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You do a great job summarizing the problems that arise from greed, but I wonder if you recognize that there are countervailing benefits. A lot of progress and

You do a great job summarizing the problems that arise from greed, but I wonder if you recognize that there are countervailing benefits. A lot of progress and innovation has been made by greedy individuals. I think much of this progress would be lost had they adopted more wholesome values, because greed is a superior motivator. Greed is a superior motivator because it has no bounds. When someone is obsessed with accumulating wealth, it tends to be a never-ending pursuit. No matter how much wealth they accumulate, they're left wanting more. This is in stark contrast to more wholesome values, which tend to be more easily satiated. I think another way to frame this is: the problem is not greed itself. Rather, the problem is that our current system of harnessing greed fails at controlling negative externalities. Without these negative externalities, greed would be a positive force.

c22 5y ago
It doesn't make any sense to talk about "losing" progress. Either you're progressing or you're not. What you're potentially losing here is "speed of progress" which may or may not turn out to be beneficial to this planet's inhabitants over the long run.
- Dudeman112 5y ago
  I think you are hanging to the literal meaning of the expression they used instead of the metaphorical (aka the progress wouldn't have been achieved). As a side note: >It doesn't make any sense to talk about "losing" progress. Haven't you (or someone you know) ever lost progress because of a power failure? ;)
  - c22 5y ago
    Yes, I will accept your definition of losing progress. I'm arguing that the progress will get achieved with or without the greedy actors, and possibly even in a "better" way, overall.
mgh2 5y ago
For who you may ask? Only to the elite few, the rest are left with scraps.
slg 5y ago
>Greed is a superior motivator because it has no bounds. When someone is obsessed with accumulating wealth, it tends to be a never-ending pursuit. No matter how much wealth they accumulate, they're left wanting more. This is in stark contrast to more wholesome values, which tend to be more easily satiated. I'm not sure why you are stating this like it is a universal fact. Plenty of people reach a level of wealth in which their desire for more is satiated and many people have a need to do good that is never fully satisfied. It all depends on the person.
- fairity 5y ago
  > It all depends on the person. Agreed. I'm speaking in generalities to make the point that, on average, greed is a superior motivating force. At least from personal experience, I've found far more people foregoing personal health and relationships for the sake of wealth accumulation than societal contribution. Even among those that eventually satiate their desire for wealth, it's mostly because their values have shifted (not because their ultimate value remains wealth accumulation and now they have enough).
- atlgator 5y ago
  You just matched one viewpoint with an opposing one. At least the OP's opinion has some empirical evidence in the form of Gates, Jobs, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and so on. All greedy robber barons of their time that made profound impacts on industry and society while treating their employees like grist for the mill.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Gates stopped and started spending his money. If the wealthiest person in the world eventually gives up that suggests greed is bound, it’s simply high enough in many people that they never realize that goal. Further the institution of retirement suggests greed isn’t an unlimited motivator for most people.
    - mettamage 5y ago
      Yep, see FIRE and it’s sibling acronyms.
andrekandre 5y ago
> because greed is a superior motivator. is it? and even if it was, is it worth the (personal, familial, societal, environmental) consequences?
- gary_0 5y ago
  There are definitely counter-examples. Linux wasn't started because Torvalds thought it would get him rich quick. Rowling didn't write the first Harry Potter thinking it would eventually earn billions. Plenty of famous artists, inventors, and scientists died poor, only receiving posthumous recognition. Key vaccine researchers were resigned to struggling in less-profitable sectors of biotech until 2020 happened.[0][1] People in a great many fields put in huge amounts of effort for very little financial reward (and even virtually guaranteed hardship), and sometimes that results in huge benefits for the world. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125003 [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-...
  - mettamage 5y ago
    Feynman is a fun one. Einstein obviously. I like strogatz and what he did with graph theory.
jollybean 5y ago
"When someone is obsessed with accumulating wealth, it tends to be a never-ending pursuit. " Wealth creation is not value creation. Just because you put money in your account, does not mean you 'grew the pie' - in fact - you can generate a lot of wealth individually, while shrinking the overall pie. For example, some kinds of resource extraction do more environmental damage than the profits generated. 'Good Capitalism' creates a ton of value for society, and then captures some of those surpluses. 'Negative Capitalism' just grabs surpluses by whatever means: leverage, legalities, etc.. The problem is we generally don't have a language for distinguishing between the two. As of today, I believe everything related to blockchain is 'bad capitalism' - in that, the externalities and effort are not worth the benefits (though that could change). My mother was complaining yesterday about the volume of ads on Facebook - while I think ads are ok, when people are locked in and deluged, its starts to corrode the net value of a situation. 'The Web' and 'Google' probably create a lot of value. 'Facebook' and 'Blockchain' ... more dubious. Because of the ridiculous amount of money available to be made in net-zero games, even respectable VC's have to pay attention. It definitely bothers me that there is no language of distinction in the SV. Finally, yes, greed is a quixotic motivator, and sometimes it actually does help.
- throwaway34241 5y ago
  > The problem is we generally don't have a language for distinguishing between the two. There is a language for this sort of stuff, it's part of economics, they just don't teach people much of it by default in our public school system. I think some of the terms you're looking for are productivity, rent-seeking, etc. More and more I think economics should be a bigger component of K-12 education even if it means pushing out some things to college like chemistry or calculus (or really, even CS). Basically all the wealthy first world countries are social democracies, with a large role for government spending/regulation in addition to the private sector. Getting more people to see the economy through an economic lens (as a complex series of cause-effect relationships and not a more simple story like "who are the bad people", which politics often devolves to) might help us as a country better connect the actions we need to take to the outcomes we desire.
  - 5y ago
yourapostasy 5y ago
> ...our current system of harnessing greed fails at controlling negative externalities. Without these negative externalities, greed would be a positive force. I believe it isn't a "current system" attribute, but a chronic feature of human power dynamics in scarcity-bound systems. We've always had these negative externalities, but the reach and rapidity available to those at various apexes within our power structures has dramatically expanded in recent generations. Greed could be perceived a positive force in the past because its negative externalities were limited to relatively local scope and durations, and its essential beneficial features could be extracted and applied in modified forms outside of those scopes. But it still sucked mightily for those within its blast radius. I really wish there was structured, systematic study of human power structures in relation to the various common personality types engaged at different focal points of those structures I could investigate, as I feel quite naive and ignorant of them.
- jlokier 5y ago
  That's an interesting observation about bounded externalities and wider positive effects. I hope someone studies the dynamics and effects of power through the lens you described. It might show up in biological systems as well, as so many of these depend on resource competition and signalling in an ever changing, open evolution environment.
  - yourapostasy 5y ago
    > That's an interesting observation about bounded externalities and wider positive effects. To a first-order approximation my mental model I'm trying to look for extant literature upon: model the signalling as a message-passing system whose agents exhibit observational reflexivity while they pass the payload. Agents are simultaneously bounded by their individual observational capacity's volume (how much granularity, how fast, how broadly of topics, how far-ranging of inter-relationships they can comprehend). If the hypothesis withstands systematic back-testing scrutiny against historical data, then the next step is to assess its predictive modeling power. Degrees of validation would help me resolve some confounding observations of my own that different organizing principles of various systems ("capitalism", "socialism", "communism", "anarcho-", "merchantilism", etc.) in different contexts (economic, biologic, social, etc.) appear to repeat certain patterns. As if the levers of control change an interface like a protein surface on a cell/bacterium/virus/DNA-strand/RNA-strand changes, but there is a certain "core API" functionality that is found over and over, like a "portable DSL" that is re-evolved in many contexts due to emergent properties of power structures in resource-constrained settings. I wish I had Dyson Swarm-scale computronium and stor-tronium to help us process and synthesize all of history's known works to find out who else has gone down this rabbit hole, though. There is hardly any original thought when college-dorm-style chatting ideas like this, mostly new ideas only show up in engineering new capabilities and pursuing scientific discovery of new principles; our ancestors were smart cookies. The Vatican has vast stores of works yet to comprehend, for just one data source out of many (every nation's archives, every private archive, etc.). Curse our limited lifespans, and simultaneously marvel at our verse's breathtaking beauty, right?
MispelledToyota 5y ago
I think it's questionable whether top-down interventions could ever control the negative externalities associated with greed. The upside of character is it is a bottom-up limitation on creating negative externalities, placed on those who are best placed and informed to avoid creating them. Admittedly, this only goes so far. Another issue is that people are so often greedy for status. Being zero-sum, it is inherently a negative externality when one achieves a status increase.

c22 5y ago

It doesn't make any sense to talk about "losing" progress. Either you're progressing or you're not. What you're potentially losing here is "speed of progress" which may or may not turn out to be beneficial to this planet's inhabitants over the long run.

Dudeman112 5y ago
I think you are hanging to the literal meaning of the expression they used instead of the metaphorical (aka the progress wouldn't have been achieved). As a side note: >It doesn't make any sense to talk about "losing" progress. Haven't you (or someone you know) ever lost progress because of a power failure? ;)
- c22 5y ago
  Yes, I will accept your definition of losing progress. I'm arguing that the progress will get achieved with or without the greedy actors, and possibly even in a "better" way, overall.

mgh2 5y ago

For who you may ask? Only to the elite few, the rest are left with scraps.

slg 5y ago

>Greed is a superior motivator because it has no bounds. When someone is obsessed with accumulating wealth, it tends to be a never-ending pursuit. No matter how much wealth they accumulate, they're left wanting more. This is in stark contrast to more wholesome values, which tend to be more easily satiated. I'm not sure why you are stating this like it is a universal fact. Plenty of people reach a level of wealth in which their desire for more is satiated and many people have a need to do good that is never fully satisfied. It all depends on the person.

fairity 5y ago
> It all depends on the person. Agreed. I'm speaking in generalities to make the point that, on average, greed is a superior motivating force. At least from personal experience, I've found far more people foregoing personal health and relationships for the sake of wealth accumulation than societal contribution. Even among those that eventually satiate their desire for wealth, it's mostly because their values have shifted (not because their ultimate value remains wealth accumulation and now they have enough).
atlgator 5y ago
You just matched one viewpoint with an opposing one. At least the OP's opinion has some empirical evidence in the form of Gates, Jobs, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and so on. All greedy robber barons of their time that made profound impacts on industry and society while treating their employees like grist for the mill.
- Retric 5y ago
  Gates stopped and started spending his money. If the wealthiest person in the world eventually gives up that suggests greed is bound, it’s simply high enough in many people that they never realize that goal. Further the institution of retirement suggests greed isn’t an unlimited motivator for most people.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    Yep, see FIRE and it’s sibling acronyms.

andrekandre 5y ago

> because greed is a superior motivator. is it? and even if it was, is it worth the (personal, familial, societal, environmental) consequences?

gary_0 5y ago
There are definitely counter-examples. Linux wasn't started because Torvalds thought it would get him rich quick. Rowling didn't write the first Harry Potter thinking it would eventually earn billions. Plenty of famous artists, inventors, and scientists died poor, only receiving posthumous recognition. Key vaccine researchers were resigned to struggling in less-profitable sectors of biotech until 2020 happened.[0][1] People in a great many fields put in huge amounts of effort for very little financial reward (and even virtually guaranteed hardship), and sometimes that results in huge benefits for the world. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125003 [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-vaccine-update-oxford.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/27/world/europe/coronavirus-...
- mettamage 5y ago
  Feynman is a fun one. Einstein obviously. I like strogatz and what he did with graph theory.

jollybean 5y ago

"When someone is obsessed with accumulating wealth, it tends to be a never-ending pursuit. " Wealth creation is not value creation. Just because you put money in your account, does not mean you 'grew the pie' - in fact - you can generate a lot of wealth individually, while shrinking the overall pie. For example, some kinds of resource extraction do more environmental damage than the profits generated. 'Good Capitalism' creates a ton of value for society, and then captures some of those surpluses. 'Negative Capitalism' just grabs surpluses by whatever means: leverage, legalities, etc.. The problem is we generally don't have a language for distinguishing between the two. As of today, I believe everything related to blockchain is 'bad capitalism' - in that, the externalities and effort are not worth the benefits (though that could change). My mother was complaining yesterday about the volume of ads on Facebook - while I think ads are ok, when people are locked in and deluged, its starts to corrode the net value of a situation. 'The Web' and 'Google' probably create a lot of value. 'Facebook' and 'Blockchain' ... more dubious. Because of the ridiculous amount of money available to be made in net-zero games, even respectable VC's have to pay attention. It definitely bothers me that there is no language of distinction in the SV. Finally, yes, greed is a quixotic motivator, and sometimes it actually does help.

throwaway34241 5y ago
> The problem is we generally don't have a language for distinguishing between the two. There is a language for this sort of stuff, it's part of economics, they just don't teach people much of it by default in our public school system. I think some of the terms you're looking for are productivity, rent-seeking, etc. More and more I think economics should be a bigger component of K-12 education even if it means pushing out some things to college like chemistry or calculus (or really, even CS). Basically all the wealthy first world countries are social democracies, with a large role for government spending/regulation in addition to the private sector. Getting more people to see the economy through an economic lens (as a complex series of cause-effect relationships and not a more simple story like "who are the bad people", which politics often devolves to) might help us as a country better connect the actions we need to take to the outcomes we desire.
- 5y ago

yourapostasy 5y ago

> ...our current system of harnessing greed fails at controlling negative externalities. Without these negative externalities, greed would be a positive force. I believe it isn't a "current system" attribute, but a chronic feature of human power dynamics in scarcity-bound systems. We've always had these negative externalities, but the reach and rapidity available to those at various apexes within our power structures has dramatically expanded in recent generations. Greed could be perceived a positive force in the past because its negative externalities were limited to relatively local scope and durations, and its essential beneficial features could be extracted and applied in modified forms outside of those scopes. But it still sucked mightily for those within its blast radius. I really wish there was structured, systematic study of human power structures in relation to the various common personality types engaged at different focal points of those structures I could investigate, as I feel quite naive and ignorant of them.

jlokier 5y ago
That's an interesting observation about bounded externalities and wider positive effects. I hope someone studies the dynamics and effects of power through the lens you described. It might show up in biological systems as well, as so many of these depend on resource competition and signalling in an ever changing, open evolution environment.
- yourapostasy 5y ago
  > That's an interesting observation about bounded externalities and wider positive effects. To a first-order approximation my mental model I'm trying to look for extant literature upon: model the signalling as a message-passing system whose agents exhibit observational reflexivity while they pass the payload. Agents are simultaneously bounded by their individual observational capacity's volume (how much granularity, how fast, how broadly of topics, how far-ranging of inter-relationships they can comprehend). If the hypothesis withstands systematic back-testing scrutiny against historical data, then the next step is to assess its predictive modeling power. Degrees of validation would help me resolve some confounding observations of my own that different organizing principles of various systems ("capitalism", "socialism", "communism", "anarcho-", "merchantilism", etc.) in different contexts (economic, biologic, social, etc.) appear to repeat certain patterns. As if the levers of control change an interface like a protein surface on a cell/bacterium/virus/DNA-strand/RNA-strand changes, but there is a certain "core API" functionality that is found over and over, like a "portable DSL" that is re-evolved in many contexts due to emergent properties of power structures in resource-constrained settings. I wish I had Dyson Swarm-scale computronium and stor-tronium to help us process and synthesize all of history's known works to find out who else has gone down this rabbit hole, though. There is hardly any original thought when college-dorm-style chatting ideas like this, mostly new ideas only show up in engineering new capabilities and pursuing scientific discovery of new principles; our ancestors were smart cookies. The Vatican has vast stores of works yet to comprehend, for just one data source out of many (every nation's archives, every private archive, etc.). Curse our limited lifespans, and simultaneously marvel at our verse's breathtaking beauty, right?

MispelledToyota 5y ago

I think it's questionable whether top-down interventions could ever control the negative externalities associated with greed. The upside of character is it is a bottom-up limitation on creating negative externalities, placed on those who are best placed and informed to avoid creating them. Admittedly, this only goes so far. Another issue is that people are so often greedy for status. Being zero-sum, it is inherently a negative externality when one achieves a status increase.