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The problem is defining “greed”. It feels like when I want more stuff per unit time/effort, I’m just “trying to support my family and build a better life for m

The problem is defining “greed”. It feels like when I want more stuff per unit time/effort, I’m just “trying to support my family and build a better life for my children”. But when other people do the same, it’s “greedy”. Is there any definition of “greedy” we could use for the purposes of this discussion that would apply yo all humans equally?

fogihujy 5y ago
Yeah, especially when there's occasional extremists that refuse to acknowledge that putting one's own first isn't the natural state of things. I guess the way forward is to build a sustainable future for everyone and their families. And to get everyone to agree it's the best way to go about things.
- ddalex 5y ago
  > putting one's own first isn't the natural state of things I am very confused about this statement, can you please explain what is the "natural state of things" ?
  - fogihujy 5y ago
    Let's imagine a hypothetical crisis, say a building on fire. You can save your own child/spouse/relative or you can save a complete stranger. You will succeed in saving any of them, but not both. Most people will chose child/spouse/relative without thinking twice and doing so is quite natural. Not everyone agree on that though, and would argue that the potential benefit the stranger could be to society should be taken into the equation. Luckily, reality isn't that black and white in most cases, but most people will prioritize their in-group. That's just the way people work.
    - mellavora 5y ago
      Clearly, people will prefer their own in-group. I think, however, you just made the parent poster's point. People will often prefer their own in-group to themselves. Thus, it depends on how one defines the in-group, and one's own interests. Looking at Coldtea's earlier comment: >It's either pushed to us by greed, or given to us as a substitute for things we'd rather have (no friends, but here are games you can buy), (no work-life balance, but here's Netflix you can watch when you're home exhaused from work), (no community, but here's social media, go argue with strangers), etc. showing how the 'in-group' has shrunk. Used to be a larger tribe, now you could be lucky to consider it an atomic family.
      - fogihujy 5y ago
        Definitely. I was agreeing with the parent post, while adding a semi-sarcastic reply about everyone having to agree before things start moving. Community-building might be a possible solution, but how do you pull people away from their screens and get them out on the streets to make new connections and then turn that into a positive force that actually makes a different?
geoffbrown2014 5y ago
Rent seeking and corruption are two definitions that spring to mind.
- simonh 5y ago
  I think those are good ones because they're definable in ways that we can probably come to a consensus on. The problem is the term greed is often used in a pejorative way as a proxy for success. If you work hard and achieve a lot and that comes with financial rewards, you are greedy by definition. Add in some snark about how the work hard part doesn't count somehow, and that's the modern critique of capitalism. Oh, and rent seeking and corruption are because capitalism too and not at all human flaws seen to an even greater degree in every other economic system ever devised.
  - harimau777 5y ago
    I think that the issue is when the financial rewards are dramatically greater than how much harder someone could conceivably be working. A billionaire could conceivably work much harder than the median person. However, they don't work 8000 times harder ($1 billion divided by the median net worth in America of $122k).
    - AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
      They may not work 8000 times harder, but they may bring to the table a skill which is 8000 times more valuable than a shelf stocker at Walmart.
      - harimau777 5y ago
        That's certainly possible, but the argument that usually gets made is that they worked harder and therefore earned being a billionaire. That being said, I think it's also unlikely that they brought a skill to the table that's 8000 times more valuable. My understanding is that people who become billionaires do so by leveraging capital.
    - 5y ago
PicassoCTs 5y ago
Greed is to defect in game theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma Its somebody who instills distrust in society by taking advantage of it.
harimau777 5y ago
One approach might be to compare how much wealth someone is attempting to attain with how much they could conceivably be outperforming the average person. For example, if we make a back of the envelope estimate that an elite person has skills that are 10 times those of an average person (10 times smarter, stronger, more charismatic, better educated, etc.) and works 3 times longer then they could conceivably be 30 times more productive. If, to be conservative, we doubled that, then we could define greed as attempting to amass more than 60 times more wealth than the average person.
- jonfw 5y ago
  What if our elite 30x productivity person takes a significant risk? If he flips a coin and wins he should rightfully expect 60x And you can be much more than 10x more productive than your average person without being 10x smarter. You can just have skills or have an idea that allows you to scale your contributions much more than an average person. For instance, if we can teach cars to drive themselves, we have the capacity to save hundreds of millions, if not billions, of man hours a day. The people who made significant contributions to that effort will have contributed thousands of times more to society than an average person. If a surgeon saves 50 lives a year, I'd say that's a lot more than 10x what I'm doing.
  - harimau777 5y ago
    I agree, it's perfectly reasonable for someone who takes a risk to receive more than I do. I could even see them receiving hundreds of times more than I do. That's a lot different than them receiving 8000 times more ($1 billion divided by the median net worth in America of $122 thousand).
agumonkey 5y ago
I have a trick to define greed: pauses. A bad greed impulse based system won't survive a stop, it's a hog, a leak .. it needs to keep going to survive.
swman 5y ago
I think there are many examples, from French Revolution to day to day examples of people throwing others under the bus for a promotion.

fogihujy 5y ago

Yeah, especially when there's occasional extremists that refuse to acknowledge that putting one's own first isn't the natural state of things. I guess the way forward is to build a sustainable future for everyone and their families. And to get everyone to agree it's the best way to go about things.

ddalex 5y ago
> putting one's own first isn't the natural state of things I am very confused about this statement, can you please explain what is the "natural state of things" ?
- fogihujy 5y ago
  Let's imagine a hypothetical crisis, say a building on fire. You can save your own child/spouse/relative or you can save a complete stranger. You will succeed in saving any of them, but not both. Most people will chose child/spouse/relative without thinking twice and doing so is quite natural. Not everyone agree on that though, and would argue that the potential benefit the stranger could be to society should be taken into the equation. Luckily, reality isn't that black and white in most cases, but most people will prioritize their in-group. That's just the way people work.
  - mellavora 5y ago
    Clearly, people will prefer their own in-group. I think, however, you just made the parent poster's point. People will often prefer their own in-group to themselves. Thus, it depends on how one defines the in-group, and one's own interests. Looking at Coldtea's earlier comment: >It's either pushed to us by greed, or given to us as a substitute for things we'd rather have (no friends, but here are games you can buy), (no work-life balance, but here's Netflix you can watch when you're home exhaused from work), (no community, but here's social media, go argue with strangers), etc. showing how the 'in-group' has shrunk. Used to be a larger tribe, now you could be lucky to consider it an atomic family.
    - fogihujy 5y ago
      Definitely. I was agreeing with the parent post, while adding a semi-sarcastic reply about everyone having to agree before things start moving. Community-building might be a possible solution, but how do you pull people away from their screens and get them out on the streets to make new connections and then turn that into a positive force that actually makes a different?

geoffbrown2014 5y ago

Rent seeking and corruption are two definitions that spring to mind.

simonh 5y ago
I think those are good ones because they're definable in ways that we can probably come to a consensus on. The problem is the term greed is often used in a pejorative way as a proxy for success. If you work hard and achieve a lot and that comes with financial rewards, you are greedy by definition. Add in some snark about how the work hard part doesn't count somehow, and that's the modern critique of capitalism. Oh, and rent seeking and corruption are because capitalism too and not at all human flaws seen to an even greater degree in every other economic system ever devised.
- harimau777 5y ago
  I think that the issue is when the financial rewards are dramatically greater than how much harder someone could conceivably be working. A billionaire could conceivably work much harder than the median person. However, they don't work 8000 times harder ($1 billion divided by the median net worth in America of $122k).
  - AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
    They may not work 8000 times harder, but they may bring to the table a skill which is 8000 times more valuable than a shelf stocker at Walmart.
    - harimau777 5y ago
      That's certainly possible, but the argument that usually gets made is that they worked harder and therefore earned being a billionaire. That being said, I think it's also unlikely that they brought a skill to the table that's 8000 times more valuable. My understanding is that people who become billionaires do so by leveraging capital.
  - 5y ago

PicassoCTs 5y ago

Greed is to defect in game theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma Its somebody who instills distrust in society by taking advantage of it.

harimau777 5y ago

One approach might be to compare how much wealth someone is attempting to attain with how much they could conceivably be outperforming the average person. For example, if we make a back of the envelope estimate that an elite person has skills that are 10 times those of an average person (10 times smarter, stronger, more charismatic, better educated, etc.) and works 3 times longer then they could conceivably be 30 times more productive. If, to be conservative, we doubled that, then we could define greed as attempting to amass more than 60 times more wealth than the average person.

jonfw 5y ago
What if our elite 30x productivity person takes a significant risk? If he flips a coin and wins he should rightfully expect 60x And you can be much more than 10x more productive than your average person without being 10x smarter. You can just have skills or have an idea that allows you to scale your contributions much more than an average person. For instance, if we can teach cars to drive themselves, we have the capacity to save hundreds of millions, if not billions, of man hours a day. The people who made significant contributions to that effort will have contributed thousands of times more to society than an average person. If a surgeon saves 50 lives a year, I'd say that's a lot more than 10x what I'm doing.
- harimau777 5y ago
  I agree, it's perfectly reasonable for someone who takes a risk to receive more than I do. I could even see them receiving hundreds of times more than I do. That's a lot different than them receiving 8000 times more ($1 billion divided by the median net worth in America of $122 thousand).

agumonkey 5y ago

I have a trick to define greed: pauses. A bad greed impulse based system won't survive a stop, it's a hog, a leak .. it needs to keep going to survive.

swman 5y ago

I think there are many examples, from French Revolution to day to day examples of people throwing others under the bus for a promotion.