This quote is often understood as a promotion of greed. According to this understanding, business is not conducted by appeal to our love for others, but instead is a means for the survival of the self. When the butcher cuts meat and sells it, she does so specifically because it will benefit her; the fact that others benefit as well is equally beneficial to the butcher, who relies on customers who appreciate her service, which is why she is interested in benefiting them in the first place. What does this mean for greed then? According to this interpretation of the passage, the butcher, the baker, and the brewer are acting greedily by only caring about themselves when they do business. Therefore, business runs on greed, and not only is business effective and reliable because of greedy behavior, but it could not be possible otherwise. Although this interpretation may seem plausible, I argue Adam Smith is actually making a more nuanced and important case for the existence of self-interest and not greed. The butcher and the baker are indeed thinking of themselves when they are performing their respective tasks. However, we would be claiming too much if we were to charge them with being greedy, a term commonly associated with excessiveness or behavior that comes at the cost of others (Seuntjens et al. 2015). Working for one’s own self-interest is less extreme than greed, but still involves putting effort into tasks that will likely benefit oneself. I will use the example of “giving to charity in order to make oneself feel good” as a way to draw out the contrast between greed and self-interest. Having “good feelings” as a reason to give to charity certainly seems self-interested. However, it seems altogether wrong to call someone greedy because of their intention to make themselves feel good in this case. Merely

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seeking to benefit oneself is not sufficient for greed. Returning to Smith’s example of the Butcher, the Baker, and the Brewer, there is clearly something wrong with assuming that they are being greedy. In order to understand how to tease out this intuition while using a demarcation between greed and self-interest, we will have to understand more of Smith’s work on the subject of self-interested behavior. Adam Smith, in his lesser-known work The Theory of Moral Sentiments explains how morality places a clear restriction on self-interest so as not to devolve into greed. As Jonathan Wight points out, Smith argues that there exists a clash between one’s sociability and self-interest which develops into an understanding of a higher moral framework that dictates our actions (Wight 2005). Additionally, self-interest can only be employed insofar as it remains subordinate to that very framework. It is significant that Adam Smith demarcates self-interest from greed by appealing to the social fabric, or the cooperation of individuals in society.2 Instead of conceding that any pursuit of self-interest is permissible, Wight’s interpretation of Smith limits the pursuit of self-interest to acts that ultimately promote the prosperity of the social fabric of the larger community. As a result, the butcher, the baker, and the brewer are seen as performing important social roles by working within their professions, but are only permitted to do so insofar as they do not violate their social roles. Smith’s differentiation between self-interest and greed is vital to a proper understanding of the arguments given in favor of greedy behavior. Take for example the brewer who is acting in his own self-interest when he brews beer for others. Aspiring to be a good brewer, as opposed to a talentless brewer, is self-interested because the former yields greater success and more revenue for one’s labor. But doing one’s job well also performs an important function in the marketplace and reinforces the norms of the social fabric. A greedy brewer would not reinforce the norms of the social fabric or improve the quality of the marketplace. For example, a brewer would be acting greedily, in addition to acting self-interestedly, if she were to dilute her beer with ammonia in order to turn a greater profit at the expense of her customers. The outcome of the brewer’s greedy behavior, although yielding shortterm profit, would likely be a greater distrust in brewers, harm to the health of other members of society, and the potential for violent retaliation; these outcomes point to the brewer’s behavior as a detriment towards the integrity of the social fabric. Acts of self-interest that are taken at the expense of social norms, social cooperation, or social cohesion in order to benefit oneself are denoted by the word ‘greed’. By appealing to a social fabric we can both make sense of the demarcation between self-interest and greed while still keeping our original goal in mind of offering an account of greed that is charitable to its advocates.

2  One might also refer to this as the “harmony of the state,” as Plato does. Additionally, this idea is very similar to what Pearlstein calls “social capital” in his book Can American Capitalism Survive Greed? (Pearlstein 2018).

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3.4  Greed and Goodness The previous section of this paper argued for an understanding of greed in terms of self-interested actions that harm, or is perceived to harm, the larger social fabric. This definition of greed benefits greatly from the work of Adam Smith and his moral philosophy. In this section, I will argue that this understanding of greed is not necessarily committed to greed’s wrongness, which offers a conceptual bridge to engage with advocates of greed. Greed can be defined, as we have come to understand it thus far, as “excessive and self-interested action that harms the integrity of the established social norms or fabric.” Nothing said about greed so far necessarily entails that acting greedy is either good or bad. In order to derive something like “greed is wrong” from this definition, a further moral premise such as “one ought not harm the larger social fabric” must be proven and included. There is perhaps one objection to this point: whatever gains we might receive by acting out against social norms could be outweighed by the gains of having a strong social fabric, or harmonious society, therefore any action that disrupts the social fabric is irrational and we ought not do it. This would mean that we would not need to add the further moral premise “one ought not harm the larger social fabric”, because it is implicit within our moral reasoning. I am happy to concede that, most of the time, we ought not harm the larger social fabric of norms and moral rules in our society. However, there are certainly cases where acting out, even at the cost of the integrity of society, is permissible and even justified. Therefore, such a disruption cannot be considered wrong or impermissible in all scenarios. For example, it is within the realm of reason to classify Galileo’s insistence on a heliocentric view of the universe as acting out at the cost of social norms. The social structure of the time situated religion as an important center of power and integral to social cohesion. Questioning the doctrine of religious institutions, which was a result of Galileo’s study, would certainly cause further distrust in other facets of the legitimacy of the church’s political power. Today we see Galileo’s contributions to our body of scientific knowledge as justified. However, in a different historical context, namely the one Galileo himself lived in, his acts were seen as unnecessary and potentially dangerous. We can further see examples of disrupting the current social fabric in the women’s rights movement which, at the time, threatened the traditional household dynamic. We hesitate to call these wrong, because they clearly were not. Despite being acts that disrupted norms and, in cases like that of Galileo, resulted in greater distrust in the current social structure, they were nevertheless justified. Therefore, it seems right to conclude that “one ought not harm the norms of the current social structure” is not necessarily true in all cases, but is only considered so given other various factors about the social context at the time of whatever action has occurred.

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3.5  Greed and Evil It has already been noted that greed is reviled by almost all existing societies throughout history. Most of us are taught at a young age that we ought not be greedy. And when we catch someone being greedy, we expect an explanation for their actions, which ultimately operates on the assumption that greedy behavior is not innocuous like getting a drink of water or saving for retirement. This poses a significant challenge to my project: with so much consensus regarding the wrongness of greed, why avoid any moral prescription when describing it? When society promotes or discourages behavior, it is likely in the interest of the society at large to do so. For example, in Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that we ought to condemn truths about the gods, even if they are true, when they promote actions in the society which ultimately harm the harmony of the state (Plato 1991). For Socrates, whether an action is right or wrong does not dictate its place in society, but instead an action’s utility regarding the promotion of justice is what determines whether or not it is permissible. For a society to function and thrive, it must adopt norms that increase its chances of survival above all else. Although many societies do not share the extreme views of Plato and Socrates, this principle of promoting the survival of the community above all else applies regardless. Because of this very principle, it is no wonder greed is so consistently condemned by the societies that are threatened by it. Greedy behavior, whether or not it is good for the individual, is unarguably bad for the survival of a society in its current state. If we are to take my understanding of greed as accurate, the individual who acts within her own interest at the expense of the integrity of the social fabric is doing some harm to their social context. For this reason, it is within the best interest of every society to dissuade its members from acting greedily, even when it is sometimes beneficial for those individuals to be greedy. Furthermore, it is not clear that any society which promotes greedy behavior can survive in the long-term without a radical change in its social structure. The constant condemnation of greed by governments, religious institutions, and communities within the state can be traced back to something that will be gained by doing so. The reason why the word ‘greed’ seems to have a prescriptive moral attitude built into it is because it is good for a functioning society to teach its citizens to believe that this is so. Like an evolutionary adaptation, only the traits of societies that help it flourish over long periods of time will remain and eventually dominate, such as this very practice. Additionally, it would make sense according to my theory for societies with a strong social fabric, i.e. a strong sense of community, to be more resistant to arguments in favor of greedy behavior because there is more investment in the well-being of the community by its members. Meaning there is less to gain for the majority of the group to promote any kind of greedy action. Societies that are more atomistic and individualistic, like the United States, are more susceptible to the promotion of greedy behavior because there is less interest in preserving deep social roots. Evidence in favor of this prediction lends credence to my overall

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argument. Although evidence of this sort is limited, it is telling that the most successful advocates of greed, like Milton Friedman and Donald Trump, hail from the United States.

3.6  Conclusion In the 1987 movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, a fictional cutthroat businessman, argues that “greed is good” because greedy behavior is effective, motivating, and “captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” Many advocates of greed will argue something similar: greed does cause harm, but there are alternative benefits that outweigh the harm caused. Milton Friedman offers a similar justification when he asserts greed is necessary to our kind of capitalistic society, and this society is the most successful one currently in existence. These arguments challenge our current values and what we want to promote in our communities. Is it better to trust our bankers or to encourage them to ensure the banking institution turns a profit? Do we want businessmen to be ruthless if it means ensuring the fiscal dominance of the United States? These questions demand answers that appeal to a tradeoff between social benefits like trust and cohesion in our communities and making extreme economic advances. Although I disagree with Gekko’s appeal to “the evolutionary spirit” when referring to greed, as it seems likely that evolutionary principles played a part in greed’s infamy, I hope my arguments provided here will be a step towards balancing these opposing values when debating the value of greed. Returning to the question posed at the start of this paper, what I think is at issue when one argues that greed is good is whether or not we can justify the harm caused by greed by appealing to its utility. We can see amongst these advocates that they are concerned about individual profits and economic advantage, with social norms being a secondary, and somewhat inhibitive, consideration Only the most disillusioned advocates of greed will accept that greedy behavior is entirely innocuous, but what is most important is whether the gains of greed are too great to resist. Moving forward, the debate surrounding greed and goodness needs to focus on the social fabric and the benefits of protecting its integrity. In Steven  Pearlstein’s book, he argues that social capital is often taken for granted in economics and needs to be promoted through our government institutions and norms about operating one’s business in a capitalist society. (Pearlstein 2018) Issues like these, and undoubtedly others not included in this paper, are at the heart of the greed debate, and their answers will be what silence or encourage those who argue for the merits of greed and greedy behavior.

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References Friedman, Milton. 1970. The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. The New  York Times. https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business /miltonfriedman1970. pdf Accessed 18 June 2019. Locke, John. [1689] 1988. Two treatises of government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plato. 1991. The republic. Trans. Allan Bloom. Basic Books. Prv. 28:25 NIV. Seuntjens, G.  Terri, Marcel Zeelenberg, Seger M.  Breugelmans, and Niels van de Ven. 2015. Defining Greed. The British Psychological Society 106: 1–21. Smith, Adam. [1776] 1981. An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, in the Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. Pearlstein, Steven. 2018. Can American capitalism survive Greed? New York: St. Martins Press. Wall Street. Directed by Oliver Stone. Twentieth Century Fox, 1987. Wight, Jonathan. 2005. Adam Smith and Greed. Journal of Private Enterprise 21 (1): 46–58. Alexander Hoffmann  is an instructor at Western Michigan University’s philosophy department. Hoffmann earned his M.A. in philosophy from Western Michigan University and his B.A. in philosophy and political science from Wayne State University. His research focuses primarily on skill-based accounts of virtue theory, with other secondary interests in applied business ethics, philosophy of science, and metaethics.

Chapter 4

Against the Need for Greed Chance Lacina

Abstract  Prominent and influential figures of the last century have made the case that greed powers our world. In effect, it is claimed that greed is necessary for prosperity. I argue that societal prosperity is standardly regarded as a conjunction of security, material abundance, and technological advancement. I also make the case that acquisitive and exclusionary behavior towards goods others need or desire is an essential property of greed. Finally, I argue that such behavior is not necessary for prosperity. If such behavior is unnecessary for prosperity, then greed is unnecessary for prosperity. Keywords  Greed · Political theory · Hobbes · Prosperity · Predistribution · Against greed

4.1  The Necessity-Claim In 1979 Phil Donohue asked author and economist Milton Friedman whether he ever had “a moment of doubt about capitalism, and whether greed is a good idea to run [a society] on?” (Donahue 1979) Friedman had the following to say in response: Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. [audience laughter] The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from under government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of C. Lacina (*) Afton, IA, USA Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. S. Pritchard, E. E. Englehardt (eds.), Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal, Ethical Economy 58, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4_4

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C. Lacina improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system. (Donahue 1979)

Much is at play in this quote. There is a suggestion that greed is socially indistinguishable from self-interest. We may call this the “self-interest” model of greed. From there Friedman suggests capitalism embraces self-interest, thus embracing greed, and in doing so alleviates poverty in ways that other economic systems do not. This vision of capitalism, along with the vision of greed as virtuous, or at the very least innocuous and endemic to all other economic systems, has since taken root in American economics (Pearlstein 2018). It is seldom stated explicitly, but one of the major implications is that greed is somehow necessary for societal prosperity.1 British investment fund manager and commentator Nicola Horlick concurs: Ultimately, the desire to make money is what pulls people out of poverty. Charity is important when dealing with deprived areas of the world, but in a way it is like feeding wild birds. It is not a long-term solution. The only solution is to enable people to help themselves by teaching them how to establish small businesses and nurture them. Without an element of greed, the world would not function. We just need to work out how to temper it and keep it in check. (Brassey and Barber 2009)

My goal in this chapter is to persuade the reader that greed is not necessary for societal prosperity. The argument I will make will run as follows: prosperity is typically thought of as some conjunction of properties like material abundance, technological advancement, and physical security. I will argue that none of those properties require greed, and so it is not the case that prosperity requires greed. In Sect. 4.2, I will lay out the conceptions of greed we will be working with. In Sect. 4.3, I will put forward my arguments against the necessity of greed. In Sect. 4.4, I will consider a number of objections and counterarguments, and in Sect. 4.5 I will summarize and conclude.

4.2  Any Kind of Greed Understandably, in the wake of the 2008 recession and subsequent economic strife, scholars have taken an interest in defining greed.2 To argue against greed as a necessary condition for prosperity, I need to make use of some conception of greed. But to maximize the strength of my argument, it would be best to leave the definition as wide as possible. As such, I will not wade into the discussion on what definition is 1  One could imagine Friedman responding to the question whether greed is necessary for societal prosperity, and it seems likely that Friedman would respond very much the same as he does in the quoted passage. He would likely insist that greed is indistinguishable from self-interest, and self-­ interest is necessary for societal prosperity. We will consider how greed is related to self-interest, and whether self-interest is necessary for societal prosperity in what follows. 2  Now, as of editing this chapter after the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent unemployment spike and wall-street bailout, we may expect to see more of this work.

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best. Instead, in addition to the conception of greed as self-interest promoted by our Friedman and Horlick foil, I will survey a few of the prominent definitions to get us some general grounding, and ultimately suggest that any kind of greed will make do in my argument. Conceptions of greed in contemporary culture vary greatly. On one pole, you have the real-life Wall-Street investor and inspiration for the fictional character Gordon “Greed is Good” Gekko, Ivan Boesky saying, “Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself” (Meserve 2012). On the other, you have philosophers like Jonathan Wight who argue, “Greed is the excessive pursuit of self-interest, with disregard for the rights of others” (Wight 2005). And Jason Kawall, who argues, “Greed is a vice of disproportionality: greedy agents pursue objects to a degree that is disproportionate to their value relative to other goods that the agents could be pursuing, or to the harms associated with their pursuit” (Kawall 2012, 224). Both Wall-Street investors and philosophers argue that greed has value. The former argues that value is positive, the latter negative. In between there are scholars distancing themselves from evaluative conceptions of greed altogether. Among them are Terri Seuntiens et al. who, after five careful studies involving several hundred participants, constructed a prototype analysis which concluded that “the core of the experience of greed lies in the desire to acquire more and the dissatisfaction of never having enough” (Seuntiens et al. 2015a). Some of these researchers went on to develop a dispositional greed scale designed to measure differences in interpersonal greed (Suentiens et al. 2015b). For our purposes, evaluatively neutral definitions of greed seem the most promising. Evaluative judgments are almost always controversial. For example, if I were to show that the simpler, evaluatively neutral “desire to acquire more” is unnecessary for prosperity, then it would follow that an “excessive/wrongful desire to acquire” more will also be unnecessary. None of this is to say the door is left wide open for just any definition of greed, however. Greed cannot simply be defined as something necessary for biological life, for example. An example of defining greed like this would be to say that greed is the acquisition and metabolism of energy. Such a definition would render greed biologically tautologous. In this case, we would have learned nothing from the concept of greed, and we would gain nothing from its use. A similar problem arises in the “self-­ interest” model of greed on display in Friedman and Horlick. Greed on this account is indistinguishable from self-interest. Of course, human beings are self-interested. And of course, we could hardly function without self-interest. So when they laud greed, if they mean to do so in an illuminating and not psychologically tautologous way, they need to move away from a strict self-interest account. Instead, greed must be something uniquely picked out; something over and above a biological or psychological tautology. The definitions offered by the scholars above succeed on this criterion, while it is not so clear for Friedman and Horlick’s self-interest account. It falls upon me now to put forward some working conception of greed. In the following definition I take elements from each of the prominent scholars listed above. Wight insists greed must “disregard the rights of others.” Kawall takes a non-­ interpersonal route; describing greed as the pursuit of objects “to a degree that is

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disproportionate to their value,” here there is no mention of the effects of greed on others. Terri Seuntiens et al. likewise avoid interpersonal language. They describe their empirically distilled prototype definition of greed as a psychological experience where one has a “desire to acquire more” coupled with “the dissatisfaction of never having enough.” For our purposes, we can safely ignore conceptions of greed which have no interpersonal implications. We are interested in greed as it relates to societal prosperity. If I am greedy about paperclips and it has no impact on the rest of society, then this is a form of greed that has no interest in societal prosperity. In addition to taking cues from scholars on greed, it is important that our notion of greed fits with the usage the proponents of greed themselves make of the term. As we saw, Horlick and Friedman made use of greed as a motivator. Friedman further suggested greed and self-interest are indistinguishable. In keeping with these notions of greed, I surmise greed must be interpersonal, motivated, and self-interested. The necessary conditions for any socially significant greed are as follows: Greed must exemplify acquisitive and exclusionary behavior toward goods others need or desire.3

In essence, any charge of greed will at minimum imply these properties. The antithesis of the essence of greed, then, is sharing. The claim in question in this chapter is that greed is necessary for prosperity. Now that we have a sufficiently broad conception of greed on the table, we also need some account of prosperity. As such, I will sketch a quick definition here. Modern societies are typically thought to be prosperous when one has some sufficient degree of security, material abundance, and technological advancement. I could also insist, on behalf of those who wish to defend greed, that a complete conception of prosperity would do well to consider individual autonomy to be a necessary component.4 But I will continue as though variations of material abundance and security are sufficient to account for individual autonomy; one may think that if one has a large plot of land, plenty of food (abundance), and some kind of social, legal, and physical protection (security), for example, then one is free in any ordinary sense. Likewise, if something like the rule of law is necessary for prosperity,

3  “Acquisition” is in most definitions of greed. “Exclusivity” and “another’s needs or desires” point toward both the interpersonal and the self-interested nature of greed. “Exclusivity” means strict exclusivity, where only one or a few people are allowed access to the goods/resources being acquired. I focused on “behavior” as opposed to thought for ease of consistency with liberalism. “Toward something” speaks to the motivational nature of greed. I use “goods” here to prevent confusion about being exclusive about one’s own body and one’s personal relationships. 4  Thanks to my colleague Mitchel Endicott for raising the point that prosperity may not amount to much if one is still under the coercive power of another. Indeed, given that Friedman’s greed quotes came in defense of his thesis in Free to Choose, overlooking the supposed freedom-granting powers of greed would be regrettable.

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I can collapse it into security.5 As such, for our purposes, I take prosperity to be a flat-footed conjunction of security, abundance, and technological advancement: A society is prosperous if it has security, abundance, and technological advancement.

Since prosperity is a conjunction of these properties, we can take them each one by one and ask ourselves whether greed is necessary for their exemplification. If greed is not necessary for any of them alone, then it cannot be necessary for any disjunction of those properties, e.g. greed cannot be necessary for any account of prosperity that involves those properties.

4.3  Against the Necessity of Greed Perhaps the most sophisticated philosophical account for the necessity of acquisitive and exclusionary behavior in the context of the human condition was put forward by Hobbes. Indeed, in effect, Hobbes made the case that a materially powerful sovereign is necessary for some minimally acceptable level of prosperity.6 To Hobbes, because of our “rough natural equality” in obtaining our ends and the limited resources in nature, there are many causes of quarrel and few ways to ensure cooperation. The state of nature for humanity is said to be endless strife and bloodshed. Thus, Hobbes argued that to keep ourselves out of this gruesome state of being we need a powerful sovereign; a “power to overawe us all,” a force so strong that none of us dare dissent. Because of the brutality of the state of nature, any measures the sovereign can take to get us out is a justified measure. The way in which Hobbes imagines a sovereign is necessary for some minimal level of prosperity is clear, given his assumptions: without a powerful sovereign, no individual or group could ever hope to achieve material abundance without being overcome by hordes of other people who would descend on them to take what they had acquired. Without a powerful sovereign, technological advancement would fare similarly; because of the constant quarrel, there would be no incentive to spread or share technological expertise with other groups or individuals. Finally, without a powerful sovereign, security is not a serious option; there is no powerful enforcer to keep any semblance of order. 5  The more properties we add as properties of prosperity, the more opportunity one has to argue that greed is necessary for one of them. If greed is necessary for at least one property of prosperity, it would follow that greed is necessary for prosperity. Thinkers have rightfully suggested codependence between many of these properties, i.e. that one needs the rule of law to be secure, and one needs security to be free, etc. These considerations are not crucial to my argument. What I take to be fundamental to prosperity here tends to align with most people’s intuitions on the matter. I leave it to the skeptic and/or greed proponent to suggest the need to include other properties. 6  Inputting “material” in front of powerful sovereign is my own addition. Given Hobbes was very materialistic (in the philosophical sense) and generally disregarded the power of heaven to regulate human power, I think material power is clearly what he had in mind.

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On Hobbes’ view, all this is enough to demonstrate that a powerful sovereign is necessary for some minimal level of prosperity. Setting aside the legitimacy of his claim, the question for those interested in the necessity of greed for prosperity, then, is whether Hobbes’s sovereign can pump our intuitions about the ‘need for greed.’ Does a Hobbesian sovereign need to be greedy by our account to acquire or maintain such powers? To find out whether this is the case, we can look at the two ways Hobbes imagines a commonwealth with such a powerful sovereign comes to be. First is a commonwealth by acquisition (Hobbes and Shapiro 2010). This kind of commonwealth would be established by force. The second way Hobbes envisions a commonwealth with a powerful sovereign coming to be is by institution. Hobbes says this would happen when, “men agree amongst themselves to submit to some man, or assembly of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be protected by him against all others” (Hobbes and Shapiro, 105). Here, people contractually forfeit their rights to the sovereign in return for sovereign protection. Now, whence cometh greed? It would have to be either in the formation or the maintenance of the commonwealth. For the argument that greed is necessary for prosperity, it would also have to be not just sufficient, but necessary in the formation or maintenance of the commonwealth. Given our loose conception of greed: if it is a commonwealth by acquisition, it must be the case that acquisitive and exclusionary behavior toward goods others need or desire is a necessary behavior of sovereigns.7 If greed enters via commonwealth by institution, it must be the case that this same exclusionary behavior is necessary for the creation or maintenance of the contractual agreement that places one person or group in power. It can be made clear now, however, that even on Hobbes’ dog-eat-dog account of the necessary preconditions of prosperity, greed need not enter the picture. As a thought experiment, let us invoke a myth. I shall call it the Myth of Athena. Let us imagine that Athena lived in the Hobbesian state of nature, a perfectly lawless and horrifying state of all-against-all. Athena, however, was not like the rest. One could look back on her now, though she was in fact a mere mortal like the rest of us, and think quite sensibly that she was a goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, and civilization. She was a righteous Leviathan. The reason we can say this is because she looked at the state of the world around her, and seeing her natural gifts, thought to herself, “I can do something about this. If I just obtain enough power, enough to overawe the rest of humanity, I can stop this endless, senseless violence and provide peace and prosperity for all.” And so she did. And she called the result a commonwealth. But given what I have said until now alone, one may rightfully worry that this loose definition of greed seems to commit Athena to violating the natural human desires of many. Indeed, Hobbes took conflicting desires as an axiomatic assumption in his state of nature (Hobbes and Shapiro, 76–77). The fact of the matter for

7  As stated in §2, possessiveness here is taken to occur wherever someone is acquisitive and exclusionary toward something another needs or desires.

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Hobbes was that we have desires that must be forced out of us; forced in check by the sovereign. How could Athena ‘force’ people to do anything, let alone form a commonwealth, without being acquisitive and exclusionary toward goods people need or desire? To see how, let me extend our mythical thought-experiment. Imagine that Hobbes’ state of nature exists on an island where the only access to food was by one person at a time climbing a single, tall, dangerous coconut tree and knocking a coconut to the ground. Let us also say the number of coconuts are large (to match natural abundance) but limited (to match Hobbes’ natural scarcity).8 Now, whenever someone all the way up in the tree knocks a coconut to the ground for themselves and begins to climb back down to obtain it, one of the people on the ground is likely to immediately steal it, just as Hobbes would suggest. The result for the islanders is an unending clamor for coconuts resulting in violence and bloodshed. The analogy here is tailored to simulate the difficulty of acquiring goods in a Hobbesian state of nature where everyone is watching everyone else and exerting oneself for one’s own benefit leaves one vulnerable to the wills and desires of others. I have invoked a social situation that is artificially contentious for the sake of testing the limits of Hobbesian necessity. In this situation, everyone needs and desires what everyone else has, and the only way to get what they want so far as ordinary islanders are concerned is to take it from each other. This is the most cynical view of what is necessary for prosperity I can conjure without requiring violence.9 The situation is a hotbed for greed as acquisitive and exclusionary behavior towards other’s needs and desires; we have imagined islanders who all share the exact same desires: individual coconuts in the trees, all with the direct motivation to be as acquisitive and exclusionary as possible (they may starve should they fail to do so). Now, imagine Athena is the islander-equivalent of what she was in the previous myth. Like everyone else, she lives in the state of nature. But for some reason, she has gifts that no other person has.10 Because of her extraordinary physical prowess,  Large but limited is possibly the best description of the total resources in the natural global environment. There is abundance, but it is limited. In any given society, however, natural abundance is a fraught assumption. I will return to objections regarding it in Sect. 4.4. For now, I know of no evidence to support the thesis that in general societies fail to produce enough material essentials for everyone (setting aside whether they do in fact fairly distribute those essentials). Of course, there are societies which have failed to do so. During a famine, for example, acquisitive and exclusive behavior toward life sustaining goods may be necessary for survival. But this is an empirical question, one it seems comes with a moral obligation to be as judicious as possible when coming to the conclusion that it is necessary, if the result is that some must starve to death so others can eat. Furthermore, as we will explore later, extreme scarcity is an extreme case in which my description of greed may no longer be apt. One might think it cannot be “greedy” to protect oneself when necessary. 9  Footnote 20 brings up situations where violence would be required for individual survival. Likewise, the end of the paper explores the implications of truly zero-sum situations that seem to require violence as well. 10  We have broken the Hobbesian “rough natural equality” for the sake of argument, but we remain consistent with Hobbes. As mentioned earlier, Hobbes also breaks his assumption of rough natural equality when he invokes commonwealth by acquisition. 8

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she can jump to the tops of the trees and pull coconuts off. Or, because of her brilliance, she alone can create and use tools to reach them more easily. Whatever be the case, she looks on the horror of the state of nature and thinks to herself, just as before: “I can do something about this. If I just obtain enough of the extra coconuts on the tree [the ones not currently occupying the needs or desires of any islanders], enough to overawe the rest of humanity, I can share the coconuts and stop this endless, senseless violence and provide peace and prosperity for all.” And so she does. She calls the result a commonwealth. By sharing the goods everyone needs and desires (coconuts), it is a society fitting of the name. Let us suppose one further step. Suppose after forming her commonwealth, she takes her people’s desire for coconuts and uses it to teach them to rise above their old ways.11 Now, if someone wants a coconut, she can just give them one. If someone needs a coconut, in all her wisdom, she will know, and will simply give them one. There is no longer a need to fight, and at no point do anyone’s needs or desires for coconuts get overrun by the acquisitive and exclusionary behavior of another. Athena is a sort of sovereign here, but in treating herself exactly as she treats the others, she acquires just as many coconuts as the people need, excludes no-one from the bounty, and saves nothing extra for herself. It is a system of sharing instead of greed, a system where Athena disinterestedly rations the supply of coconuts to herself and the commoners. In this thought experiment, we took Hobbes’ commonwealth by acquisition and provided a case where the kind of acquisitive and exclusionary behavior necessary for greed never enters the picture. At no point either in the creation or maintenance of such a commonwealth would Athena need to be acquisitive and exclusive toward goods someone needs or desires. Thus, greed was not necessary. What about commonwealth by institution? Does greed need to play a role there? This can go down roughly the same as the previous case. Instead of Athena using physical power to overawe her people, she instead may be one among many ordinary people who recognize the need to band together and cooperate rather than fight over every coconut. As such, she and the rest of the islanders may form a contract that says not to steal each other’s coconuts, and design some system for who can climb the tree and in what order. All of this is possible, again, without the need to acquire and exclusively maintain anything another needs or desires. If they want a coconut, they simply climb the tree in the order defined in their social contract and get one. If they need a coconut without recognizing it, perhaps the contract is set to

 This is not a critical point in the story. One could postulate that people would desire all of the coconuts for themselves. In that case, Athena’s behavior would seem to violate their needs or desires. But that is to make a psychological claim about humanity that does not fall on me. It is by no means clear to me that humans would necessarily desire all of the goods given by nature for themselves. I set a realistic desire for humans forward, and a zero-sum situation where they cannot obviously obtain those desires without bloodshed. Learning how to mitigate that situation is necessary for prosperity. Learning how to mitigate a situation where human psychology is necessarily acquisitive and exclusionary of goods, they do not need for themselves is not.

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remind the commoners they will soon need a coconut, to ensure no one misses their opportunity.12 We can imagine that Athena’s presence (or the presence of a contract co-authored by Athena) guarantees security in our islander thought experiment. Whenever someone climbs a tree to knock a coconut down, she can (in effect) step in and ensure that person gets the coconut. Then, she can grab a coconut for the islander that would be tempted to quarrel over the climber’s coconut. Thus, Athena’s commonwealth stands as a counterexample to the claim that greed is necessary for security. We have also already said something of how Athena can secure material abundance to the extent that nature can provide it. So long as there are enough coconuts to go around, even if there is a limited pool of them, she can ensure that each islander is fed. Thus, Athena’s commonwealth stands as a counterexample to any argument that greed is necessary for abundance.13 Lastly, we come to technological advancement. It can be said that a prosperous society must be technologically advanced. Maybe we need some people of the commonwealth to use coconut oil to power the technology of the society, and so the technologists will need more coconuts at the expense of others’. But if that is the case, then Athena can pick more than enough coconuts for those people, so long as the tree does not run out. Thus, technology is still possible without acquisitive and exclusionary behavior on behalf of any of the islanders. And if acquisitive and exclusionary behavior is not necessary for technological advancement, then greed is not necessary for technological advancement. Taken together, these arguments negate a disjunction between the necessity of greed for security, the necessity of greed for material abundance, and the necessity of greed for technological advancement. Since prosperity is taken to be a conjunction of these three properties, it follows that greed is not necessary for prosperity.

4.4  Counterarguments In this section I will attempt to clear the air of an assortment of counterarguments. Two main objections occur to me to take the most hold. Both involve what I call ad-hoc metaphysical objections, where one claims the natural world is not abundant enough to allow non-zero-sum relationships between people in the way Athena

 It is worth considering how the value of coconuts would change for the islanders. Because they need coconuts to survive, they are extremely valuable. But so long as they get them whenever they want or need them, the demand is effectively stopped as immediately as it begins. Thus, the islanders are free to pursue other interests. They can effectively take for granted the value of coconuts. 13  In our own world, raw material resources have yet to become a terminally limiting factor of our material prosperity. The ingenuity and know-how to extract or enhance the yield of those resources to meet our material needs has been the limiting factor, and it has been successively overcome. Such competence is fulfilled by Athena in these thought-experiments. 12

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facilitates. First, I will make the case that such objections are ad-hoc and should not be taken for granted. Second, I will argue that only the narrowest possible class of greedy behavior follows from zero-sum situations like these, and even then it is still a material necessity and not a moral necessity. A defender of the necessity of greed might be tempted to insist that of course the tree will run out of coconuts. In the real world, they might say, we must sacrifice the needs or desires of the few (or the many) for the sake of technological advance (for example). Indeed, if we fail to advance sufficiently, our very security is jeopardized: our fates will be no better than the dinosaurs; all kinds of technologically preventable disasters like asteroid collisions could no longer be averted. But that insistence on sacrifice needs justification. The thermodynamic exchange of matter and energy require a source to be transformed or ‘sacrificed’ from its previous state to a new state, but nothing says that the source of that exchange must be goods another person needs or desires. It is nowhere decreed that I must want that coconut, but that coconut is needed to fuel technological prosperity.14 So maybe technology is a bad example, and the point of the objection, anyway, is to insist that there are limited resources, and that there must be a zero-sum trade-off. Here’s another way to state the objection that may be more charitable to the objector: let us remove all but Athena and one other person. Athena, like the others, needs to eat. But for some metaphysical reason, there is only one coconut left, and it cannot be shared. Additionally, by stipulation, whoever eats it can be expected to go on and repopulate the society somehow, and the other will starve to death. Now, defenders of greed as a necessity might say, “A-ha! Here is a situation where one must be acquisitive and exclusionary toward the needs or desires of another in order to ensure prosperity.” As the argument has gone, we can tip our hats. They have forced a truly zero-sum situation on us. The result appears to necessitate greedy behavior on my account. Can a society prosper in this case without my loose definition of greed coming into play? First, I suggest there is a high moral burden on the one claiming to analogize such extreme cases to anything in real life. I will not deny that such scenarios exist in the real world. But the default assumption should be that most situations can be resolved in non-zero-sum ways, especially when the costs of assuming a zero-sum relationship could ostensibly justify a torturous and fatal death.15 Second, let us have a look at how the situation might play out with Athena involved. The assumptions made earlier were that the people on the island strongly desire coconuts. Along with Hobbes, we can also assume that they desire their lives. They may even desire the coconuts because they desire their lives. As such, they clearly have a Hobbesian rational self-interest in eating that last coconut in a  Furthermore, it seems like technology is precisely the kind of thing that does not require much beyond cognitive resources. One needs fuel to eat to think, but if they have fuel then they can think of clever ways to improve their lot technologically. There seems to be no limit to what technologies one could come up with in service of their problems, given sufficient time and mental resources. 15  Indeed, the tendency to assume situations are zero-sum without justification is what psychologists call a “fixed-pie” bias. See: Liu et al. (2016). 14

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situation where there is only one coconut left. Now, Athena knows this, but we have made no assumptions beyond Hobbes about the character of those she has been interacting with. They will undoubtedly take the coconut if she does not forcibly prevent them. The question becomes whether Athena can be okay with not taking the coconut. She might think that although she has all these powers that the other person whose interests conflict with hers does not, none of this amounts to any bit of moral superiority. As such, it is plausible that she could reason, and in fact feel that she does not desire the coconut. If she recognizes she is truly just as morally worthy as the other person on the island, then why should she want to deny it to them? Even in this case, however, losing the coconut would transgress her personal need to exclusively acquire the coconut. Thus, exclusive acquisition would be necessary for her or the other islander, either way. As such, I need to run a little apologetics on the meaning of “need” with regard to reflective creatures such as ourselves. What does it mean for a conscious, thinking being to need something? Ordinarily we might say all of the same stuff that any other animal needs. But is that all there is to say in the case of humans? Is it true that our psychological needs correspond perfectly with our material needs? I venture to say it is not. In fact, it is at least plausible our psychological needs can far outstrip our material needs. In fact, it is possible that in some cases we can feel no psychological satisfaction unless we fulfill some kind of rejection of our material needs. One such case might be Athena’s. She may have deep ethical needs. As we have imagined her, it sure seems to be part of her psychological makeup. If she were to need to help others before herself, for example, then there would be a direct conflict between her psychological needs and her material needs. Which need takes precedence? If the psychological need, then no need is violated by her forgoing the coconut. And if Athena can do it, then any of us can do it. But if the original condition I put forward must imply that any of someone’s needs being violated by someone else’s actions is enough to count as greedy, then I suppose some conception of greed would be exemplified by the taking of the coconut by the other person. This establishes that some notion of greed may be necessary in true zero-sum situations. But this is but a consolation prize with respect to the necessity claim implied by Friedman and Horlick. Their claim suggested that greed was necessary for prosperity, in history in the case of Friedman, and in principle for Horlick. But this leaves them with the enormous burden of proof that I just suggested. To avoid moral atrocities, sacrificing one for others out of pure “necessity,” one must first establish that it really is a necessity. But there is still a deeper problem with this suggestion. What kind of greed would mere self-preference in such a zero-sum situation have to be? The kind of greed that prefers my life to yours, all things equal, if such a choice must be made. Here we edge right up to the criteria I set forth for our conception of greed at the beginning of the chapter, and if we bite, we fall right in: greed must refer to something unique, something over and above an ordinary principle of life striving to survive and flourish. Greed cannot be something so mundane as self-­ interest, self-preference, self-preservation in situations forced by natural circumstance.

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Thus, if greed is not so mundane as self-interest acting out in some natural moral dilemma, then, again, greed is not a necessity.

4.5  Conclusion I have argued that greed is not necessary for societal prosperity. I drew this conclusion from an analysis of prosperity as a conjunction of security, material abundance, and technological advancement. I suggested that other common-sense properties of prosperity could collapse into these three, and that therefore if greed is not necessary for any one of them, then greed is not necessary at all. It is sobering to realize that greed as a vice has hardly been systematically discussed by philosophers while advocates of greed as a social necessity have dominated our political discourse and the popular imagination. In my estimation, we need far more voices painting less dystopian images of human prosperity. Robert Wright, Rutger Bregman, and Peter Diamandis have been among the brightest counter-cultural influences on my thoughts on this subject. Debunking the idea that greed is necessary for prosperity is just a small step toward shifting the zeitgeist away from a society based on greed to a society based on sharing. If anything is necessary for societal prosperity, it is cooperation, and cooperation requires the basic human decency of trusting others with a share of our collective resources.

References Brassey, Alexis, and Stephen Barber, eds. 2009. Greed. Cham: Springer. Donahue, Phil. 1979. The virtues of capitalism. The Phil Donahue Show, CBS. https://youtu.be/ RWsx1X8PV_A. Viewed on 6/15/19. Hobbes, Thomas, and Ian Shapiro. (1651) 2010. Leviathan: or, The matter, Forme and power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and civil. New Haven: Yale University Press. Kawall, Jason. 2012. Rethinking greed. In Ethical adaptation to climate change: Human virtues of the future, 223–239. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Liu, Wu, Leigh Anne Liu, and Jian-Dong Zhang. 2016. How to dissolve fixed-pie bias in negotiation? Social antecedents and the mediating effect of mental-model adjustment. Journal of Organizational Behavior 37 (1): 85–107. Meserve, Myles. 2012. Meet Ivan Boesky, the infamous Wall Streeter who Inspired Gordon Gekko. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-­ivan-­boesky-­the-­infamous-­ wall-­streeter-­who-­inspired-­gordon-­gecko-­2012-­7#in-­may-­of-­1986-­he-­delivered-­remarks-­ about-­greed-­being-­healthy-­12. Accessed June 16, 2019. Pearlstein, Steven. 2018. Can American capitalism survive?: Why greed is not good, opportunity is not equal, and fairness won’t make us poor. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Seuntjens, Terri G., Marcel Zeelenberg, Seger M.  Breugelmans, and Niels Van de Ven. 2015a. Defining greed. British Journal of Psychology 106 (3): 505–525. Seuntjens, Terri G., Marcel Zeelenberg, Niels Van de Ven, and Seger M.  Breugelmans. 2015b. Dispositional greed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (6): 917–933. Wight, Jonathan B. 2005. Adam Smith and Greed. Journal of Private Enterprise 21 (1): 46–58.

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Chance Lacina  is a recent graduate of the Western Michigan University Masters of Philosophy program and a political organizer for Fair Shot Texas. His philosophical work focuses on metaethics, epistemology, and political philosophy. He is a passionate advocate of Basic Income, which he views as one of the only policies large enough to address widespread precarity and destitution in the twenty-first century economy.  Prior to his academic career he was a professional Quake player for team Evil Geniuses. He is currently looking for work bridging his interests in philosophy, gaming communities, and political theory.

Chapter 5

The Irrationality of Greed Kaleb TerBush

Abstract  In this paper, I argue that greed is distinguished from self-interest by its irrationality. According to the psychological literature, greed is best understood as a desire for more and more of some resource, coupled with constant dissatisfaction resulting from the feeling of never having enough of that resource. From this, we get greed’s deep irrationality; the greedy person has a desire that can never be satisfied, and in acting greedily they repeatedly set out to do the impossible. On the other hand, we take rationality to be a constitutive part of truly self-interested behavior. Thus, arguments forwarding the idea that “greed is good” either equivocate between greed and self-interest or make untenable claims about greed. So, this paper has two main upshots: we now have a morally-neutral distinction between greed and self-­ interest, and a reason to reject pro-greed arguments. Keywords  Greed · Self-interest · Rationality · Milton Friedman · Capitalism · Adam Smith

5.1  Introduction Some have argued that, contrary to popular belief, “greed is good.” Broadly speaking, these arguments claim that negative appraisals of greed miss the fact that greed actually results in optimal material outcomes. That is, moral evaluations of greed as vicious are trumped by the instrumental value of greedy behavior; if it was not for greed, the world and its inhabitants would not have the amount of wealth and prosperity that they currently do (Friedman 1970). The implication, then, is that we ought to promote rather than deride greed. While such arguments are prima facie plausible, they are deeply flawed because they rest on a problematic equivocation between greed and self-interest. As I will argue, these arguments get their purchase (and counter-intuitive appearance) from their use of the term “greed” rather than the more-appropriate “self-interest.” The K. TerBush (*) University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. S. Pritchard, E. E. Englehardt (eds.), Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal, Ethical Economy 58, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4_5

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primary purpose of this paper is to offer an analysis of the distinction between greed and self-interest that is grounded in notions of rationality—namely, that it is often the case that self-interest is rational and greed irrational. The motivation for such an approach is twofold. The first reason is that greed and self-interest are regularly conflated in both popular and academic discourse. This is both descriptively and normatively problematic. The conflation is descriptively problematic because when equivocating in this way, we call the wrong sorts of behavior self-interested, when they really ought to be called greedy. And likewise, this conflation is normatively problematic insofar as it prevents those who are greedy from being held morally blameworthy. The second reason is that discussion of greed is usually couched in moral terms. Said moral discussions often result in attempts to provide either a conceptual analysis of greed and/or arguments for greed’s viciousness. Although these tasks are central to much philosophizing, they can myopically exclude other fruitful avenues of inquiry when it comes to the subject of greed. So, by providing an account of greed explained in terms of rationality rather than morality, we can (1) distinguish greed from self-interest and thus (2) resituate the debate around greed in a novel, informative way. My argument, then, has a number of theoretical upshots. Perhaps most importantly, one of these is the means to reject the aforementioned “greed is good” arguments, which turn out to be ultimately ill-founded.

5.2  What Is Greed? One thing I will not do in this paper is offer a traditional conceptual analysis of either greed or self-interest—that is, a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for each concept. Rather, I will examine some of what we take to be the central features of greed. In this way, the kind of conceptual analysis of greed that I will be drawing on is best understood as some version of a “prototype” approach to conceptual analysis.1 Later, I will go on to show how these prototypical features of greed constitute its irrationality and argue as to how they help us to distinguish greed from self-interest. Ultimately, my goal in this paper is to give an account of dispositional greed; my focus is on greedy people rather than greedy actions. This project, then, is not an attempt to set out the conditions under which an action can be properly called greedy.2 Instead, I want to provide an analysis of greed that explains greed as a character trait: what is it, exactly, that makes a person greedy? 1   For example, see Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances.” Wittgenstein, L. (1953/1958). Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edition, G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell. 2  Of course, my view will nevertheless have implications when it comes to determining whether an action is greedy or not. In particular, one potential worry about my argument is that it might preclude us from justifiably labelling certain seemingly-greedy actions instances of greed. I return to this objection later.

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In the moral psychology literature, survey-style attempts have been made to show what ordinary people take to be the important features of greed.3 Participants are asked to explain what they think the characteristic elements of greed are, and then these elements are grouped by whether they were felt to be either central or peripheral to greed. While the list of features is quite long, some of the central features of greed included: excessiveness, acquisitiveness, selfishness, materialism, lack of satisfaction, money, envy, stinginess, egocentrism, consequence-ignorance, immorality, wealth, manipulation, gluttony, tunnel vision, and striving for both quantity and quality (Seuntjens et al. 2015a, b).4 In light of these results, the authors give the following analysis of greed: “the core of the experience of greed lies in the desire to acquire more and the dissatisfaction of never having enough” (Seuntjens et al. 2015a, b). Assuming these results give an accurate approximation of the folk notion of greed, the claim here is that two major components fall out of our everyday understanding of greed: first, a desire to acquire more and more of some resource(s), and second, a lack of satisfaction caused by the feeling of never having enough of that resource. Note that this definition of greed is prima facie morally-neutral, as opposed to invoking the explicitly evaluative terms that frequently crop up in discussions of greed (e.g. some of the other features listed by study participants). So, on the authors’ definition, one is greedy for money if one has a never-satisfied desire to acquire more and more money—that is, if there is no amount of money that the acquisition of would make one satisfied. In many cases, of course, people would be more inclined to call a person greedy if the pursuit of their desires involves envy, deception, egocentrism, manipulation, stinginess, or any of the other features study participants listed as being components of greed. And, these concepts themselves are not morally-neutral. However, according to the definition of greed that the study’s authors provide, we can be justified in calling somebody “greedy” without necessarily invoking these kinds of “thick” moral concepts. This is the case even if talk of “never-satisfied acquisitive desires” inclines people towards a negative moral evaluation of the behavior in question. On its face, the study’s definition gives a purely descriptive and non-normative analysis of a certain character trait. Thus, I take said definition to be non-moral in nature. Assuming, then, that this definition is an approximate representation of the folk understanding of greed—which it presumably is, given the survey-style nature of the studies—this morally-neutral analysis turns out to have striking implications.

 For my primary focus, see: Terri G.  Seuntjens, et  al. “Defining Greed.” British Journal of Psychology, 106(3), 2015, pp. 505–525; Seuntjens, et al. “Dispositional Greed.” Journal of personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 108(6), 2015, pp. 917–933. 4  This list is not exhaustive. Interestingly, one of the most important features of greed, according to the participants, was actually self-interest. However, we should not take this to mean that greed and self-interest are the same. Rather, one might think it is some conjunction of self-interest and the other cited features that make greed what it is. 3

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5.3  How Is Greed Irrational? Per our working definition, the two core features of greed are (1) a never-satisfied desire to acquire more and more of some resource(s) and (2) constant dissatisfaction resulting from never having enough of said resource(s). If this view is true, we are now in a position to draw a distinction between greed and self-interest—one that relies on notions of rationality. In fact, the authors of this study note an inherent tension in greedy behavior that arises from their definition. They say that: ... greed is an exaggerated form of maximizing, in which people not simple [sic] prefer to have more, but are also frustrated by not having it. While it may be rational to strive for the maximum, striving for more than what is possible is not rational. Thus, when people are greedy, they can become so focused on what they want or desire that it leads to behaviour that is not rational anymore (Seuntjens et al. 2015a, b).

There are two distinct kinds of irrationality mentioned in this passage. First, there is the sort of irrationality that occurs when attempting to carry out the impossible. With greed, this means desiring and/or trying to acquire an unlimited and (thus impossible) amount of some resource. Greed is irrational, then, insofar as it often involves a desire for an essentially infinite amount of something—a desire that, by definition, can never be satisfied. Second, the passage mentions that greed can itself lead to irrational behavior; in pursuing one’s greedy desires, one is often led to act in a way that is irrational. This can include sacrificing other goods, not cooperating with others, and so on. This sort of irrationality can be captured by many of the features of greed listed by participants that were not included in the survey’s “core” definition (e.g. tunnel vision, egocentrism, materialism, etc.). While the second sort of irrationality is relevant when analyzing greed, the claim that some particular vice leads to irrational behavior is not unique to greed alone. For example, consider the seemingly irrational behavior that results from other vices: rashness, vanity, envy, etc. In fact, it seems that this is just the sort of “irrationality” that critics of greed often have in mind. However, my focus will instead be on the first kind of irrationality—the kind that emphasizes the greedy person’s dispositions. Being irrationally disposed towards having these impossible-to-satisfy desires is a promising contender for a feature that helps us differentiate greed from self-interest. So, just what exactly does this sense of irrationality involve, and how does it help us to distinguish greed and self-interest? Recall that per our working definition, greed often involves being disposed towards desiring and/or pursuing an amount of something that can never be satisfied. Here, the study’s authors employ the concept of a “hedonic treadmill”: they say that greed can be thought of as “a gap between acquiring or consuming a product and gaining satisfaction... [which] confirms the idea that greedy people are on a hedonic treadmill” (Seuntjens et  al. 2015a, b). While the term “hedonic” is misleading (greed does not necessarily need to involve the pursuit of bodily pleasures), the metaphor is still an illustrative one. The greedy pursue some resource because they desire it, but it turns out that no amount of that

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resource will ever satisfy their desire; they are running in place rather than getting closer to achieving their goal. Thus, if our definition of greed is correct, it turns out that greed is deeply irrational, and in such a way that it is essentially impossible to be rationally greedy. This claim can be clarified by looking at two particular types of irrationality: epistemic and behavioral irrationality. I argue that the greedy individual exhibits both epistemic and behavioral irrationality, and these work together to constitute greed’s deep irrationality. First, take epistemic irrationality to involve holding beliefs that are unsupported by one’s available evidence. In the case of the greedy individual, they believe that pursuing their greedy desires will help to satisfy those desires; additionally, they have at some point probably pursued those greedy desires. Recall, though, that in our definition of greed the greedy desires can never actually be completely satisfied. Therefore, the greedy person has a false belief—“doing X will satisfy my desire”— that is unsupported by the available evidence of their past experiences. This individual continues to believe that acting greedily will satisfy their greedy desires, despite the fact that behaving in this way has never done so.5 For example, take the person who hoards material wealth. They desire money and have always pursued it; even once they are rich, though, their desire still has not been completely extinguished, and they continue to believe that acquiring more money will eventually satisfy that desire. In this way, greed constitutes an agent’s being epistemically irrational. Second, consider behavioral irrationality, which is irrationality pertaining to one’s actions.6 We can identify two specific types of behavioral irrationality: instrumental and practical irrationality. It turns out that greed can entail both of these types of behavioral irrationality. First, instrumental irrationality broadly involves not adopting the means suitable for fulfilling one’s ends. In the case of the greedy person, one of their ends is presumably to satisfy their desire via attaining an amount of some resource. To fulfill this end, the greedy person just does whatever they need to do to get that resource; their means, then, are simply doing what it takes to acquire said resource. However, given our analysis of greed from before, it turns out that this route of action is incapable of satisfying its purpose, because the goal itself is incapable of being accomplished. Thus, the greedy agent’s means, i.e. resource acquisition, fail to fulfill their ends, i.e. desire satisfaction. This is an example of greed’s being instrumentally irrational. Likewise, greed also involves practical irrationality, which we can take to be a failure to adopt rationally justifiable

5  Of course, it is possible to partially satisfy one’s desires—even greedy ones. My greedy desire for more and more money is presumably partially satisfied each time I acquire more of it. However, this is distinct from fully extinguishing one’s greedy desire(s). What’s significant here is that a greedy desire is never capable of being completely realized, even if some intermittent and partial contentment is attained in pursuit of its complete satisfaction. 6  Some think that epistemic, or theoretical rationality, is a type of behavioral, or instrumental, rationality; I set these debates aside. However, I do think that an agent can be both epistemically and behaviorally irrational at the same time—an idea that I turn to shortly.

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ends—to fail to decide to do the thing that one has reason to do. When someone has decided to act in a way that possesses the two core features of greedy behavior, they have quite literally set out to do the impossible. This is because the end that they have alighted upon—the satisfaction of their greedy desires—is impossible to fulfill, and presumably it is irrational to set ends that can never be fulfilled. For example, if I am greedy for money, I endeavor to acquire an amount of money that I think will make me happy; as it turns out, though, it is impossible for me to attain that amount of money, as that amount of money is non-existent by way of being infinitely large. So, greed is an example of behavioral irrationality—instrumental and/ or practical—too.7 Importantly, the greedy individual is capable of being both epistemically and behaviorally irrational at the same time. A greedy person can adopt unjustified beliefs about the efficacy of their actions in conjunction with behaving in a way that is indicative of unjustified means and/or ends. Thus, greed turns out to be an especially vicious character trait, since it leads the greedy person to adopt patterns of both thinking and behavior that are deeply irrational. The greedy agent is led to desire what cannot possibly be attained, believe what cannot possibly be true, and act in a manner that cannot possibly be effective.8

5.4  Why Is Greed Not Good? Now that we have an account of greed’s irrationality, we are in a position to fully differentiate greed from self-interest and thus see why “greed is good” arguments fail. Consider the concept “self-interest,” which is generally used in two different senses. In the first, self-interest refers to wellbeing—to what is in a person’s interest to do, as doing so would make their life go well. In the second, self-interest is meant to refer to behavior done to further one’s own interests rather than those of others or 7  It also appears possible for greed to be both instrumentally and practically irrational. This is because greed involves the adoption of both unsuitable means (instrumental irrationality) and unattainable ends (practical irrationality). These two types of irrationality look to be prima facie compatible. In other words, an agent can adopt ends that are rationally unjustifiable, i.e. impossible, while simultaneously adopting means that are unsuitable for fulfilling that end. 8  One might think there are cases wherein it is prudential for an agent to have impossible-to-satisfy ends, since in attempting to fulfill those ends optimal outcomes might still obtain even if the end itself is never satisfied (example: deciding that I want to independently stop global warming, which although impossible might lead me to nevertheless recycle more, drive less, and so on). While technically true, it is still more rational for the agent to adopt attainable ends rather than the unattainable one. In one sense, this is trivially true; moreover, one can instead just adopt those “sub”ends on their own, without the impossible one (i.e. simply decide to recycle more, drive less, and so on, rather than the larger, impossible goal of stopping global warming). The same seems true for greed, in that I find it difficult to think of cases where it would more prudential for one to adopt greedy, impossible ends (e.g. an unrealistic amount of dollars) rather than some non-greedy, attainable one (e.g. realistic X amount of dollars).

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the “greater good.” Since I will argue that “greed is good” arguments invoke this second sense of self-interest by their use of the term “greed,” we can set aside the first interpretation for now. Recall that greed is prototypically characterized by (1) a never-ending desire to acquire more and more of some resource(s) and (2) dissatisfaction resulting from never having enough of said resource(s). Moreover, I also argued that this definition of greed means that it involves what I call deep irrationality. Rationality, on the other hand, is a constitutive feature of our folk notion of self-interest; we think that rationality and self-interest are intricately tied up with one another. Additionally, consider the philosophically-ubiquitous phrase “rational self-interest.” When we describe somebody as acting out of self-interest, we are usually saying that we think they acted rationally—in a way that makes sense, given the reasons that person has. Likewise, we think that acting irrationally is generally not in one’s self-interest. Thus, the idea of “irrational self-interest” is an oxymoron of sorts. This becomes especially evident when we consider the sense of self-interest I want to focus on: action supposedly done to further one’s own interests rather than those of others, or society’s as a whole. Remember that greed is deeply irrational, and the type of self-­ interest at hand involves doing what is rational for one to do; if this is the case, then it is apparent that greedy behavior cannot be identical to self-interest. Greed and self-interest have different characteristics insofar as the former is irrational and latter rational, and they therefore cannot be identical or equivalent. This point highlights a common linguistic confusion, in which people interchangeably use the terms “self-interest” and “greed” to refer to the same disposition. However, these terms are also confused in theoretical contexts as well—including in typical “greed is good” arguments. With the rationality-based distinction between greed and self-interest in hand, we can now see why Friedman-type “greed is good” arguments rest on a problematic equivocation between the two concepts. First, let’s briefly reconstruct this argument. Its thesis is that greed is good because it leads to optimal material outcomes. In pursuing your greedy desires, you make yourself materially better-off than you would have been otherwise. Thus, if we encourage more people to be greedy, more people would be better off. Additionally, the fact that people possess this “newfound” wealth ostensibly entails that a significant amount of said wealth will end up reaching people who otherwise would never have seen any of it (i.e. some version of “trickle-down” economics). This argument therefore implies that greed is, in fact, a good thing, contrary to the usual view that it is a problematic character flaw. Many individuals pursuing their greedy desires results in substantially increased abundance for many people—especially when compared to a world in which fewer people are encouraged to act greedily. Moreover, this argument is often forwarded as a response to critiques of capitalism that criticize it as an economic system based upon greed. These critiques levy that encouraging greedy behavior leads to a lack of cooperation, and even incentivizes harming others; respectively, these end up being both practical and moral reasons to oppose capitalisms’ greed. Friedman-type arguments, though, respond that

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this critique understates the value of greed. Close examination supposedly reveals that even if greed is the foundation of our current economic system, that just means that greed-focused capitalism is merely to blame for being the most successful mode of production the world has ever seen. It has historically lifted millions out of poverty, improved the lives of countless others, driven technological advancement, and generated an unprecedented amount of wealth and prosperity. If greed is the cause of all of this, what’s not to like? Setting aside (oversimplified) debates about political economy, I argue that these sorts of “greed is good” arguments are actually talking about self-interest rather than greed. Accordingly, then, greed should not to be praised in the way these arguments claim it should be. To clarify the equivocation that I claim is taking place, it is helpful to look at where these arguments draw their inspiration from—mistakenly so. The basis for these pro-greed positions is often attributed to the following quote from Adam Smith: It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages (Smith 1981).

On its face, the sentiment here looks similar to Friedman’s: individuals pursuing their own interests is what makes the economic world go around, as it were, ultimately making us all better off. After all, if the price to pay for being able to purchase meat, bread, or beer is permitting greedy behavior, then so be it. However, it is telling that Smith uses the term self-interest rather than greed, which contrasts with Friedman-type arguments. The fact that they use different terms to purportedly describe the same phenomenon is an interesting and important disparity. Is it out of greed or mere self-interest that the butcher sells us meat? Or the brewer beer? Or the baker bread? Of course, people do buy and sell things out of self-interest; as I have argued, though, we have strong reason to think that self-interest and greediness are distinct phenomena. So, the question is whether or not these individuals cross the boundary from self-interest to greed in acting the way that Smith describes. The answer seems, to me at least, to be a resounding “no.” It is doubtful that the a priori claim that all individuals who run a business are necessarily doing so out of greed can be a true or justified one. This is an initial reason to think Friedman should have used “self-interest” rather than greed to describe capitalism’s successes. This reading becomes more plausible when we return to our prior two-part characterization of greed: a never-ending desire for more and more of some resource, and constant dissatisfaction resulting from never having enough of that resource. It seems unlikely that all of those who participate in the sales economy satisfy these two criteria. The butcher, baker, and brewer certainly all sell their products to further their own self-interest—to acquire money in order provide for themselves and their family. Yet, they are probably not selling their products in order to sate a never-­ ending desire for money, and it is unlikely that no matter how successful their business becomes they will always feel a lack of satisfaction and/or money. Some might,

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of course, and hence the cliché of the greedy businessman.9 However, Smith’s passage actually captures just the sentiment Friedman seems to have in mind: people pursuing their self-interest, to an extent, likely makes us all better off in many ways.10 Unfortunately, Friedman uses the wrong word—“greed”—to describe the behavior in question, which is in fact merely self-interested. Thus, his argument problematically equivocates and fails to prove that greed is, contrary to popular belief, a good thing. This leaves Friedman-type pro-greed arguments with two options. First, they can admit that they really just meant “self-interest” when they said “greed,” and then their argument works. However, if this route is taken, all that has been done—at best—is reaffirm the notion that allowing individuals to pursue their self-interest can be good for society as a whole. But, this claim is uninteresting at best and trivial at worst. On the other hand, they have the second option of doubling down via committing to having really meant “greed” all along. However, this move is unsatisfactory as well. My prior analysis of the irrationality of greed makes this clear. Recall that greed is often indicative of epistemic and/or behavioral irrationality on the part of the greedy person. There is a prima facie tension inherent to the claim that greed can be good, given the way(s) in which it is irrational. What could be good about something that causes people to believe things they do not have evidence for? Or to have desires they cannot satisfy? Or to do things that are incapable of fulfilling their intended purpose?11 In fact, a disposition that causes these phenomena might even be thought to constitute a harm to the agent of some sort. So if “good” just means “optimal,” as Friedman seems to use it, it is not clear that greed can really be optimal in even this sense, given the thicket of irrationality that it leads agents into. Put 9  Although I do not pursue this line of argument, one might also be skeptical of Friedman’s claims insofar as they might lead to an overgeneralization: by calling nearly everything everybody does related to improving their self-interest “greed,” we stand to lose the ability to use the term in any meaningful way, resulting in not being able to properly label a large class of greedy and morally-­ blameworthy desires, actions, and character traits. If “greed” ends up capturing every instance of “feeding one’s family,” the analysis has gone wrong somewhere. 10  It is interesting to note that even Friedman suggests limiting our greedy pursuits, claiming that we should only maximize our resource acquisition insofar as we still follow the “basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.” Yet if we combine this with his promotion of greed elsewhere, there seems to be a tension: immorality or norm-violation seems built into the very concept of greed itself, at least in many peoples’ eyes. Thus, we have reason to think there is some sort of internal tension, if not an outright contradiction, in Friedman’s views on greed and norm-following. See: Milton Friedman. “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” The New York Times, Sep. 13, 1970. 11  One might think that there could be value in pursuing greedy desires despite the fact that they can never be fully satisfied. For example, maybe my pursuit of wealth and subsequent acquisition is good for me, even if I am never ultimately content with the amount of wealth I possess. Although conceptually possible, such a claim has unsavory commitments even if the balancing test is passed. Is it good for an agent to have desires that are never completely satisfied? Is it good to expend one’s resources pursuing something that cannot be attained? Is it good to have a character trait that turns out to be deeply irrational? Moreover, these agent-facing concerns are even more difficult to square with greed’s well-established relationship with non-cooperation and harm to others. It seems much less likely that greed is good and ought to be encouraged once these considerations are accounted for.

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another way, the phrase “greed is good even though it is irrational” has an odd ring to as it, just like “irrational self-interest” does. Ultimately, then, Friedman-type “greed is good” arguments fail. In order to succeed, they would have to mean “self-interest” rather than greed—but if they do this, then the argument proves little to nothing. However, holding fast to the original greed-emphasizing formulation also fails, since as we know greed is inherently irrational in a number of ways—and “good irrationality” is as prima facie implausible as “irrational self-interest.” It turns out that greed is not good after all. There are also two additional upshots of my argument. First is novel way of resituating debates about capitalism, and greed more generally. Friedman mistakenly takes greed to be a necessary condition for the economic flourishing he associates with supposedly greed-centric capitalism, a mistake grounded in his conflation of greed with self-interest. When we clear up this confusion, it becomes less likely that greed is necessary for said flourishing. If true, one implication of this might be that greed no longer needs to be associated with economic well-being or taken to be a necessary prerequisite—i.e. an unfortunate but indispensable part—of material flourishing. In ridding ourselves of the assumption that greed is central to economic flourishing, we can more effectively debate the import of particular policies and their effect on individual flourishing, by helping us think more clearly about what is really in peoples’ self-interest. In doing so, it will become clear that greed and its promotion do not fit this bill. Second, my irrationality-focused account captures notions of not just greed at the individual level, but also organizational greed as well (e.g. corporations, governments, etc.). It is not hard to think of situations where organizations act greedily, of course, but thinking about such instances in terms of irrationality can be illuminating. Consider the following example: in the pursuit of maximizing profits in order to compensate CEO’s, corporations often underpay their lowest-ranking employees. But, when many corporations do this, those employees are unable to buy the goods those corporations sell, resulting in a reduction in profits for those businesses. In fact, this criticism is one that Marxists make of purely profit-oriented capitalism; in capitalism’s unceasing pursuit of profit, negative side effects occur that actually hinder said accumulation wealth. In this way, organizations can be disposed towards greedy irrationally in the same way individuals are. Thus, while somewhat metaphorical, my analysis of greed has implications for how we can talk about larger-­ scale, organizational instances of greed in that we now have a useful way of thinking about the way in which not just individuals but also larger organizations can be disposed, and irrationally so, towards greed.

5.5  Objections I have argued for two main claims: that (1) there is a useful distinction to be made between greed and self-interest that grounds their difference in rationality and (2) it follows from this distinction that a certain type of “greed is good” argument fails. In

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this section, I now turn to objections to my account. I first respond to the charge that my definition of greed is an inaccurate one. Second, I defend my account against the criticism that it underdetermines the cases that we typically want to label as greedy. First, one might object to my definition of greed by being skeptical as to whether it is always constitutive of greed that one has an unlimited, impossible-to-satisfy desire for something. Isn’t it at least possible, in theory, for a greedy individual’s desire to eventually be satisfied at some point after acquiring a particular amount of a resource? Or, that their greedy desire is satisfied every time they successfully acquire more of the resource in question? After all, greed’s “unlimited” feature is, while the central part of my definition, not an immediately apparent part of most peoples’ conception of greed—even if it does to fall out folk notions of greediness. If true, this would mean that my descriptive project fails right at the start, and the greed vs. self-interest distinction I draw is unlikely to be sound. My response here is twofold. Admittedly, my account does not rule out such a case being possible in theory. However, I think this sort of instance of greed is psychologically implausible and/or still irrational in a significant sense. First, I think that the existence of such non-unlimited instances of greed is unlikely, or uncommon, due to their psychological implausibility. Think about paradigmatic instances of greed: most of the time, these cases do appear to involve an individual who will never be completely satisfied. Consider those who dedicate their lives to the greedy pursuit of money—for example, the cliché of the greedy business-owner. Is there really evidence indicating that this person will suddenly up and stop their pursuit at some specific amount of money? The same seems to be true of those greedy for non-material resources, like political power; attaining some rank or office rarely seems to be enough for such individuals, and they still try to increase their influence in other ways. More generally, this just is not how we think dispositions work; if I have a certain vicious disposition, it is implausible that I stop acting on it at some further arbitrary point. If somebody is rash, do we expect that they stop acting rashly once they reach a certain critical mass or threshold of rash behavior? Second, I think the objection fails to hurt my more general conclusion that greed is, generally speaking, irrational. Even granting that there are cases of the greed where the desire isn’t unlimited, the instances of greed the objection has in mind are still likely to be irrational to some extent. In other words, even if we lose the ability to claim that almost all cases of greed are “deeply” irrational, greed might still be irrational insofar as it causes individuals to behave in a manner that is irrational.12 For example, we know that greed often causes people to not cooperate with others, sacrifice other goods and projects, ignore the consequences of their actions, and so on—all behaviors that we think are irrational in some sense. Greed makes people act in a way that does not often seem to actually be in their (rational) self-interest, and this might make one think that greed is irrational, even if not in the “deep” sense I emphasized previously. For example, recall the hedonic treadmill of greed. Staying

 Recall the passage that I quoted from Seuntjens et al. on p. 5, where I identified two different types of irrationality mentioned in the passage.

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on the treadmill for one rotation is like merely satisfying one intermittent greedy desire; no matter how many laps you successfully complete, you are never closer to your real destination, i.e. fully satisfying your greedy desire. Staying on a hedonic treadmill in this way hardly seems rational. Thus, my claim that greed is irrational—which serves as the basis for the rest of my arguments—remains largely unscathed. A second objection one might have about my account of greed is that it under-­ generalizes and does not allow us to capture cases that we typically want to say are instances of greed. In particular, my theory of greed might seem to preclude Hume’s “sensible knave” from being greedy, which would be too steep of a theoretical cost. Recall that for Hume: …a sensible knave…. may think that an act of iniquity…. will make a considerable addition to his fortune, without causing any considerable breach in the social union... he, it may perhaps be thought, conducts himself with most wisdom, who observes the general rule, and takes advantage of all the exceptions (Hume 1751).

Thus, a sensible knave is a rational agent, one who does what is immoral when doing so is to their benefit and they can avoid social sanctions—a free rider. Put another way, the sensible knave acts viciously when doing so is in their rational self-­ interest. However, now there is a problem: greed is clearly a vice, but if the sensible knave is a rational agent and my claim is that greed is irrational, then my account appears to rule out our justifiably labelling the sensible knave as greedy. The issue here is that if we think anybody is capable of being greedy, it is the sensible knave. Thus, one might think that the concept of the sensible knave is a counterexample to my claim that greed is irrational. In response to this, I would actually agree with the objection; my account does probably rule out the ability to call the sensible knave greedy. However, I reject the claim that this is too steep of a theoretical cost. This is because even if we cannot call the sensible knave greedy, we can still charge them with being guilty of other vices that capture many greed’s other features. For example, if a sensible knave acts in a way that we are inclined to call greedy, we are just as justified in claiming that they are being egocentric, excessive, materialistic, selfish, and so on. Thus, we can still capture the intuition that the sensible knave is morally blameworthy yet rational for acting in a seemingly “greedy” way, while still denying that they are actually greedy for theoretical reasons. In fact, this need not even be problematic for our everyday attributions of greed, since such attributions often aim to capture the sub-­ features of greed of the sort I just listed. Thus, we can look at my account of greed as a purely theoretical one that might be non-problematically revisionary in regard to our ordinary moral thought and discourse. Thus, not being able to call the sensible knave greedy turns out to not be too steep of a theoretical cost after all. And, given the other upshots of my view, this is small sacrifice to make—if it is really even one at all.

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5.6  Conclusion Here is what I hope to have accomplished. First, I gave a definition of greed based on findings from the moral psychology literature. Second, I argued as to how that definition shows that greed is often deeply irrational, which is in and of itself a novel characterization of greed. Third, I then argued that characterization can help us distinguish irrational greed from rational self-interest. Fourth, I used that new distinction to reject a typical version of a “greed is good” argument. Fifth, I responded to two objections to my account: first, I argued that my definition is a plausible one, and even if it is not universally accurate, my claim that greed is irrational stands regardless; second, I defended my account against the charge that it under-­ determines, and that even if we lose the ability to call certain cases instances of greed, we can still say that they are instances of other morally-blameworthy vices that are often constitutive of greed itself. Furthermore, here are the two main upshots of this paper. First, my irrationality-­ based account gives us clear grounds to distinguish between greed and self-interest, which will hopefully help prevent further equivocation between the two terms. In doing so, we can now properly label peoples’ dispositions as either self-interested or greedy. The second upshot is that we now have a way to respond to “greed is good” arguments. They either equivocate between greed and self-interest, saying the former when they really mean the latter; or, they really mean greed, which my account shows to be an indefensible answer. A more general benefit of my account, then, is that we have a morally-neutral way to talk about greed. This might sound odd, given that talk of greed is often couched in moral terms. However, pro-greed arguments are unfortunately convincing to many people. By showing that these arguments fail on a conceptual level without presuming anything about morality, I hope to help convince others that such arguments are flawed and ought to be rejected. This is precisely because I think our folk notions of greed are largely accurate: greed is a vice, arguably one of the most pernicious, and it is bad for the greedy person, those around them, and society at large. Hurting greed’s good reputation is what actually promotes optimal outcomes—not greed itself. A world with less greed is a more moral and, ultimately, more rational one.

References Friedman, M. 1970. The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. The New York Times. Hume, D. 1983. An enquiry concerning the principles of morals. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Seuntjens, T., et al. 2015a. Defining greed. British Journal of Psychology 106 (3): 505–525. ———. 2015b. Dispositional greed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences 108 (6): 917–933.

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Smith, A. 1981. In An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, ed. R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner. Indianapolis: Liberty Press. Wittgenstein, L. 1958. Philosophical investigations. Trans. G.E.M.  Anscombe. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Kaleb TerBush  completed his A.B. in philosophy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2017 (high distinction, honors) and his M.A. in philosophy at Western Michigan University in 2019. He started law school at the University of Michigan in 2020 and plans to become a public interest lawyer after graduation.

Chapter 6

Greed and Social Context Chad M. Watson

Abstract  This chapter will be first suggesting one possible way to clarify the distinction between greed and self-interest by defining greed normatively, focusing on certain acts and behaviors in our own socioeconomic context result in acquiring or maintaining more of a given good than one’s fair share at the expense of others’ needs. With this working definition in hand, I will then argue that in instances where we claim some good consequence has come from greed, we have reason to question who benefits from these consequences and who loses out. Despite the benefits enjoyed by some, if these benefits require many others to lose out than we should not so readily concede that greed is good. Keywords  Perpetuating wealth · Semantic trap · Self-interest · Deprivation · Progressive tax · Distributive justice

In his 1979 interview on The Phil Donahue Show, Milton Friedman, when pressed by Phil Donahue about the role of greed in perpetuating wealth inequalities in capitalist societies, retorts, “Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed?”. China, Russia, and the United States alike “run on greed”, according to Friedman. After this claim, though, Friedman performs an apparent bit of linguistic sleight of hand. The great achievements in history and the world today, he argues, have been and continue to be driven by “individuals pursuing their separate interests”. I suspect the intuition many of us have is though greed and self-interest are closely related, they are not necessarily identical nor completely interchangeable. With this intuition in mind, accurately evaluating Friedman’s claim is tricky. Is he simply using the terms interchangeably, or is he drawing a line between malicious and benign self-interest and implying that Donahue’s evaluation is mistaken? Determining Friedman’s actual position would have required pressing him on this matter, which did not make it into that interview.

C. M. Watson (*) Seattle, WA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. S. Pritchard, E. E. Englehardt (eds.), Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal, Ethical Economy 58, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4_6

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Confusion, misuse, and imprecision around uses of ‘greed’ and ‘self-interest’ are likely not limited to this sole instance, though. These two concepts are difficult to fully distinguish from one another; we may simply consider greed to be just “too much” pursuit of self-interest, for example. Likewise, the insistence that there are at least some good consequences to greed prevails as well. These tendencies, I suspect, are connected. And both seem troublesome. Since many of us readily admit that greed is negative or wrong in many cases,1 there is good reason to more closely evaluate our use of these terms and the claim that perhaps greed occasionally leads to positive outcomes. My project here will be first suggesting one possible way to clarify the distinction between greed and self-interest by defining greed normatively, focusing on certain acts and behaviors in our own socioeconomic context result in acquiring or maintaining more of a given good than one’s fair share at the expense of others’ needs. With this working definition in hand, I will then argue that in instances where we claim some good consequence has come from greed, we have reason to question who benefits from these consequences and who loses out. Despite the benefits enjoyed by some, if these benefits require many others to lose out than we should not so readily concede that greed is good. The following discussion of greed, self-interest, and the relevant moral concerns is intended to be a careful and accessible philosophical examination of these concepts. My aim is to interrogate these ideas in a rigorous manner but to also do so without too much philosophical baggage or terse argumentation. Conversations about distribution of wealth, appropriate taxation, and what it means to contribute one’s fair share have become more commonplace. As such, I believe projects like I am presenting here ought to be meaningful for any audience.

6.1  Greed and Self-Interest An observer could take Friedman’s apparent equation of greed and self-interest to be malicious, that he is trying to catch opponents in a semantic trap. Defending a position that acting in self-interest is necessarily wrong is a far more difficult position to defend than questioning the role of greed in a capitalist system. Placing an opponent in a position to defend this more extreme claim about self-interest would give someone holding the same stance as Friedman an advantage in the debate. However, we need not, and for my purposes I will not, read Friedman’s statement as malicious. Rather, it seems plausible that he is suggesting the two terms are interchangeable. And this is not an outrageous thought. In claiming that someone has acted out of self-interest, we may plainly be saying his motivation was primarily from his own self-interest. Yet our common conceptions of greed are closely tied to self-interest and the two may be difficult to untangle. I suspect few of us would

1  Studies surveying individuals’ concepts and intuitions regarding greed seem to bear this out, see for example Seuntjens et al. (2014) and Seuntjens et al. (2015).

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consider someone acting apparently on behalf of others, by donating to charity or working at a soup kitchen, to be acting greedily based on that action alone even if some amount of self-interest in fact motivated those actions.. Whereas for paradigm cases of greed, a feudal lord harshly taxing citizens to fill his own coffers or corporate executives pinching their employees’ paychecks to pad their own salaries, the individuals labeled as greedy appear to be acting on their interests alone when others’ are at stake as well.2 Though the two concepts are highly similar, it is dubious to claim that every case of self-interest is a case of greed. Having a cup of coffee and a banana for breakfast is in my self-interest; I need something to power me through the morning and these are things that I like. However, other things being equal, it strikes me as odd to suggest that having a banana and a cup of coffee is being greedy just because doing so is in my self-interest.3 Likewise, it is in the interest of all workers to earn a living wage. Again, it is dishonest to suggest that demanding a living wage is greedy, despite it being in the self-interest of minimum-wage workers.4 What this suggests, at least for those who share my intuitions, is that there is a line to be drawn between benign, normal, or expected self-interest and malign self-interest that we call greed. Greedy behavior may be self-interested behavior, but it is not merely self-interest behavior; it is some distorted or extreme self-interested behavior. And self-­interested behavior of any variety is not necessarily greedy simply because one’s self-interest motivates the behavior. Of course, this is an abridged discussion of this distinction. The complexity of our interests and the infinitude of possible situations we may find ourselves in, actually or theoretically, means I could generate any number of finely tuned examples to discuss. However, pointing to a few simple examples frames one of the issues at hand; for those that share the intuition that ‘greed’ and ‘self-interest’ are not interchangeable in any and all cases, accurately evaluating Friedman’s claims requires determining his stance as well. And by the passage of time, this is currently not possible. However, my project at hand is not simply deciphering Friedman, as Friedman is surely not the only person to use these terms equivalently. Because these two terms are so closely tied together, we have good reason to continue to work on making a satisfactory distinction between the two. Whether the issue is using the two terms interchangeably or noting the persistent imprecision surrounding the use of ‘greed’ and ‘self-interest’, there is clearly a need for more work to be

2  This is certainly an abbreviated discussion of cases of greed. I will turn to a more robust discussion in the latter portions of my paper. 3  I should add the disclaimer here that is seems odd to suggest I am being especially greedy, or greedy in the same way as the hypothetical feudal lords or corporate executives. Perhaps if my coffee or banana were farmed or purchased by unfair means or means harmful to the environment, I am guilty of a subtler form of greed. I will return to this idea later in this paper. 4  Nevertheless, some may argue that in fact, low-wage workers demanding a pay increase is in fact greedy. In suggesting a distinction between greed and more benign self-interest, I will be ruling out this case as a case of possible greed.

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done in examining the difference between the two terms based on how closely-tied these concepts are. Pursuing a more precise definition of greed in psychological literature, Terri Seuntjens, Marcel Zeelenberg, Seger Breugelmans, and Niels van de Ven pursue a prototype analysis of greed (Seuntjens et al. 2014). The purpose of prototype analysis is to simply list core elements of a given concept instead of compiling a list of necessary and sufficient conditions. These core elements can be more or less important than others and some may be present while others are not for any given case or example of the concept at hand. To clarify, the authors use the example of a prototype analysis of a chair. A prototypical chair has four legs and a backseat. Obviously, not all chairs have these components; some have a different number of legs and others may lack a backrest. Despite the variance, we are still able to effectively categorize objects as being chairs or not chairs, or as being more or less chair-like. As part of the impetus for their project, Seuntjens and her fellow researchers note imprecision across psychology literature in conflating greed and self-interest. The researchers suggest using this prototype approach would help clear up this matter in a fashion conducive to their field of study.5 In the first of five related studies by the authors, participants were asked to list the features and characteristics comprising a case or experience of greed. The most commonly cited attribute of greed was self-­ interest, being cited by 166 of 195 participants.6 Following self-interest, the next four most cited features were ‘acquisitiveness’, ‘stinginess’, ‘materialism’, and ‘money’. The limitations of the provided data, though, do not give us any clear insight to whether any study participants find greed and self-interest to be equivalent; it is entirely possible that none of them think so. The importance of my project does not rest on claiming that a rampant number of people actively argue that greed and self-interest are necessarily equivalent in all cases. Rather, what this data supports is that in the presence of claims like those made by Friedman and the fact that self-interest is seen as a central feature of greed, we have good reason to draw an appropriately sharp distinction between greed and benign self-interest. My overall aim is for the conceptual analysis portion of this project to be preventative and ameliorative rather than corrective, to hopefully provide a clear suggestion of how to distinguish these terms for clarity in future and on-going conversations. The main preventative goal is simply clarity of conversation. If we are to appropriately evaluate claims like “greed is good” or “greed drives the economy”, or to be able to accurately condemn some action or behavior as greedy, we must have a firm foundation for what we are talking about. Secondly, outlining this boundary

5  The authors note that discussions of greed often are presented in a post-hoc fashion in psychological literature. And it is easy to see how this happens. Most of us are very comfortable using the term ‘greed’ despite the surrounding imprecision. 6  As an interesting and related point, in the table of features cited, concepts related to self-interest were coded by the researchers as “selfishness”. Apparently coding all self-interested behavior as selfish seems akin to the misuses of the concepts of greed and self-interest I am tackling here. Disentangling this equation – selfishness and self-interest – has previously been masterfully done by Joel Feinberg in Psychological Egoism (Boston: Wadsworth 1965/2011).

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hopefully provides some protection against more negligent or malicious rationalizations. To the extent acting in self-interest is morally neutral, or perhaps even commendable, these actions are easy for us to justify to one another. However, self-interest is not a legitimate justification for all of our actions; I suspect many of us would easily condemn someone who harmed an innocent bystander and justified it by claiming it was simply his own self-interest. In some scenarios, the legitimacy or illegitimacy of self-interest as a justification is clear; self-interest is not necessarily an illegitimate justification for our actions, nor is it necessarily a legitimate one. And this is due to the relative moral neutrality of self-interest by itself.7 Justifying one’s actions to others using generally maligned moral sentiments is much more difficult. Consider an easily morally condemnable trait like indifference or spite. It is much harder to justify one’s actions to others when these actions are motivated by such traits. Perhaps there are some cases where acting in such a way has good consequences for others, yet the moral residue from acting with poor character remains. For example, if a doctor refuses to treat a mob boss, for example, out of spite, we can be relieved that this will prevent some undue harm in the future but still not be pleased with the doctor’s motives. And we can likely say similar things about justifying one’s actions through greed. Though we may not find greed necessarily immoral or wrong, we would be hard pressed to ignore the negative aspects of greed.8 If an acquaintance justified his actions to us simply by saying, “Well, I did that because I am greedy,” even if we do not condemn or shun him, we may be rightly skeptical of his character. However, suspicions about one’s moral character may be mitigated if one can simply claim his actions were not done out of greed but merely out of self-interest. If we recognize that self-interest can be a legitimate justification, at least more so than greed, it becomes much easier to rationalize or explain our actions to ourselves and to others. Being able to draw a firm line between greed and reasonable self-­ interest serves to make such rationalization hopefully more difficult. And the purpose here is not to condemn or finger-wag at those of us using these terms in this way in conversations or even in academic writings on the topic. Rather, the intent is to recognize this as a potential problem and direct conversations about greed in a way that mitigates this problem. Before moving on to evaluate the claim “greed is good” or even the weaker claim that perhaps greed can have some good consequences, it is important to clearly distinguish greed and neutral or benign

7  What I mean here is that we tend to need more details to make an accurate judgment for the legitimacy of self-interest as a justification. Certain factors like possible benefits or harms for others, the presence of other choices, the means used, etc. color our ultimate decision on the legitimacy of one’s self-interest as a justification. 8  In the research by Seuntjens et al. (2014), the authors note that study participants consider greed to have both constructive and destructive outcomes. In the latter part of my paper, I will pressure the validity of positive aspects. For my purposes in this section though, I am not assuming these can be immediately discounted. However, even if there is the possibility of constructive outcomes brought about by greed, my suggestion is that we should still be skeptical of greed as a legitimate moral justification for one’s action.

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self-­interest. An adequate discussion of this boundary aids not only in clarification but as a guard against overly rationalizing our or others’ behavior and motives.

6.2  Making the Distinction Most of us likely have a firm conception of what we think greed is, and likely the same goes for self-interest. Since we can easily use these concepts in our normal conversation, pausing to philosophically reflect on precise boundaries, if any are present, between greed and self-interest often seems unnecessary. Greed is not a philosophically dense concept like phenomenology or supervenience; it is a term we readily employ in everyday conversation. We might use it to describe someone who takes an extra slice of pizza before everyone else has gotten one, or to chastise a child who is not sharing her toys. And on the other side of the coin, we would probably not label someone as “greedy” if he takes a single doughnut from a communal box. This is a term we know how to employ and on we take to have a clear definition. Greed is clearly a vice of excess, or disproportionality. This observation alone is insufficient, though. Two clear questions follow: what is greed an excess of and what is the benchmark we are comparing this excess to? In this section, I give my answers to these questions by first clearly drawing boundaries between greed and acceptable self-interest. In making this distinction, and to answer the second question posed above, I examine how canonically greedy behaviors and individuals are situated socially and affect others in different social positions rather than solely focusing on the vicious aspects of greedy behavior in and of itself. As a preliminary answer to the question of “What is greed?”, then, I argue that we should consider greed a trait marked by acting in a way that excessively values one’s self-interest while unfairly ignoring or stifling the self-interests of others. Given the prevalence of self-interest in typical cases of greed, the immediately obvious answer is to suggest greed is simply excessive self-interest. This observation alone does not do much to clarify these ideas, though. For example, posting fliers with a picture of me and a list of my academic achievements on all of the telephone poles, dumpsters, and abandoned buildings I can find does not strike me as greedy though it does seem I am exercising a great amount of self-interest. Perhaps it is more fitting to call such behavior vain, but not greedy. And if I spend all waking hours of the day reading the same book over and over, it seems I am exhibiting or acting on a gross amount of self-interest but it does not strike me that “greed” is the most fitting descriptor for such action; perhaps intemperate or gluttonous is a more fitting descriptor. Our common-sense ideas of greed are much more focused than can be described by “excessive self-interest”. One insightful example of adding to the basic concept of greed as simply excessive self-interest is Jason Kawall’s suggestion for characterizing the disproportionality of greed (Kawall 2012). Kawall argues not only is greed excessive self-interest but that greedy behavior also entails self-interestedly pursuing some good despite the resulting harms. In

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this sense, we can be even modestly greedy if we overvalue a good at the cost of other goods or resulting harms. For example, choosing to continue driving an SUV despite the cumulative environmental impacts of driving large personal vehicles. My own discussion of greed will address similar elements to Kawall’s, in exploring how malice is not necessary for our behavior to be greedy. Kawall’s project, though, begins with this claim and explores what we can and should do to correct it. My project focuses more heavily on the specific boundaries between greed and acceptable self-interested pursuits rather than specific outcomes and corrective measures. The examples I have used above suggest greed is related to some kind of material good: money, food, natural resources, and so on. And as Seuntjens note, it is fair to suggest people can be greedy regarding immaterial goods such as power or sex (Seuntjens et al. 2014) Greed, per our common-sense notions, must have some thing as its object, material or immaterial. Simply having an excess of some good, though, also does not supply enough details to be an immediately clear case of greed. For example, if I walk into a doughnut shop and purchase several dozen doughnuts for myself, these details alone do not seem to indicate a case of greed. I enjoy doughnuts, so buying them is certainly in my self-interest. Buying so many of them, though, without much more context about the situation again does not seem like an obvious case of greed. Similarly, we often associate greed with money,9 but simply acquiring a large amount of money does not provide enough details to be a clear-cut case of greed. What seems necessary for something to qualify as greed is that the acquisition or possession of the goods in question must come at the expense of something else. And I will suggest that particularly this must come at the expense of another. There are many ways excessive self-interest can manifest itself: gluttony or intemperance, cowardice or rashness, or general selfishness, to name a few possibilities other than greed. What seems to be especially troubling about greed is that the acquisition of the object involved in some way takes or prevents the acquisition of a given good from another, or otherwise harms another. We can fill in the above doughnut example with these details to see how this relationship of “acquiring at the expense of” holds. If I am purchasing these dozens of doughnuts for myself but there are plenty left for others to purchase, this seems more akin to a case of gluttony than greed. However, if I am buying the entire stock of doughnuts, depriving everyone else of the chance to purchase doughnuts for the rest of the day, it seems much easier to consider my behavior greedy.10 We may look askance at anyone exercising an excessive amount of self-interest in any way, but 9  As noted above, “money” was the fifth most commonly cited feature of greed by the participants in the 2014 study conducted by Seuntjens and her co-researchers. 10  We may also think perhaps I am being greedy toward my future self in acting on my present desire to consume an incredible number of doughnuts. What I am “taking” in this sense is perhaps better health; the immense intake of unhealthy foods in some way harms myself in the future. However, I am wary of over-expanding the category of actions and behaviors we can appropriately and accurately deem greedy. If I choose to eat unhealthily now and this comes at the expense of my future health, this may be greedy in some sense but may be more accurately described, for example, as imprudent. Fully investigating the most appropriate descriptor, though, may be more appropriate for a more expansive exploration of our use of evaluative and moral terminology.

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what seems to be most troubling about greed in particular is the social harms incurred by such behavior. From this discussion, then, we have the framework of distinguishing greed from benign self-interest, where greed is excessive self-interest in acquisition of some good to the extent or in such cases that others are deprived of that good or otherwise harmed. I think more can be clarified, though, to fully distinguish the conceptual boundaries of greed. As contemporary conversations about greed, self-interest, and wealth inequality become increasingly frequent, it is pertinent for any account of greed to accurately assess concerns raised contemporary socioeconomic contexts. And given the final portion of my project here, evaluating whether greed in fact has positive consequences, using American capitalism as the backdrop to finish distinguishing greed seems pertinent. Earning money is undoubtedly in our self-interest; this is how we are able to survive in contemporary society. When does this pursuit leave the boundaries of allowable or reasonable self-interest, though, and become greed? As I have shown above, we often need a fair amount of detail to accurately assess whether some given scenario can fairly be considered an instance of greed. Given the vast number of possible scenarios around generating and maintaining money, it is important to carefully walk through possible scenarios. To begin, we ought to examine the sense of harm or the extent of deprivation we are concerned with regarding greed. Harm and deprivation are generally disvalued, but these are not concepts that are necessarily morally wrong. Harming an attacker whilst defending oneself is not imminently condemnable, and neither is depriving some power-mad villain the means he needs to commit heinous acts. Being too lose in what we are talking about with these features hinders our ability to do the critical normative work we want to do when employing greed in moral and social discussion. To help clarify here, consider the following examples. Mr. Smith is a highly paid corporate executive. He makes enough money to cover his everyday expenses and leads a comfortable lifestyle, but he would like more, perhaps to buy a new car a little earlier than originally planned. Revenue has been steady, but not enough to generate a substantial raise for himself. To increase his paycheck, resources will have to be diverted from some other portion of the company budget, whether this means laying off employees, decreasing the quality of required materials his company uses, increasing prices, or some similar means. It seems like in order for Mr. Smith to get the raise he wants, the funds will require others, employees or customers, to lose out. Meanwhile, Mr. Adams is a minimum-wage factory worker. Working full-time leaves him essentially living paycheck to paycheck, making enough to just cover his monthly bills but not much more. Mr. Adams and his co-workers would like raises; the extra money would allow them more of a financial safety net and possibly allow for saving a little extra money for future purchases or expenses. Like Mr. Smith’s company, the factory Mr. Adams works for has a steady revenue, but not to the extent a raise can come from revenue alone. One possible source of the funds required for a raise for Mr. Adams and his co-workers is the company executives taking a pay cut, or perhaps foregoing any bonuses or pay increases themselves. As

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with the first case, it seems for Mr. Adams and his co-workers to get a pay raise that money will have to come in some sense at the expense of others. Naturally, these are highly simplified examples. And my intention with the characters involved was not to beg the question or load the examples to suggest “of course the corporate executive is greedy”. And many of the situational details can be tweaked to find a more comfortable set of examples. Mr. Smith need not be fabulously wealthy, simply able to live comfortably. Mr. Adams need not be barely scraping by, walking between paychecks on a financial tightrope. What is important to consider about these two examples is the similar features across examples. Both Mr. Smith and Mr. Adams want more of something in their self-interest, specifically a higher paycheck. And for both to achieve this want, others must lose out on the same good (i.e. money). If our concept of greed is simply self-interested desires that require taking from someone else, both scenarios would appear to be cases of greed. However, my belief here is that only the first scenario should be considered an instance of greedy behavior. Between these cases there is a difference in the magnitude or extent of harm or detraction. In the example involving Mr. Smith, acquiring his pay raise comes at the expense of the needs of others, whether that is employment, a fair wage, or the access to Mr. Smith’s company’s product. And the acquisition of that pay raise does not serve to fulfill a need of his, only perhaps a strong desire. In the case of Mr. Adams and his co-workers, however, their potential pay raise could immediately serve to meet their fundamental needs, allowing them to secure a sense of financial stability. What this comes at the expense of, is increased pay for the company owners, those whose pay already allows them to meet fundamental needs. Between the two cases there seems to be an asymmetry between the magnitude of the benefit provided and what is at stake for the other part in the situation. Here, though, I do not intend to frame greed as a primarily utilitarian notion. I suspect if a great number of executives received benefit at the expense of laying off just a single employee, many of us would still consider such behavior to be greedy despite the sum of happiness gained being greater than the sum of happiness lost. Rather, what I have tried to illuminate with these examples is that what I suspect is most troublesome about greed is the overvaluation of the necessity of gaining a given good by the greedy individual that comes at the expense of others’ more emergent, critical, or most fundamental needs. Greed is at its most noxious when some individual takes from others to fund his own luxurious pursuits at the expense of the needs of those taken from. However, not all instances of greed involve such vicious caricatures of individuals, and I suspect comparatively few instances of greed manifest like this. Greed can be just as troubling when it comes from a more insidious place, where an individual continues to act on his own self-interest not with the intent of depriving others but out of negligence or a simple lack of recognition of the needs of others. If we find truth to this, that greed can present itself regardless of the intent of the individual in question, it is fair to point not to intentionality as the determining factor of someone’s greed but to the cost incurred by those affected by the individual’s behavior. With this in mind, I would like to address one more example.

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Suppose I have found a way to mulch garbage into a highly efficient and clean-­ burning fuel. I charge people a fee to pick up their garbage and sell the product back to them at a fair price after converting it. After pursuing this enterprise long enough, I accumulate quite a bit of wealth for myself. Perhaps I am not fabulously wealthy, but I am able to earn more than enough to cover my needs and basic expenses. And I have gained this wealth solely through my own work and without having to take or detract from others’ needs. Maybe I am performing this service with the beneficent intention of providing a clean fuel alternative to help protect the environment, or maybe I am just running this enterprise to earn money. Regardless of the intention, as I have suggested, the fact that I acquire my wealth without taking from or otherwise harming others indicates that, without further details, that my actions here cannot be fairly or consistently considered greedy. Greed, though, is not merely a matter of acquiring some good at the expense of others but maintaining possession of that good as the expense of others as well. The idea of maintaining wealth at the expense of others’ needs is not as obvious as the idea of acquiring at the expense of others’ needs. In this example, my wealth has been acquired in a fair or perhaps even beneficent manner and the existence of my acquired money in my bank account does not require, for example, others to pay a maintenance fee on my account. As noted by Seuntjens and her fellow researchers, stinginess or miserliness, not only acquisitiveness, is central to our conception of greed as well (Seuntjens et al. 2014, 510). So perhaps I have amassed my wealth fairly and squarely, but this is not enough to escape greed. From there we must consider what I am doing with that wealth. If I am using it to continuously further my own ends well beyond necessity while the same financial resources could aid others to simply reach the fulfillment of their basic needs or provide some small sense of financial security, then I suggest we consider my behavior greedy. What I am trying to call attention to here is the presence or appearance of greed in a broader social system. We may think it odd of someone to zealously or single-mindedly pursue some good, but what moves this behavior beyond merely odd and what makes one greedy is when such a pursuit comes at a greater cost to others. Despite the benign or even positive intentions that motivated or means utilized in the pursuit of goods and resources, as in my garbage mulching example, these good intentions can sour when I continue to accumulate wealth beyond my own needs while ignoring the needs of others. Greed, in some sense, is a detachment from one’s place in the social context, to insist my own wants, no matter what they are, are more important than what others deserve as individuals. And more empirical research about our folk ideas of greed may lend some credence to this idea. Long Wang and J. Keith Murnighan reference a study examining the presence of greedy behavior in participants primed by making a series of intense calculations (Wang and Murnighan 2011). The authors note that while performing these calculations tended to make participants greedier in the following experiments, introducing social clues appeared to mitigate this effect. Some participants were presented with several family pictures and asked to choose which they thought represented the family that owned the hypothetical business in the participants’ prior tasks. Wang and Murnighan note that those participants asked to choose a photo exhibited far less

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greedy behavior in the following experiments. Only so much insight can be gleaned from this single experiment, but the greed-tempering nature of social clues is important to note. These data suggest our concept of greed should not solely focus on an individual acquiring more than he needs, but what appears to enable this is a lack of recognition of how one’s behavior fits in a broader social context. Pursuing one’s self-interest is usually compatible with others pursuing their own. This was precisely Adam Smith’s point in speaking of the butcher, the brewer, and the baker (Smith 1776/1997, 538). As Smith reminds us, we do not receive purchased goods out of the seller’s benevolence; these are not gifts to us. This exchange is one of mutual self-interest; I desire the meat, beer, and bread and the butcher, brewer, and baker want compensation for their product. And when I pay a fair price for their goods, our interests are mutually compatible. However, if I were to demand the price of the bread be lower or underpay the brewer because I have decided my interests are of greater social value than that of the merchant, our aims are no longer compatible; the merchants’ interest suffers by the value I place on my own. Likewise, if the butcher raises the price of his meat so most others cannot afford it, and does so simply for the profit, he has placed his self-interest in such a high regard that is incompatible with others being able to adequately pursue their own ends. With this importance of social context in mind, my suggestion for distinguishing greed and benign self-interest runs as follows. Our separate self-interests and our pursuit of these interests can be mutually compatible in our social arrangements, and in many ways may even depend on others around us pursuing their interests. Where we run into trouble is when these interests or their pursuit are no longer compatible for whatever reason, and greed is a specific instance of this incompatibility. Greedy individuals or greedy behavior exhibits not only an over-valuation of the individual’s self-interest, but it comes at a cost to others’ needs. It is in this sense, greed is indeed exhibiting excessive self-interest. However, merely being excessive is not a sufficient condition for my pursuit of my self-interest to be greedy. My boundless desire for some good may be ill-advised and intemperate, but it need not come at great cost to others. Likewise, my desires may be modest in volume or goal, but are incompatible with the needs of others. With these many considerations and examples in mind, my proposed definition or conceptualization of greed is: The trait or vice of greed is a disposition to (a) acquire, or (b) maintain possession of some good at a level (i) beyond one’s own needs and (ii) at the expense of or despite the needs of others.

I am construing “need” in a relatively broad sense beyond just bare necessity. Humans not only have a need for food, water, and shelter, but a sense of future security and stability, the ability to flourish, and to be treated with dignity by one’s fellow humans.11 As I have noted, acquisition that detracts from any of these needs is especially troublesome.  This is a brief discussion of need. However, a full discussion of need would be a full book-length treatment. By keeping this idea somewhat open, though, it allows room for others to make feasible

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From this account of greed, versus benign self-interest, I think we can capture the many forms greed can take, large and small. Laying off workers to pad one’s own paycheck is clearly beyond allowable self-interest; this is beyond what I need at the expense of what others do. Likewise, continuously helping oneself to the communal box of doughnuts before others have had their chance is a much less impactful instance of greed, but an instance of greed nonetheless. Additionally, this account pays proper attention to what may be the most troubling aspect of greed. Greedy acquisition is not only excessive or extravagant, but it may also often come, with little regard or recognition, at the expense of others. By incorporating normative concepts into a concept of greed, we can communicate precisely what we find morally unacceptable about greedy behavior. And by recognizing more forms of behavior as greedy, we may hopefully be able to more effectively combat or discourage such behaviors. If, as I have argued, excess is not a sufficient factor for behavior or actions to be considered greedy, simply chastising others for their acquisitiveness and trying to convince them to tamp down their desires may not be enough to address such behavior. Rather, if we find some truth to the idea that interaction with social structures and relative imbalances of need fulfillment across these structures are also key factors in identifying greed, then we gain another tool to stand up to greed. We should not only implore others to recognize their own excesses but to also recognize others’ deprivation, and how the two may be related. I do recognize, though, that my account may be somewhat revisionary and as such seemingly may not adequately address our everyday intuitions about greed. I will address these concerns below. One concern may be that my account is overly focused on social context and not enough on acquisition itself. In different social and economic climates, this may lead to counter-intuitive conclusions. For example, suppose wealth were far more evenly distributed in the future and owners and executives could pad their paychecks at the expense of others without obviously infringing on their needs. What if employees not receiving deserved raises meant simply these employees would have to wait a little longer to buy a new car but their lives were not otherwise strongly affected (e.g. basic needs are still being met, overall wellbeing does not suffer, an appreciable amount of happiness is not lost, etc.)? The behavior still seems to follow a greedy pattern but without as drastic social costs. Given this, it seems that maybe the account of greed I have laid out is overly focused on contemporary contexts. Here I think there are two possible responses. One is that though such actions do not strike at more fundamental needs, there are higher-level needs at risk. As I mentioned earlier, it seems fair to suggest humans have some need to be treated with dignity and to live in conditions enabling them to flourish. Even if the actions of one individual do not threaten others’ ability to secure basic survival needs, his actions may threaten other social or personal needs. And even if the effects of one’s greed arguments about what should be considered an instance of greed in this model. Perhaps there is a strong argument to be made that workers wanting a pay raise is in fact greedy. A proponent of such a position merely needs to make the account that wanting a pay raise somehow presents as an imbalance of need.

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are not drastic, the pattern of what we find most toxic about greed applies nonetheless: holding one’s self-interest in an inappropriately higher regard than that of others. Secondly, along similar lines, in such a scenario it seems we could still be troubled by the disregard of others exhibited by such individuals. Even if those affected are not put into dire straits, it is not only the magnitude of the effect that troubles us, but the carelessness that causes it as well. So perhaps though the needs of those affected do not suffer, the fact that the pattern of behavior of other instances of greed persists and this is due to the negligence on behalf of the purportedly greedy individual, we may still be well within our rights to still consider this person greedy. Another possible concern may be that this account of greed limits the category of goods one can be greedy towards; if the zealous acquisition of some good does not appear to threaten the needs of others, then though the behavior seems greedy based on our everyday intuitions it is not considered greedy by my account. For example, suppose someone acquires all of the various video game systems in the world and leaves none for anybody else.12 My account seems to be left with a bit of a dilemma, to either consider this action counterintuitively not greedy or to claim that humans have some kind of need for video game systems. One possible response here is like my response to the above objection. Perhaps our need for video game systems is not as critical as a need for food or water, but we do have some need for rest and entertainment. While buying the global supply of video game systems is not as villainous as hording the global supply of water, it does show blatant disregard for the needs of others. If this is not a convincing response, there is one more route: conceding that my account cannot establish these individuals as greedy. However, this is not necessarily a huge blow. If I cannot consistently label such a person as greedy, that does not mean this person cannot be criticized. His actions still display excessive self-interest and we do seem warranted in still considering him to be selfish, a broader category of unjustly holding one’s self-interest in inappropriately high regard. Our intuitions about the centrality of acquisition to greed may initially direct us to consider this person greedy, but this is not the only way excessive self-interest manifests. There seems no loss in normative force to consider such an individual selfish rather than greedy.

6.3  Is Greed Good? After carefully constructing an account of how to separate greed from acceptable self-interest, I can now return to the point of contention from the beginning of my writing. That is, is greed good? The authors doing the empirical research I have cited thus far note that even if our conception of greed tends towards the negative, there may be positive aspects to it. Terri Seuntjens and her fellow researchers note that participants’ responses in their studies suggest that we may see greed as an

12

 Thank you to Alexander Hoffman for this example.

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important driver of the economy (Seuntjens et al. 2014, 506). Wang and Murnighan (2011) suggest the same; we may culturally view greed as an important motivating force. Taking a charitable view of these thoughts, it is easy to see how one may make the case for the positive aspects of greed. At a very simple level, greedy behavior is good for the individual acting on it; there is clearly benefit for that individual. Beyond this singular benefit, though, there is a sense that many of us may benefit from the greedy behavior of others. If people are driven by the desire for profit, the variety and quality of goods and services will increase, and jobs will be created to fulfill these demands. In this sense, many of us stand to benefit from the greedy behavior of others. However, the presence of positive outcomes does not negate the presence of severe negative consequences. Surveying contemporary American capitalism, Steven Pearlstein collects many figures regarding the distribution and growth of wealth across economic quintiles in the timespan of the late twentieth century to 2014 (Pearlstein 2018, 77–96). And the results portray a distribution of wealth that is from equal or equitable. The share of market income for the lowest income quintile is roughly 2%, adjusted to 7% following taxes and transfers. Meanwhile, the share of market income for the highest quintile is roughly 57%, adjusted to 49% following taxes and transfers. The second and middle quintiles both fall below 20% of market income as well, with the fourth quintile being the only other quintile above the 20% of market income share that would represent a wholly equal distribution of income (Pearlstein 2018, 79). These disparities come after decades of asymmetrical increases in average market income. Since 1979, the lowest and second quintiles have seen their after-tax income increase 69% and 39.5%, respectively. These changes, as Pearlstein points out, have largely come from a progressive tax and transfer system; these quintiles’ respective market income increases are 26.3% and 15.3%. Meanwhile over that same span, the highest quintile has seen a 95.4% market income increase with a 97.2% after-tax income increase (Pearlstein 2018, 82). If greed is indeed a powerful driver of our economy, the purported positive outcomes appear to be arranged to favor only some of our population. However, we can fairly ask whether we should consider this disparity to be an indicator of greedy behavior by the nation’s top earners. My suggestion from reflecting on these data, though, is not to construe the top quintile of earners as cartoonish misers reaching their hands into the others’ wallets. Through the account of greed I have provided, intentional malice is not a necessary component of greed. Rather, my suggestion is that we must take a closer look at the methods and circumstances that allow many individuals to prosper so greatly while so many others are left behind. If the wealth of some comes at the expense of low wages, demanding working conditions, and an unfair distribution of company gains and benefits for others, then we seem well within our rights to consider such manners of business to be greedy per the account I have given. And even in the absence of these conditions, the persistence of such inequality is still imbalanced in such a way that while some have wealth far beyond their own needs, others must continually struggle to make ends meet. If greed is indeed a primary driver of our economy, the most positive aspects of it seem to be primarily enjoyed by those who are greedy. Perhaps greed is good for some, but it clearly is not good for all.

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And we must also attend to the claim that perhaps those who suggest greed is good are wrong or have misspoken and it is the laudable pursuit of self-interest that is the primary driver of the economy. This claim does not fare much better, unfortunately. When we consider Adam Smith’s butcher, brewer, and baker, we have an archetype of mutually compatible self-interest. And if everyone can pursue their self-interest in such a fashion, we all stand a greater chance of getting what we want. However, the wildly unequal distribution of wealth and income in the contemporary United States suggests that the manner through which or the extent to some individuals pursue their self-interest is no longer like Smith’s merchants. Even if we consider those in such a position to be merely acting out of self-interest, this does not wholly prevent them from being fairly labeled greedy by my account here. If their pursuit of their self-interest, however apparently benign, comes at the cost of needs of others then those most benefiting from our economy can reasonably be labeled greedy per the account I have given here. It is a heavy task, and one well-beyond the scope of a single philosophy paper, to probe all methods, practices, and environments that create such wealth disparity. My suggestion based on the account of greed I have given here, though, is that these are elements we must be cognizant of in arguing for the goodness of greed. The current disparities in wealth and income illuminate that while some profit and prosper, many more are left with far less. As such, my account of greed suggests that a significant amount of economic prosperity is at least in part the result of greed. Namely, that individuals in the upper income quintiles can maintain such a level of wealth while so many more are lacking. And despite the incredibly positive consequences for those who benefit most and the goods and services many more of us enjoy that comes from such pursuits, the economic asymmetries generated should give us pause. It seems fair to conclude then while greed may be good for some and perhaps marginally good for many others, we should be hesitant to concede that greed is good. As long as our cultural and economic contexts allow for such stark disparity, that the fulfillment of the self-interest for some comes at the expense of the needs and self-interest of others, we can rightly hold that greed, more often than not, has more negative effect than good. Does this entail that greed is necessarily wrong? Of course, as with any normative concept, there is room for corner cases. Perhaps the initial greed of some can result in resounding benefits for others across economic classes. Or that one individual solely seeking to inflate his own bank account defrauds some other villain or tyrant, leaving them unable to pursue more treacherous ends.13 In these cases we may begrudgingly admit that the greedy behavior of some individuals had positive consequences. However, I think it is still fair to condemn the greed of those who brought about these consequences. It is not contradictory to be pleased with the results but wish they had been brought about in a better way. Thus, though greed may not be necessarily wrong, we should be wary of those who conduct themselves in such a manner.

13

 Thank you to Dr. Mike Pritchard and Chance Lacina for this observation.

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6.4  Concluding Remarks Returning to Milton Friedman’s remarks, perhaps it very well is the case that our economy runs not on the malicious efforts of some to take everything they can from others, but from individuals pursuing their own self-interest just as everyone does. However, what I have discussed here is that we should look at such pursuits far more critically. Even if we go about our business fair-and-square and playing by the rules, which Friedman also endorses, there are still instances where we can reasonably consider the economic behavior of individuals to be greedy, specifically, when their pursuit of their self-interest extends beyond their needs and comes at the cost of needs of others. We can fairly admire our ability to mutually pursue our own self-­ interests. This is something we can do quite regularly. However, when this pursuit becomes unfixed from the broader social context and continues despite the adverse effects on others, we should rightly be critical. Our economy need not be driven by greed, and the consequences of it are grim, but this will require collective reflection and reassessment of what we consider to be appropriate pursuit of self-interest.

References Friedman, M. 1979. Interview by P.  Donahue. The Phil Donahue Show [Television broadcast]. Chicago: Multimedia Entertainment. Feinberg, J. 2011. Psychological egoism. In Ethical theory: Classical and contemporary readings, ed. L. Pojman and J. Fieser, 75–86. Boston: Wadsworth. (Reprinted from J. Feinberg. 1965. Reason and Responsibility. Boston: Wadsworth.). Kawall, J. 2012. Rethinking greed. In Ethical adaptation to climate change: Human virtues of the future, ed. A. Thompson and J. Bendik-Keymer, 223–239. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pearlstein, S. 2018. Can American capitalism survive? New York: St. Martin’s Press. Seuntjens, T., M. Zeelenberg, S. Breugelmans, and N. van de Ven. 2014. Defining Greed. British Journal of Psychology 106 (3): 505–525. Seuntjens, T., M.  Zeelenberg, N. van de Ven, and S.  Breugelmans. 2015. Dispositional greed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences 108 (6): 917–933. Smith, A. 1997. The wealth of nations. In Classics of modern political theory, ed. Steven Cahn, 531–552. New York: Oxford University Press. (Reprinted from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776. London: W. Strahan & T. Cadell.). Wang, L., and J.K.  Murnighan. 2011. On Greed. The Academy of Management Annals 5 (1): 279–316. Chad M. Watson  received his BA in Philosophy from the University of Washington and his MA in Philosophy from Western Michigan University. Chad worked with the WMU Philosophy Prison Education Program as the program’s first Graduate Mentor. Chad currently works in Court Administration and Analysis in Snohomish County, WA.

Chapter 7

Greed and Addiction Ian Everitt

Abstract  Ordinarily, we praise those that show temperance, and we admonish those that stray from it. When I wander too far in the direction of excess, you may be inclined to call me “greedy” or, depending on the circumstances, “an addict.” It is surprising that very little research has been conducted in an effort to understand any possible connection between these two ways of departing from temperance. In this essay, I analyze both our common usage of terms like “greed” and “addiction” and what I take to be paradigmatic cases of greed and addiction. To do so, I rely heavily upon philosophical and scientific analyses of greed and addiction. I conclude that there does appear to be a genuine connection between greed and addiction, though more empirical research is needed. If I am right about this connection, then research on addiction may naturally lend itself to greed researchers, and treatment designed to treat addiction may be available to those wishing to treat their greed. Keywords  Dispositional greed · Behavioral addiction · Reward system · Conceptual analysis

7.1  Introduction Ordinarily, we praise those that show temperance, and we admonish those that stray from it. Beyond merely scolding those who lack moderation, we may even intervene in cases where one tends too far towards scarcity or excess. In the case of the former, we may label offenders as “overly-prudential” or “cheap,” and in the latter, we call them “misers” or “addicts.” The purpose of this essay, from a bird’s-eye-view, is to further explore this latter sort of departure and our descriptions of those that venture too far from the mean. In particular, I would like to explore cases where it is common to describe a person as “greedy for” or “addicted to” whatever it is she seeks in excess.

I. Everitt (*) Department of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. S. Pritchard, E. E. Englehardt (eds.), Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal, Ethical Economy 58, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4_7

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To get an idea of what I mean by common cases of greed and addiction, let us start with a quick reflection on how we typically use the terms “greed” and “addiction.” When we think about addiction and addicts, we tend to imagine strung-out junkies, alcoholics with multiple DUIs, or our coworker who constantly steps out for a quick smoke break. These, we think, are clear instances of addiction. But there are other examples of addiction that, were we to think carefully enough, we would quickly produce, like one’s addiction to sex, gambling, video games, or caffeine. Were we to reflect further, we may even conclude that we take the addict to be motivated by a strong desire for the object of her addiction in each case. When we think about greed and greedy people, we tend to imagine people who pursue the accumulation of wealth and power at the extent of others (e.g., multimillion-dollar banker Ivan Boesky). We imagine the already rich and powerful, or we imagine those who nefariously seek fortune, like a deceptive used-car salesman. Like our associations with the term “addict,” there are other cases where we would readily call someone greedy. People can be greedy for shoes, clothes, technology, and attention.1 We may even say that someone is greedy for their own time when they, say, regularly show up late for work and leave work early. These cases too, we might conclude, are characterized in part by the greedy person’s strong desire for the object of her greed. This short exercise is by no means intended to suggest the appropriate associations of these terms, but our reflections on these terms, as I have laid them out, should lead us to ask the following question: if both greed and addiction are characterized by a departure from temperance in the direction of excess, and if both the greedy person and the addict are motivated to act by their strong desires, what distinguishes a case of greed from a case of addiction? Given the genesis of the question, we may even break this question into two. First, we may ask whether our ordinary usage of the terms “greed” and “addiction” indicate the existence of two distinct afflictions.2 The answer to this question, I believe, is no. Just consider some ways we might talk about common cases of greed and addiction. To the addict, we might say she is greedy when she steals money for drugs or when she decides to use drugs rather than attend planned events. She is only thinking of herself and what she wants, we might say. To the person who spends inordinate amounts of money on his shoe collection, we may jokingly call him an addict. We would say so with even more conviction if, for instance, he had to sacrifice his weekly lunch with friends in order to finance his collection. He’s an addict who cares more about his “fix” than his friends, we might say. Whether these remarks are genuine is not of importance here. Rather, what these practices seem to suggest is that we sometimes call greedy people addicts because we believe we can convey something very real about greed from our understanding of addiction. The 1  I should be careful to note here that the sort of greed I am concerning myself with in this paper is dispositional and not the sort of greed one sometimes experiences in rare cases. 2  I use the word “affliction” here loosely. At this point, I am making no claim about the normative status of greed or addiction. However, I do believe that the negative connotation associated with “affliction” captures, at least in part, the negative attitude traditionally attributed to greed and addiction among those outside of academic philosophy, economics, and the sciences.

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same goes for our practice of calling addicts greedy: we sometimes call addicts greedy because we believe doing so can lead to a more accurate understanding of the addict and her experience. The second question we may ask is whether “greed” and “addiction” actually refer to two separate afflictions. One way you might understand this question can be broken down into two further questions: can one be addicted to x without being greedy for x, and can one be greedy for x without being addicted to x? The answers to these questions, however, will come only after answering more fundamental questions concerning greed and addiction. Instead, I propose we ask a much more modest question: does our best available research on greed and addiction suggest an interesting overlap between the two, despite our ordinary understanding of them as distinct concepts? Answering this question will be the focus of the remainder of this paper. Maybe unsurprisingly, I conclude that greed and addiction are importantly similar, but determining the degree to which the two overlap will require much more research, especially on the nature of greed. In fact, we may even have good reason to fast-­ track this research if something like what I conclude is true. If, for instance, some people we would ordinarily characterize as greedy are better understood as having an addiction, then perhaps the treatment and therapy we offer addicts could be effective at treating greedy people. I have more to say on this and other implications of my view in the final section of the paper.

7.2  Two Theoretical Cases In order to guide our investigation on greed and addiction, I will describe an extreme case of greed and an extreme case of addiction. The former is loosely based on John Skilling, the former CEO of Enron who is blamed for Enron’s eventual collapse in 2001.3 The addiction case is purely fictional, though I think we will agree that this tragedy is a plausible one – one that could be told countless times, honestly, with new names and little else changed. In the next section, I will carefully describe each of these cases, paying close attention to the salient behavioral patterns exhibited in each case. What we will see, I think, is a set of important similarities in these cases at every level of detail. Following each description, I offer a number of different analyses offered by both philosophers and scientists. Then in section three, once I have laid out both cases and the analyses available, I will provide an argument in favor of the view that there is an important overlap in our conceptions of greed and addiction. In section four, I will then attempt to defend this view against objections. Finally, I end with some concluding remarks concerning the implications of my view.

 For more information on Jeffrey Skilling and the Enron debacle, see McLean and Elkind (2003).

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7.3  Greed Case Jane is the CEO of a large and influential company. Unfortunately, Jane employs many harmful business practices: she is guilty of insider trading, paying her employees less than she thinks they are worth, and making risky but potentially lucrative bets on market trends. Her actions have massive impacts on her employees, the employees of the businesses her company works with, and the market at large. When Jane’s company eventually files bankruptcy as a result of these shady business practices, she will have already quit her position as CEO, sold her stocks in the company, and moved on the next business venture. Much like any other businessperson of her caliber, Jane has a family, and much like these other businesspeople, she rarely sees them. Most of her time is spent in the office or on business trips, and when she does spend some time with her family, Jane has difficulty keeping her mind off her work. Naturally, her eating and exercising habits are subservient to her work habits. In short, Jane is all business. If asked, her primary motivation is making as much money as possible and getting as many buildings as she can erected in her name. She would be the first person to agree that she is greedy. In fact, she likes to say that greed is a good thing, and it keeps her both motivated and happy to do her work.4 It seems natural to call Jane a greedy person. Consider what philosopher Jason Kawall (2012) has to say about the nature of greed: Greed is a vice of disproportionality: greedy agents pursue objects to a degree that is disproportionate to their value relative to other goods that the agents could be pursuing, or to the harms associated with their pursuit. (p. 224).

In the first place, Jane does appear to place an inappropriately high value on wealth accumulation alone, notwithstanding the value she places on wealth accumulation relative to her other values. Some recent studies suggest that those who make around $95,000 annually evaluate their life as more meaningful and fulfilling than those who make more or less.5 But Jane inappropriately values money relative to other things of value in her life, as well. The most obvious example is the relative value she places on her relationship with her family. In spending most of her time at work, Jane is missing out on establishing meaningful connections with her spouse and children; she is placing too low of a value on, for example, making it to her children’s sports events, or sharing an intimate dinner with her spouse. Furthermore, she places too high of a value on wealth accumulation compared to the other values she could realize. For example, she is not engaged with pursing other interests she could have, like finding a hobby, making friends, or finding a job that is fulfilling to her in more ways than simply amassing wealth.

4  This is reminiscent of what Ivan Boesky said in a commencement speech at UC-Berkeley School of Business in 1986: “I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” 5  See, for example, Jebb et al. (2018).

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Beyond the goods she is missing in her own life, Jane lacks concern for the wellbeing of others. Given that her business actions negatively affect those that she works with, those that work for her, and countless others, it is clear that she is morally culpable for placing too low of a value on others. Business practices like Jane’s result in underpaid workers who have difficulty providing for their families, employees being laid off because a business went under as a result of a bad bet on stock prices, and employees feeling a general sense of insecurity in the workplace. And, given that Jane’s actions have ramifications on the stability of the market, thousands of people beyond Jane’s direct influence could be negatively affected by fluctuations in the economy. Jane, of course, is relatively safe from these deleterious effects. Kawall goes on to say that when an agent pursues wealth to the detriment of the goods of friendship, the development of other interests and talents, or even moral constraints, her pursuit becomes greedy. (p. 224).

Kawall’s (2012) analysis of greed is mirrored by psychiatrists and neurobiologists. Unfortunately, hardly any empirical research has been performed in an effort to get at what occurs at the neurobiological level of greed. This is not to say that scientists have avoided research on greed, nor have they strayed from offering their analyses of what is going on at the psychological level of description. Ralph Crawshaw (1996), a psychiatrist, suggests that greed is constituted by an “unslakable appetite” for the objects of one’s greed (p. 1597). He goes on to say that people can be greedy for money, power, time, and mind-altering substances, among other things (ibid.). Seuntjens et al. (2015), a team of psychiatrists, offer a purely dispositional view of greed. For them, greed is “the tendency to always want more and never being satisfied with what one currently has.” (p. 917).6 Already we can see how Jane fits these descriptions. Her behavior is characteristic of someone who wants all the money she can get (and more), regardless of the impact her pursuit has on others. And we see this latter quality of greed specified in neurobiologist D. P. Levine’s (2005) description of the effects greed has on an individual’s behavior. According to Levine (2005, p. 724), greed causes people to focus on only their own fulfillment and to ignore the norms and values they accept. He goes on further to suggest that greed is linked to other forms of negative behavior, like deception, theft, fraud, and corruption. Of course, we see Jane exemplifying these behaviors in the way she runs her business, and the case may be made that she exemplifies these behaviors towards her family and even herself. What we are missing, however, is a description of the underlying causes of greedy behavior, and, as I stated above, we will not get this description from scientists until more research has been conducted. Nevertheless, let us set aside our deliberations on greed and turn now to a case of addiction.

6  Interestingly, Seuntjens et al. (2015) ascribe to the view that dispositional greed is a driving force in evolution. That is, they believe that greed promotes self-preservation, and the tendency to acquire and hoard resources provides people living in environments that exhibit scarcity of resources an advantage over those without this tendency (Seuntjens et al. 2015, p. 918). For more on this view, see Cassill and Watkins (2005) and Robertson (2001).

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7.4  Addiction Case Phil is someone who regularly consumes methamphetamine. He makes regular visits to his supplier, he spends exorbitant amounts of money acquiring meth, and he spends as much time as he can under its influence. Since Phil is an experienced user and has thus built up a tolerance to the drug, he is able to perform routine tasks, like working and grocery shopping, while under the influence of a low dose of the drug. Because he has used meth recreationally for years, he is starting to experience some of the negative consequences to his health: some of his teeth have begun rotting and falling out, he has experienced rapid weight loss due to undereating, and he experiences bouts of severe pain in both his lungs and heart. Phil has a hard time holding a job for more than a few months at a time. He has been fired on multiple occasions for missing work, usually for drug-related reasons. These jobs help to pay for drugs, though he has been known to finance his habit through theft and panhandling when he is between jobs. Over the years, he has had multiple partners and even has a couple of children, though he rarely sees them. This is in part because of disputes related to his drug use, but the main reason is that he prefers seeking out and using methamphetamine over cultivating a relationship with his children. Clearly, Phil is addicted to methamphetamine, and since much research has been done on addiction, we are able to paint a more nuanced picture of what he is experiencing. In the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association 2013), what we would normally consider drug addiction is labeled “substance use disorder.” The primary focus of the description in the DSM-5 is to provide clinicians with a means of diagnosing the disorder and to provide guidance on treatment. Substance use disorder is measured on a continuum from mild to severe, and, given the criteria for diagnosis, Phil would likely be diagnosed with severe substance use disorder. That is, he exhibits a sufficient amount of behavior characteristic of severe substance use disorder, including: spending a lot of time getting, using, or recovering from the use of the substance; not managing to do what you should at work, home, or school because of substance use; continuing to use, even when it causes problems in relationships; giving up important social, occupational, or recreational activities because of substances use, and so on.7 Notice that if we were to replace the references to drug use with references to greedy behavior, Jane would easily fit the description of someone dealing with a severe addictive disorder. But this is only to say that Phil and Jane appear to exhibit very similar behavioral patterns surrounding the respective objects of their pursuits. This is not, on its own, an argument in favor of the view that there is an interesting overlap between greed and addiction. 7  This list of characteristics is taken almost word-for-word from larger list found in the chapter in the DSM-5 called “Substance-Related and Addictive Disorders” (American  Psychiatric Association 2013).

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Those who study addiction tend to make a distinction between substance addiction and behavioral addiction (see, for example, Clark and Limbrick-Oldfield 2013). The distinction between the two is relatively straightforward: substance addiction is an addiction caused by the repeated use of some substance, while behavioral addiction is an addiction caused by the repeated performance of some behavior. Phil, of course, would be an example of someone who has fallen prey to substance addiction. Some examples of behavioral addiction include addictions to gambling, stealing, shopping, sex, gaming, and interacting on social media. Of this list, the DSM-5 recognizes only gambling addiction as a genuine example of a nonsubstance-related addiction, though more and more researchers have since reached the conclusion that addictive behavior is not limited to substance abuse (Everitt and Heberlein 2013). Nevertheless, many addiction researchers recognized gambling addiction and other forms of behavioral addiction even before the release of the fifth edition of the DSM in 2013 (O’Brien 2011). Unsurprisingly, addictions arise from a variety of factors. According to Kranzler and Li (2008, p. 94), addictions “result from a combination of genetic, environmental, social, and psychological factors.” Despite this, what all cases of addiction seem to share in common is that the addict’s mesolimbic dopamine system, oftentimes called the “reward system,” is severely impacted by repeated drug use or some repeated behavior (Everitt and Heberlein 2013, p. 463). The reward system of the brain is believed to be involved in both producing memories and, most interesting to us here, reinforcing behavior. Most researchers believe that drug use and behavior associated with behavioral addictions causes in some people an activation of the reward system that is so intense that it effectively “usurps” control over the individual. (ibid.). That is, the activation of the reward system is so powerful that the brain learns to prioritize, for example, drug-seeking behavior over one’s normal activities. In “A Liberal Account of Addiction,” Bennett Foddy and Julian Savulescu (2010) argue for a purely desire-based view of addiction. In other words, they argue that there is little difference between an addict’s desire for drugs and, say, the philosopher’s desire for intellectual discussion. Perhaps this is an oversimplification of Foddy and Savulescu’s (2010) view, though I do not intend to discuss their view any further. Nevertheless, they take the role of the reward system in addiction to indicate that there is nothing special about addictive desires beyond their felt strength (ibid., p. 4). Although I am not committed to a view like Foddy and Savulescu’s (2010), I think they are right to pay close attention to the fact that any pleasurable experiences activate the reward system (p. 4): [W]hen we indulge in a rewarding activity, the reward mechanisms of our brains reinforce the neural pathways that led us to seek the activity in the first place, making us more likely to repeat that particular activity. (ibid., p. 6).

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7.5  A Modest Proposal We now have at hand what we need to get my view, that there is an interesting overlap between greed and addiction, up and running. As I noted above, both Phil’s behavior and Jane’s behavior are clearly characteristic of severe addictive disorders. In the case of Phil, we would be inclined to say that Phil suffers from addiction on this evidence alone.8 But, I contend, we should abstain judgement on Jane without further evidence, since the criteria for assessing addictive disorders in the DSM-5 were not designed to diagnose cases like Jane’s as a case of addictive disorder. That is, without independent reasons to believe cases like Jane’s could be cases of addiction, these criteria for diagnosing addictive behavior tell us nothing of importance about Jane’s experience. However, we have at least some reason for thinking Jane’s case could be a case of addiction. First, we know that cases of substance addiction and behavioral addiction are both characterized by a severe disruption to the mesolimbic dopamine system caused by the consumption of some substance or by some behavior. We also know that a whole host of biological and nonbiological factors determine how quickly, if at all, one’s reward system is hijacked by some drug or behavior. Given these considerations and given that any pleasurable experience activates the reward system, it seems possible that, at the very least, Jane is addicted to the pursuit of wealth. The question remains whether this evidence is conclusive enough to reasonably judge that Jane is an addict. Admittedly, I do not take what I have presented as a strong argument in favor of this judgement. Rather, I believe I have called into reasonable doubt the view that our concepts of greed and addiction are wholly distinct. One thing I neglected to indicate following my description of Phil is that each of the views of greed we discussed portray Phil as greedy: he shows an “insatiable appetite” for methamphetamine, and he pursues it at the detriment of himself and others. Perhaps this is no surprise, and perhaps we should feel comfortable with this conclusion. I will have more to say on this in the final section. However, if you subscribe to views on greed and addiction sufficiently similar to those I present here, you likely feel, as I do, that there is something salient shared between Jane and Phil.

7.6  Objections There are a number of ways one might criticize my general argument. For instance, one might find fault with the selection of views on greed and addiction I have presented. One might also question my decision to focus on dispositional greed rather than some broader conception of greed. When I first conceived of this project, I had only just begun researching greed, and I was surprised to find that philosophers and 8  As I noted earlier, the primary purpose of providing this list of criteria in the DSM-5 is to provide clinicians with a means for diagnosing addictive disorders.

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scientists alike have a tendency to talk about greed and greedy people in a very similar fashion to how they talk about addiction and addicts. I was further surprised to find that very little research has been performed in an effort to explore this apparent overlapping of ideas. Thus, this essay is meant only as a first step – albeit a baby step – in the direction of what hopefully turns into a much larger research program. That is to say, so long as the views I have presented capture all of the intuitive cases of (dispositional) greed and addiction, and I have not left out importantly different competing views capable of capturing these cases, I see no reason to think my selection worthy of serious criticism. To the best of my knowledge, I have met this condition. There is, however, at least one objection that deserves a little more care. One might argue that I have neglected an overwhelming set of very important differences between Jane and Phil. For starters, Jane is wealthy and in good health. The same cannot be said of Phil. Furthermore, although Phil does cause harm to others, he experiences the brunt of the harm brought on by his addictive behavior. This is not so in Jane’s situation. Her actions primarily cause harm to others, like her family and her employees. And still, there are more differences between these cases. Given these differences and the evidence we have available to us, it is at best indeterminate whether there is any interesting overlap between Jane and Phil, and thus greed and addiction. We may just as well conclude that greedy behavior tends to hurt others, while addictive behavior tends to hurt the addict. I agree with anyone posing this objection that the differences noted are salient to the discussion at hand. They do not, however, pose a problem for my view. Many of the differences in Jane’s and Phil’s experiences are simply due to the object of their pursuit. In order to amass her wealth via her business ventures, Jane needs to maintain her health and her professionalism. Phil, on the other hand, does not need to meet anywhere near the same standards in order to acquire meth. Furthermore, Jane’s pursuit of wealth does not pose any obvious threat to her physical or mental wellbeing, and she is likely praised by those around her, especially if they are unaware of all of her business practices. Of course, Phil’s consumption of methamphetamine poses great risks to his physical and mental wellbeing. And just like it is our tendency to equate wealth with success, it is also a tendency of ours to look down upon and ostracize drug addicts. It is clear, then, that what is salient about these differences across the two cases is that they suggest a difference in the object of pursuit and the relevant population’s acceptance of that pursuit. These differences do not suggest, contrary to the critics, that my general argument is faulty.

7.7  Concluding Remarks: What Comes Next If I am right to conclude that there is an important overlap between our conceptions of greed and addiction, then there are some implications of this view worth considering. One implication is that there may be no difference between cases of addiction and cases of dispositional greed. Whether this seems problematic likely turns on

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one’s view of addiction and autonomy. On the “disease view” of addiction,9 the hijacking of the reward system characteristic of addiction is understood literally. In other words, the disease view claims that an addict’s autonomy is compromised in virtue of being an addict (Foddy and Savulescu 2010). If you ascribe to some version of this view, you may be inclined to agree that all cases of addiction are cases in which the individual’s autonomy is not fully realized, but you may be less inclined to think this about all cases of dispositional greed. It may be that Jane’s autonomy is compromised, but surely the person greedy for their time is not in the same boat, you might say. Again, whether this prospect is troublesome will likely turn on the correct view of addiction and autonomy. Suppose my conclusion and the disease view of addiction are both correct. This implies that much of what we do to treat addicts – especially those addicted to some behavior – may be useful in treating dispositional greed. From our privileged standpoint, we can see that Jane is not living the best life she could. For starters, her behavior with respect to others suggests an impoverished moral life. There are more ways Jane could benefit from getting a grip on her greedy behavior, and this is true regardless of whether the disease view of addiction is correct. If it is, though, then we may even have a moral obligation to help people like Jane receive treatment. This obligation can arise in a number of different ways. One situation in which we may have a moral obligation to provide treatment is when the greedy individual has significant power over the welfare of others. Jane’s children, for example, would likely benefit from her treatment. But if the disease view is correct, not only is Jane highly unlikely to receive treatment on her own accord, she is also likely incapable of committing herself to treatment. Thus, someone like Jane’s husband may be obligated to at least provide treatment as a viable option to Jane. The last implication of my view that I would like to discuss here concerns further empirical research on greed in particular. If what I have said about the overlap between greed and addiction is plausible, then that suggests that we can glean some important information about dispositional greed from what we already know about addiction. At the very least, it suggests that empirical scientists looking into greed at the neurobiological level need not limit themselves to the current impoverished state of the greed literature.

References American Psychiatric Association. 2013. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 5th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. Cassill, D., and A. Watkins. 2005. Mogul games: In defense of inequality as an evolutionary strategy to cope with multiple agents of selection. In Evolutionary sychology and economic theory: Advances in Austrian economics, ed. R. Koppl, 35–59. Oxford: Elsevier.

9  For a more detailed account of the different views of addiction and autonomy, see Foddy and Savulescu (2010).

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Clark, Luke, and Eve H. Limbrick-Oldfield. 2013. Disordered gambling: A behavioral addiction. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 23: 655–659. Crawshaw, Ralph. 1996. Greed. BMJ: British Medical Journal 313 (7072): 1596–1597. Everitt, Barry J., and Ulrike Heberlein. 2013. Addiction: Editorial overview. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 23: 463–466. Foddy, Bennett, and Julian Savulescu. 2010. A Liberal account of addiction. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology: PPP 17 (1): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1353/ppp.0.0282. Jebb, Andrew, Ed Diener, Louis Tay, and Shigehiro Oishi. 2018. Happiness, income satiation, and turning points around the world. Nature Human Behavior 2 (1): 33–38. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41562-­017-­0277-­0. Kawall, Jason. 2012. Rethinking greed. In Human adaptation to climate change: Human virtues of the future, ed. Allen Thompson and J.  Bendik-Keymer, 223–239. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Kranzler, Henry R., and Ting-Kai Li. 2008. What is addiction? Alcohol Research and Health 31 (2): 93–95. Levine, D.P. 2005. The corrupt organization. Human Relations 58: 723–740. https://doi. org/10.1177/001872670505160. McLean, Benthany and Peter Elkind. 2003. The smartest guys in the room: The amazing rise and scandalous fall of Enron. Portfolio Trade. O’Brien, C. 2011. Addiction and dependence in DSM-V. Addiction 106: 866–867. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1360-­0443.2010.03144.x. Robertson, A.F. 2001. Greed: Gut feelings, growth, and history. Cambridge: Polity Press. Seuntjens, Terri, Segar Breugelmans, Niels van de Ven, and Marcel Zeelenberg. 2015. Dispositional greed. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (6): 917–933. Ian Everitt  is currently a master’s student in the Department of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. Upon completing his M.A., Ian looks forward to pursuing philosophy at the doctorate level, and he hopes to one day become a full-time philosophy professor. In his leisure time, Ian enjoys composing and performing music and spending time with his cat, Euthyphro.

Chapter 8

Greed, the Market, and Human Flourishing Rebecca Cobern Kates

Abstract  Milton Friedman once argued that the free market system has been the most effective economic system in lifting millions out of poverty and that greed is a key component of that system. While greed has been almost universally condemned throughout major world religions, economists such as Friedman, have argued that there are some benefits to greed in free market economies. In this chapter, I explore the positive case for greed in a market economy argued by John Meadowcroft. Ultimately, I argue that while there are benefits to society derived from individuals pursuing their self-interest, in contrast, the effects of greed on society are harmful. I then suggest solutions on how society can help shape the character of its citizens through education in the arts and positive psychology in an effort to curb the excesses of greed. Keywords  Greed · Positive psychology · Market economy · Arts education · Sustainability

8.1  Introduction Milton Friedman once argued that the free market system has been the most effective economic system in lifting millions out of poverty and that greed is a key component of that system (Donahue 1979). While greed has been almost universally condemned throughout major world religions, economists such as Friedman, have argued that there are some benefits to greed in free market economies. With growing income inequality and environmental degradation, however, philosophers and scholars have recently begun to critically question the role of greed in our society (Meadowcroft 2009). Is greed a problem or not? If it is a problem, what should be done about it? Critical to this debate on the positive or negative impacts of greed, R. C. Kates (*) Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 M. S. Pritchard, E. E. Englehardt (eds.), Everyday Greed: Analysis and Appraisal, Ethical Economy 58, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70087-4_8

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is how greed should be defined. Is greed the same as self-interest? Or something different? The first section of this paper shall explore three common definitions of greed and whether greed, according to these definitions, is desirable in a market economy. To examine this, we shall look at the positive case for greed in a market economy argued by John Meadowcroft. Ultimately, I will argue that greed can be distinguished from self-interest. Self-­ interest can be beneficial to market economies, but greed causes more harm than good to both greedy agents and to others. Section 8.2 will discuss how greed is a vice of disproportionality which threatens human flourishing. It should therefore not be promoted as a virtue. The final section will examine one possible solution to curbing greed’s impact on society. Good regulation of markets can curb the excesses of greed but a cultural approach of promoting positive psychology and the arts is also needed to shift our values away from overemphasizing material acquisition. Discouraging greed need not dispel its side benefits for a market economy, but would rather encourage beneficial rather than harmful consumption.

8.2  Defining Greed Many who discuss the positive and/or negative impacts of greed on society do not clearly define greed. John Meadowcroft comments that this is problematic as it is not “necessarily obvious at what point a healthy appetite or a natural passion gives way to greed and among those scholars who have attempted to define greed, divergent definitions have been offered” (Meadowcroft 2009). Greed and self-interest have often been equated, even leading to perhaps a total misreading of Adam Smith (Wight 2005). But if greed fits any one of the following three descriptions, then Meadowcroft argues that they do not constitute a valid critique of a market economy. The three descriptions are: first, a desire for material wealth beyond one’s needs; second, consumption that denies others the opportunity to similarly consume; and third, an exclusive focus on accumulating material wealth (Meadowcroft 2009).

8.3  G  reed as Desire for Material Wealth Beyond One’s Needs The first description captures most dictionary definitions of greed. Meriam-Webster characterizes greed as ‘a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed’ (Seuntjens et al. 2015). Oxford Dictionary defines greed as ‘a strong desire for more wealth, possessions, power, etc. than a person needs’ (Seuntjens et al. 2015). These definitions raise more questions than they answer.

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Is it really greedy to desire more possessions than one needs? Or if those definitions do capture greed, is greed always wrong? And what counts as a need? Meadowcroft points out that it is a benefit of civilization that we are able to pursue not only things that are necessary to life but also things that can make life more pleasurable. He writes: There is nothing inherently virtuous about an economy that only satisfies people’s needs. On the contrary, it is an economy that satisfies wants as well as needs that offers the greatest possibilities for human flourishing because it provides far greater scope for cultural development and enables cultural products to be made available to the widest possible range of people. (Meadowcroft 2009)

Surely the goal of society is not that humans merely survive but flourish. Human flourishing requires more than just having basic needs such as food and water met. What else is needed for human flourishing? Jerome Segal outlines five areas of need: material, social, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual (Segal 2003). A person can experience impoverishment in any one of these areas. Social impoverishment entails a lack of meaningful relationships. Intellectual poverty could be lack of education, but also intellectual isolation where a person is out of touch with people who have different points of view or backgrounds. Aesthetic poverty is the absence of beauty in one’s surroundings both natural and artificial. Lastly, spiritual poverty is the absence of any transcendent meaning, be it religious or having a sense of purpose in life. Many material acquisitions that are ‘wants’ instead of basic needs may be used to help fulfil these other four areas of human flourishing. If we broadened the definition of needs from basic material goods, such as food and shelter, to include goods used for other areas of human flourishing, it blurs what is a mere desire verses need. Not all desires are superficial or superfluous. Further, Meadowcroft points out that there are numerous benefits for society when one pursues material wealth. When Adam Smith pointed out that it is not out of benevolence that the butcher, brewer and baker make their wares but out of their self-interest, he was highlighting how pursuing wealth can lead us to serve others. Pursuing wealth obliges us to “learn about and respond to the needs of others” (Meadowcroft 2009). It need not matter if a person’s principle desire is to make money or serve humanity; either motive leads to humanity being served so long as basic principles of justice are upheld such as honesty and not stealing. If pursuing possessions can help serve others, what could be so wrong with consuming beyond one’s needs? If greed is defined merely as a desire for material wealth beyond one’s needs, then Meadowcroft is surely right that greed may not always be a bad thing and that it can bring some benefits to society. But this first definition is too vague a definition to be really helpful in distinguishing healthy self-interest from something more obviously wrong. If we assume that there does exist self-interest that is wrong and greed is a negative term which best fits those kinds of cases where self-interest is harmful, then we need a sharper definition to distinguish it from ordinary cases of self-interest.

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8.4  G  reed as Consumption that Denies Others the Opportunity to Similarly Consume The second description adds the clause that consumption is greedy if it denies the opportunity to others to similarly consume. This definition is more promising than the first because it more clearly demarcates greed from self-interest, where greed is at the expense of others whereas self-interest alone is not. There are clear-cut cases where a person who consumes at the expense of others is greedy. For instance, if there is a limited quantity of food for a group of refugees in a boat, it would be greedy for a person to take more food than is absolutely necessary before everyone else is fed their fair share. Most would agree that excessive consumption that involves theft, corruption and deception is wrong. But Meadowcroft argues that most market behavior and consumption is not at the expense of others. He writes: Prosperity is not a zero-sum game in which different individuals, groups, or societies compete for a share of a fixed pot of wealth. Rather, economic development involves the creation of new wealth: the resource pot can be made bigger…Ceasing or limiting economic activity in one part of the world will not make other parts of the world richer. Rather, the challenge is to spread economic development more widely. (Meadowcroft 2009)

If such is the case, then a rich person spending money on an expensive car while another person is struggling to pay for college would not be greedy because his purchase is not at the expense of the poor college student. Or, if it is greedy, then greed is not obviously wrong in this case. While many decry financial inequality in society, Meadowcroft sees it as necessary for economic development. When the wealthy pursue luxuries and conveniences, they raise the standards of living in society because “the rich pay for new products and research that ultimately benefit all” (Meadowcroft 2009). Economic development does not take place uniformly and universally, he argues, but rather in waves where some people advance before others but pave the way for future generations and a broader pool of people to enjoy that same standard of living. Wealthy people who buy expensive Teslas are investing in a company that hopes to produce more affordable electric cars for the middle class. Many could ultimately benefit if the wealthy continue to make such purchases that are out of range for most. Meadowcroft’s description of market behavior and wealth creation, if true, then would not merit the attribution of greed according to the second definition because it is not at the expense of others. The question is whether his description that typical market behavior and wealth creation is not at the expense of others is accurate. Whether market behavior merits the label greed would depend on the goods in question and the availability of resources. Upon closer inspection and given the current climate situation, there are several industries where growth does come at a cost to others and future generations. Business journalist, Sam Pizzigati has documented a substantial number of studies and stories on the negative impact of financial inequality in his tome Greed and Good, which argues that spending by the wealthy does not always benefit the rest of society (Pizzigati 2004). In it he observes that increasing financial inequality does

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drive up prices of goods, making them unaffordable for the middle class. While prices have fallen in some industries such as food and clothing, prices for the middle- and lower-class consumer have skyrocketed for goods such as new cars and homes. For example, Pizzigati points out that until the 1980s carmakers focused on building cars for the middle class. But by the end of the century, this market had evaporated because automakers realized they could make more money per car by making them bigger and adding luxury features that they could sell to the rich such that most new cars were out of reach for the average American.1 American families’ need for two cars has also drastically increased transportation costs. Acquiring more cars has become more necessary as affordable housing becomes farther and farther from people’s place of employment. Between 1970 and 1998 the median sales price of existing homes adjusted for inflation increased by 43%. In the West, the increase was 73% (Segal 2003). The most dramatic example may be San Francisco where home costs were four times the national average by the end of the 1990s. Pizzigati observes, Why did homes cost so much in the San Francisco area? The “intensely competitive bidding from freshly minted millionaires,” concluded the San Francisco Chronicle, after a lengthy investigation. These freshly minted millionaires, USA Today added, frequently think “nothing of plunking down $500,000 for a San Francisco tear-down with a view.” The new homes that replaced the tear-downs  – and filled virgin spaces  – would be grand homes. In the 1980s and 1990s, developers built homes the same way automakers built cars. They build them big, to maximize the profits they could expect to receive from their affluent customers. (Pizzigati 2004)

Average families have had to leave many urban areas to live in distant suburbs and spend long uncomfortable hours commuting in heavy traffic. Jerome Segal notes that even in regions where aggregate housing costs have remained stable, “safe housing has become progressively more expensive” (Segal 2003). Furthermore, to gain access to high-quality schools, people must move to progressively more expensive neighborhoods. It is not within the scope of this paper to cover all the areas where spending by the rich hurts others overall. But, without even discussing environmental costs, the above examples at least indicate that some consumption by the wealthy has come at a significant negative cost to others. Greed is a factor in rising costs and is having a wide negative societal impact that needs to be curbed rather than encouraged without qualifications. Where resources are limited, specific and targeted regulation will likely be needed rather than relying solely on personal and cultural change.

 Pizzigati illustrates the price increase with the following example among many: Back in the mid 1960s, the most popular sedans, the Chevy Impala and Ford Galaxie, had cost consumers about $2600, or around $13,000 in 1996 dollars. Most middle-class households could, without much squeezing, afford that cost. By contrast, the comparable 1996 vehicle, the Ford Taurus, ran about $20,000, a price that shoved the Taurus “out of the reach of many middle-class consumers.” P. 251 1

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8.5  G  reed as Exclusive Focus on Accumulating Material Wealth The third description of greed is an exclusive focus on accumulating material wealth. Meadowcroft does not deny that this can describe greed, but he does deny that it has negative societal impacts. He comments, Certainly it may be considered undesirable or imperfect that in market economies some people do appear to become obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth. But similarly it may be deemed undesirable or imperfect that some people appear to become obsessed with sex, or with food, or choose to devote a large proportion of their leisure time to watching television. What activities people choose to engage in, even obsessively, must be a matter of individual choice. It only becomes a matter of public concern if their actions harm others. (Meadowcroft 2009)

Obsessive pursuit of wealth does not harm others according to Meadowcroft for the reasons mentioned previously: in order to pursue wealth in the market one must serve the public good by providing for people’s needs and desires. It does not matter to us whether Bill Gates is obsessed with money or not; his company has benefitted society greatly. We have already touched on the mixed record on how financial inequality impacts the middle and lower classes, but there is another reason why we should not tolerate greedy behavior, which is that greed has a negative impact on the greedy individual as well as a negative social impact. If the goal of society is to promote human flourishing, we should not encourage others to ruin their lives even if it could possibly benefit us if they do. To understand further how greed negatively impacts the greedy agent and those around him or her, we need to look at one more description of greed.

8.6  Greed and Human Flourishing Jason Kawal, in his article “Rethinking Greed”, defines greed as “a vice of disproportionality: greedy agents pursue objects to a degree that is disproportionate to their value relative to other goods that the agents could be pursuing, or to the harms associated with their pursuit” (Kawall 2012). For instance, a workaholic could value money to the detriment of his or her social, intellectual or spiritual goods. When considering that overvaluing wealth can come at the cost of undervaluing other goods such as friendship, developing other interests, etc. it is clear that the harm of greed is not just to others, but is harmful to the greedy agent herself. Studies and human experience suggest that having too many material goods can negatively impact overall happiness. It is not merely that time spent making money is time away from friends, family, or the opportunity to develop other interests. Wealth tends to distort one’s perspective, relationships, and character. Several nonprofits and counseling institutes exist to address the psychological problems facing

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wealthy people (Pizzigati 2004). Many wealthy people report that they can never tell if people desire to be around them for who they are as people or for their wealth. They face envy of others, and sometimes guilt for having wealth when others do not. If they do not feel guilt and believe they deserve their wealth, they often become contemptuous of the poor. This insecurity drives many to only build relationships with other wealthy people, but this can lead to social and intellectual isolation, leading them to be out of touch with people who are different from them.2 The children of the wealthy are often less industrious. Several famous wealthy individuals have decided not to pass their wealth onto their children, reporting that it would be like passing on a curse. James Rogers, the chairman of Sunbelt Communication, reported that “leaving children wealth is like leaving them a case of psychological cancer” (Pizzigati 2004). The wealthy also tend to be less generous, which is an example of how wealth can distort character. Researchers at NewTithing Group have documented that wealthy people “are less generous with their dollars than low- and middle-income Americans – and the wealthier families become, the less they give, as a share of their income and wealth”3 (Pizzigati 2004). Not only are the wealthy less generous in the giving to income ratio, but when they do give, they contribute mainly to universities and cultural institutions and rarely to organizations that directly help the poor. One might ask, if the rich are so miserable why don’t they just give away all their wealth? Alexis Brassey observes that our culture equates being rich or powerful with success and greed is “the failure to appreciate that happiness is not solely contingent upon what we have” (Brassey 2009). Constant and insatiable desire is a source of unhappiness. It is not just the ultra-wealthy who are affected. Recent studies have shown the negative impact of clutter on mental health which may help explain the popularity of businesses and bestsellers addressing decluttering and organization such as Marie Kondo (See Roster 2016; Saxbe and Repetti 2010; Ferrari et al. 2018). Overabundance in material possessions is unnecessary for pursuing full human flourishing because one can pursue other goods such as social,

 This phenomenon is well-documented in Pizzigati, pp. 260–265.  Pizzigati further writes: In 2000, for instance, average households at each income level below $100,000 contributed, according to NewTithing’s calculations, every dollar they could comfortably afford to give. They, in effect, “maxed out” on their charitable contributions…America’s more affluent households did not come anywhere close to maxing out. Those households that earned between $100,000 and $200,000 in 2000, for instance, gave to charity only 70 percent of what they could have comfortably afford to give. But these households making between $100,000 and $200,000 were veritable Mother Theresas compared to families higher up on America’s economic ladder. In 2000, households making between $200,000 and $500,000 a year gave away to charity just 36 percent of what they could comfortably have afforded – and those that reported income between $500,000 and $1 million gave a mere 21 percent. And what about the top, those families over $1 million a year? Households at this loftiest level gave away only 12 percent of what they could have given without crimping their lifestyle or shrinking their net worth. 2 3

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intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual without always turning to the material. The material can, in fact, get in the way. The Stoics would probably agree with this assessment that we mistake the source of our happiness in external goods rather than realizing, as the Stoics believed, that we are born with everything we need to be happy: our own reason and will. In fact, the Stoics even opposed having pity on those who experience misfortune because it is based on false beliefs about the value of external goods (Nussbaum 1996). Having pity on someone could lead them astray because, using Martha Nussbaum’s words, “a person who accepts those judgments accepts that she has given hostages to fortune” (Nussbaum 1996). This would be a cruel fate because the person who accepts pity will always be tossed about by the hands of fortune rather than finding happiness internally. While the Stoics may occupy an extreme position on the value of material goods, it is clear that too little material acquisition and too much material acquisition can impact our happiness. If the goal of society is to promote human flourishing, then it seems like a balance must be struck in how much focus there is on producing and acquiring material goods. Economic and systemic interventions both to provide basic needs and restrict excess could help promote the happiness of all. While some economic restrictions and wealth redistribution may be entirely appropriate, it may not address the underlying problems of overvaluing material goods and undervaluing other goods. Therefore, other cultural solutions must also be encouraged.

8.7  Solutions Aimed at Reforming Character The key lies within figuring out how to encourage beneficial consumption while restricting harmful consumption. Material goods can be instrumentally helpful in our pursuit of other human goods such as in the social and aesthetic realms. The trouble with greed is when we value the material over and above these other goods and use the material as the primary means of pursuing these other goods when the other goods are actually primarily achieved through other means. Alan Cottey in his article “Moral equivalents of greed” comments: Now, in the 21st century, it is worth considering whether merely disapproving of greed […] and pillorying selected individuals is going to get us anywhere useful. So far it has not. ‘Wealth’ as generally understood – that is, sum of assets convertible into money – is, in the upper range, a surrogate. (Cottey 2013)

For Cottey, wealth is a surrogate for status and approbation which we can replace with honors, awards and pursuing celebrity. I further suggest that tending to our mental health and discovering how to pursue the goods of social relationships, beauty, and intellectual goods are what is needed to help people find fulfillment. Pursuing social relationships, beauty and intellectual goods is something that can be taught through promoting positive psychology and the arts.

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8.8  Positive Psychology In the decades following Milton Friedman’s observations about the benefits of greed in a free market system in his 1979 interview with Phil Donahue, social researchers began observing another interesting phenomenon. As countries in the Western world got richer and richer, inhabitants of those countries self-reported happiness did not keep pace. Inhabitants of Germany and Japan with twice the gross national product of Ireland reported much lower levels of happiness (Inglehart 1990). The wealthiest in the United States were barely happier than those with average incomes (Diener et al. 1985). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the co-founder of positive psychology, pointed out these studies and more in his 1999 ground-breaking article, “If we are so rich, why aren’t we happier?” Although levels of happiness have not kept pace with rising levels of prosperity, what makes matter worse, Csikszentmihalyi observes from a study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, is that we continue to think that lack of money is the problem even for those who live well above the poverty line (Csikszentmihalyi 1999). Why do people persist to think they need more money when it starts to have diminishing returns? There are several possible explanations including cognitive biases of comparison and escalation of expectations. So long as society remains unequal in wealth, people will always compare their position to those earning more than them even if they live quite comfortably already (Martin 1981; Williams 1975). We also become quickly habituated to new levels of comfort or acquisitions of material goods leading us to constantly desire more and pushing our goals further and further up the ladder (Davis 1959; Michalos 1985; Parducci 1995). Mental health practitioners have long referred to affluent people seeking mental health services as the ‘worried well’. However, studies show significant cracks in the socio-emotional health of those who have boundless resources. Ever since these initial observations, research in positive psychology has exploded, where instead of focusing on maladaptive behavior, researchers in psychology study what behaviors contribute to a positive, meaningful, and happy life. People are hungry for this research and knowledge. This is evidenced by the fact that a Harvard course in positive psychology, a direct answer to these ailments, is the most in-demand course at the affluent institution (Pninit Russo-Neter and Ben-­ Shahar 2011). What does positive psychology have to offer? Positive psychology promotes autotelic activities, or activities that can be done for their own sake, including mindfulness, deep-breathing, exercise, the arts, extra-curricular education, religious experiences, and so forth. It is not that these have no extrinsic goals at all. However, these are all engrossing and satisfying in and of themselves, not simply as a matter of industry. Csikszentmihalyi describes people with autotelic personalities as individuals who experience ‘flow’ regularly. Flow describes a particular kind of mental state where whatever the person is doing is so engrossing and enjoyable that it becomes autotelic (Csikszentmihalyi 1999).

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Flow experiences are inherently enjoyable and can counteract fixations on money and material gains. It helps people to focus on that which truly promotes long-term happiness: physical health, social connections, mental habits of acceptance and gratitude, creativity, altruism and spiritual connection. These behaviors, however, can be difficult to learn. The cycle of greed is difficult to stop once it has taken hold (Linder 1970; Benedikt 1999; Scitovsky 1975). Csikszentmihalyi comments, “to the extent that most of one’s psychic energy becomes invested in material goals, it is typical for sensitivity to other rewards to atrophy. Friendship, art, literature, natural beauty, religion, and philosophy become less and less interesting” (Csikszentmihalyi 1999). When time is money, activities which do not make money seem more and more irrational and less enjoyable. Habituating is very important for actually changing behavior. It is not enough to know that pursuing material goods and money does not necessarily lead to more happiness. This would be to succumb to what Tamar Gendler and Laurie Santos call the G.I. Joe Fallacy that “knowing is half the battle.” Cognitive research has shown that in many situations “behavioral control does not come from knowledge, but from things like situation selection, habit formation, and emotion regulation” (Gendler and Santos 2014). We may know that our dissatisfaction with our level of prosperity is only because someone else has more, even though they aren’t necessarily happier. We know that spending more time with family and going for a run will make us happier, but we chose to consume instead. Therefore, the importance of starting autotelic practices by educating the public beginning in early childhood is critical. While it is not too late for adults to change behavior, if we want our culture to shift more dramatically to create a more sustainable economy and environment, it is important to teach the skills at an early age when it is easiest to receive. Some places in the world have already begun experimenting with introducing positive psychology in primary education. A Chilean study found that a program in positive psychology in their primary schools, which included activities in rock climbing, gardening, visits to the forest and nursing homes, was effective in building reflective thinking and empathy in students (Andres Ampuero et al. 2015). What was especially notable, however, was that the effect of the program was fastest in the first three grades and slower in the higher three grades. The researchers observed about the students in the higher three grades that in times of class sharing they had less courage to contribute their ideas. It was not until the end of the year after much reinforcement that changes in attitude became notable (Andres Ampuero et al. 2015). Developing the skills of positive psychology will not only help people be happier, but counterintuitively, can actually help society become more productive in a sustainable way by helping workers become healthier and more creative and inventive. While interest in positive psychology has increased, notably in organizational psychology for its boon to productivity, curriculum in autotelic activities, such as the arts, is being slashed in primary and secondary education across the country. This is a big mistake. I conclude this article with a special focus on arts education and why we should invest more in it.

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8.9  The Arts The importance of the arts has long been recognized. In his work Politics, Aristotle discusses that music education is important; and educators arranged to include it in school curriculum from the beginning “because nature itself seeks, as has been said repeatedly, not only to be occupied in correct fashion but also to be capable of being at leisure in noble fashion” (Aristotle 2013). Cultivating high forms of leisure helps direct our activities away from unfulfilling tasks such as excessive pursuit of wealth, but it also helps us pursue goods that have no excess and are not harmful. Art can also help different groups of people find common ground. The arts play an important role in cultivating compassion. Martha Nussbaum comments: Every society employs and teaches ideals of the citizen, and of good civic judgment, in many ways; and there are some concrete practical strategies that will in fact support an education in compassion. First of all, public education at every level should cultivate the ability to imagine the experiences of others and to participate in their sufferings. This, I think, means giving the humanities and the arts a large place in education, from elementary school on up. It also means recognizing that the arts serve a vital political function, even when their content is not expressly political – for they cultivate imaginative abilities that are central to the political life. This would give us special reasons for supporting the arts, and for giving artistic expression a high degree of protection from the repression that so often threatens it. (Nussbaum 1996)

The threat to the arts is particularly high in our society right now. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, school programs facing budget cuts were forced to slash educational programs. Arts and music programs are almost always the first to go in favor of retaining and strengthening science and technology subjects. But this is highly counterproductive (Hawkins 2012). The arts not only help bring people together across the spectrum of social strata and provide people meaningful pursuits beyond acquisition, but they also enhance performance in the very subjects that tend to replace the arts–science, technology and math. John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, has argued that scientists need art “in order to invent and innovate successfully” (Lamont 2010). He has helped promote the movement of turning government-approved STEM subjects into STEAM where art is included. Scholar Michelle Land has also commented that traditional STEM subjects “focus on convergent skills whereas art degrees focus on divergent skills” (Land 2013). Having both is key to innovation. Not only does art enhance STEM education, but it has also been shown to help at-risk students complete their high school and college education. A 2011 report called “A Snapshot of Arts Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools: 2009-10” from the National Endowment for the Arts reports that “low-income high school students who earned few or no arts credits were five times more likely not to graduate from high school than low-income students who earned many arts credits” (Hawkins 2012). Students who had arts-rich experiences were three times as likely to earn their Bachelors degree. One study showed that the arts “positively affected

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the motivation of these students included a supportive environment that promotes constructive acceptance of criticism and one where it is safe to take risks” (Hawkins 2012). Cultivating the arts has the benefit of encouraging empathy in those who are already advantaged as well as helping the disadvantaged achieve greater academic success. Any solution that addresses the vast inequality in our society is critical to addressing a root source of greed and consumption, comparison, escalation of expectations, and insensitivity to autotelic goods. Once people are better able to fulfil their social, aesthetic, intellectual and spiritual needs, they would become more mindful consumers. This could prevent the harms of greed on society without completely discarding the progress that a free market can achieve in raising people’s quality of life. Restricting economic activity or redistributing wealth could be helpful, but may be insufficient if people are not also trained in how to pursue other goods. More research in ways to promote helpful consumption and discouraging harmful consumption would be beneficial to ensure that economic growth continues that is for the benefit of all.

References Ampuero, Andres, Christian Miranda David, and Samantha Goyen. 2015. Positive psychology in education for sustainable development at a primary-education institution. Local Environment 20: 745–763. Aristotle. 2013. Politics. Trans. Carnes Lord. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Benedikt, Michael. 1999. Values. Austin: The University of Texas Press. Brassey, Alexis. 2009. What drives man toward greed? In Greed, ed. Alexis Brassey and Stephen Barber, 5–20. London: Palgrave Macmillian. Cottey, Alan. 2013. Moral equivalents of greed. AI & Society 28: 531–539. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1999. If we are so rich, why aren’t we happy? American Psychologist 54: 821–824. Davis, James A. 1959. A formal interpretation of the theory of relative deprivation. Sociometry 22: 289–296. Diener, Ed, Jeff Horwitz, and Robert A. Emmons. 1985. Happiness of the very wealthy. Social Indicators 16: 263–274. Donahue, Phil. 1979. Television interview with Milton Friedman. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=MQ0-­cDKMS5M. Accessed 15 May 2019. Ferrari, Joseph R., Catherine A.  Roster, Kendall P.  Crum, and Matthew A.  Pardo. 2018. Procrastinators and clutter: An ecological view of living with excessive ‘stuff’. Current Psychology 37: 441–444. Gendler, Tamar and Laurie Santos. 2014. Knowing is half the battle. 2014: What scientific idea is ready for retirement? https://www.edge.org/response-­detail/25436. Accessed 1 July 2020. Hawkins, Tyleah. 2012. Will less art and music in the classroom really help students soar academically? Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/will-­ less-­art-­and-­music-­in-­the-­classroom-­really-­help-­students-­soar-­academically/2012/12/28/ e18a2da0-­4e02-­11e2-­839d-­d54cc6e49b63_blog.html?utm_term=.b795d96f163d. Accessed 29 May 2019. Inglehart, Ronald. 1990. Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Kawall, Jason. 2012. Rethinking greed. In Human adaptation to climate hange: The human virtues of the future, ed. Allen Thompson and Jeremy Bendiik-Keymer, 223–239. Boston: The MIT Press. Lamont, Tom. 2010. John Maeda: innovation is born when art meets Science. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/nov/14/my-­bright-­idea-­john-­maeda. Accessed 10 June 2019. Land, Michelle. 2013. Full STEAM ahead: The BENEFITS OF INTEGRATING THE ARTS into STEM. Procedia Computer Science 20: 547–552. Linder, Staffan Burenstam. 1970. The harried leisure class. New York: Columbia University Press. Martin, Joanne. 1981. Relative deprivation: A theory of distributive injustice for an era of shrinking resources. Research in Organizational Behavior 3: 53–107. Meadowcroft, John. 2009. Greed and the market. In Greed, ed. Alexis Brassey and Stephen Barber, 5–20. London: Palgrave Macmillian. Michalos, Alex C. 1985. Multiple discrepancy theory (MDT). Social Indicators Research 16: 347–413. Nussbaum, Martha. 1996. Compassion: The basic social emotion. Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 13: 27–58. Parducci, Allen. 1995. Happiness, pleasure, and judgment. Mahwah: Erlbaum. Pizzigati, Sam. 2004. Greed and good: Understanding and overcoming the inequality that limits our lives. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Roster, Catherine A. 2016. The dark side of home: Assessing possession ‘clutter’ on subjective well-being. Journal of Environmental Psychology 46: 32–41. Russo-Netzer, Pninit, and Tal Ben-Shahar. 2011. ‘Learning from success’: A close look at a popular positive psychology course. The Journal of Positive Psychology 6: 468–476. Saxbe, Darby E., and Rena Repetti. 2010. No place like home: Home tours correlate with daily patterns of mood and cortisol. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36: 71–81. Scitovsky, Tibor. 1975. The joyless economy. New York: Random House. Segal, Jerome. 2003. Graceful simplicity: The philosophy and politics of the alternative american dream. Oakland: University of California Press. Seuntjens, Terry G., Marcel Zeelenberg, Seger M.  Breugelmans, and Niels van de Ven. 2015. Defining greed. British Journal of Psychology 106: 505–525. Wight, Jonathan B. 2005. Adam Smith and Greed. Journal of Private Enterprise 21: 46–58. Williams, Robin. M., Jr. 1975. Relative Deprivation. In The idea of social structure: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Merton, ed. L.A. Coser, 355–378. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Rebecca Cobern Kates earned her MA in Philosophy from Western Michigan University and her Masters in Theological Studies from Calvin Theological Seminary. She is currently an instructor in Philosophy at Western Michigan University. Her research and teaching has focused on feminist theology, feminist philosophy of science, philosophy of emotion, bioethics, and most recently ethics in criminal justice.