On Multiple Functions of Greed

Greed has gotten a lot of play recently : The greed of “Wall Street”; the rapidly deflating value of greedy “Main Street’s” McMansions with our fuel guzzling SUVs. And greed's virtuous antagonist is the imperative of change: from global warming; to presidential politics; to consumer spending ; and to banks’ unwillingness to extend credit- even after injections of lifesaving government capital. This awareness of greed, suddenly everywhere, functions to warn of complacency. It highlights greed so that we can make sense of our world. It orients us to the problem of insatiable consumption--- long recognized as an aspect of American national character from Tocqueville through Fromm. Let’s call this functional awareness Greed 1.0.

Opposing Greed 1.0 is Change 1.0. Like its antagonist, Change 1.0 is about functional awareness. It is a fundamental imperative for survival of our planet and its complex ecological, social, political, and economic systems. It is no joke--- as Thomas Friedman forcefully argues in his Hot, Flat , and Crowded. And now somewhat aware, what are we supposed to do? Bearing this tension itself is painfully difficult for most of us. It makes us anxious, uncertain, and hyper-vigilant: how are we to fix it?

Greed 1.1 is our knight in shining armor. Like General Alexander Haig’s inaccurate but heartfelt declaration of command when President Reagan was shot, Greed 1.1 comes to the rescue when awareness makes us anxious.

Its function is to help us pretend that in having become somewhat “aware”, our awareness equates with “knowing”. Greed 1.1 is a know-it-all, falsely self-assuring that bullet pointed imperatives and short-term change initiatives will do the trick so that we can get back to business as usual. Greed 1.1 facilitates self-deception. Its programmatic correlate is “no child left behind” which replaced learning with test taking. Greed 1.1 is insatiable, impatient, and dismissive. It is our Oz declaiming to Dorothy, “pay no attention to that man behind the screen”.

We recently saw Greed 1.1 on the big screen of economic life, when AIG used bailout funds in a characteristically extravagant manner. From a PR perspective, AIG’s timing could not have been more self destructive. The corporate retreat (itself a good idea for a company in such disarray) followed a tense week-long period of global breath-holding as Paulson’s put was debated in Congress and markets swooned. But Greed 1.1 was incensed: it had found its patsy.

Vilifying AIG for its use of federal funds only appears to solve a problem. We can pretend that we’re in control. That we know. But we’ve only substituted impatient dismissal for the greedy acquisition Greed 1.1 pretends to oppose.

And Greed 1.1? That’s just the beginning. If we are to change, and change we must---- we are up against forces potentially much tougher than the externals we think we know. We’re up against our weakest links, ourselves.