The Specter Of Greed

There is a specter haunting America. Like many apparitions, it is also sometimes an object of religious devotion.

It is the specter of greed.

This specter is said by some to be in our own self interest. The reason why we are in the best of all possible worlds. It is why, we are told, we must exalt the "makers" (and facilitate their greed) and demean the "takers."

More than a century ago, the wealthy justified their greed by the authority of Darwinian evolution - the survival of the fittest. Now it is often justified by the revelations of Ayn Rand and her acolytes. But always there is a genuflection in the direction of Adam Smith and the "invisible hand," where "self interest" results in the greatest good for the greatest number.

What could be better than that?

But that isn't what Smith means, at all. What he really means is that the bargains that put dinner on the table, clothes on our backs and roofs over our heads, must be in the interest of everyone involved. Not a one-way bargain, "red in tooth and claw," but mutual bargains. Smith explains: “Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer, and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of” (WN I.ii.2: p 26)

Gavin Kennedy provides a fuller explanation here.

Bottom line: cooperation works better than compulsion.