Help Me Understand.....Greed (Gekko's Lament)

Help Me Understand Greed.....


Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglass), the lead character in the 1987 movie Wall Street, put into words the spirit of the free market when he said the following:

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Greed is right. Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Wow. That’s it. That is the basic tenet of our Free Market. The idea is that our freedom to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is in large part our desire to make a lot of money and live a life filled with the benefits of our prosperity. We eagerly export our free market thinking to other countries because we have confused true freedom with the freedom that comes with a “free market.”

While it is true that our Country gives us the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that right must necessarily be constrained by morality. The right to pursue our life, liberty and happiness without regard to the impact it has on others would simply mean that if you are interfering with my life, liberty or pursuit of happiness, I could just eliminate you.

When we set up our government, we set up a system of checks and balances. We have the President, the Congress, and the Judiciary. In theory, each of these institutions struggle with one another in an attempt to keep any one of them from becoming preeminent . A deeper examination of the system concludes that the framers believed that power left unchecked would influence and allow leaders to engage in behavior that suppressed the rights of the citizenry, because that is simply human nature.

The Free Market cannot be summed up any better than Mr. Gekko. Greed is right. Greed works. If you pursue wealth and happiness, you will come up with better products, better services, and better ideas. It will propel you to greater achievements......or.....it will propel you to come up with cheaper products that can sell quickly, dangerous products that you can sell and then avoid liability for by filing for bankruptcy or by incorporating in a foreign country, or any of a host of other ideas that you can envision that will cause great profits without regard to human impact.

You see, there is no corresponding “checks and balances” on the free market. Maybe you could say that each greedy corporation is checking and balancing the other greedy corporations. If that were the case, why wouldn’t all the greedy corporations band together to make money at the expense of the populace? Kinda like.....the gas companies? The US used to vigorously enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act, which was designed to prevent price fixing. The Act came as a result of super-wealthy individuals buying up entire markets and then unilaterally setting a price on a product which would ensure extremely healthy profits for the monopoly. We rarely prosecute under the Act anymore. I think it is because we now believe that Greed is good.

Any system whose prime motivator is greed must be regulated, because unbridled greed knows no moral constraint. Any government who promotes greed without moral restraint is just asking for trouble.

Decidedly Anti-Free Market,

Blawgerman