Ah! So you don’t mean uncivilized, savage greed, red in tooth and claw, but a genteel, smartly-dressed greed. If you can drain other people’s money into your pockets* but* keep a sharp eye for legalistic niceties…well, then, deadly sin number three becomes a positive and benign motivation, so long as its practiced by the right sort of people.
No I’ mean the same greed hippies enjoy when they figure out money doesn’t grow (legally) out of the ground and has to be earned.
Oooh, snap! Next time you need a nice tie-dyed shirt, go get it from a banker!
No, I’ll get it from a hippie who got a loan from the banker.
Hell, we didn’t want their money! We wanted their daughters!
Hate to break to you sparky but the internet was established first for the military then as a tool of research and collaboration between universities.
So guess science > greed.
Hate to break it to you less-than-sparky but Bill Gates and his fellow industrialists brought it to your door along such things as laser read disks. If it was up to the military, you wouldn’t be using it.
Big Al Gore :sigh: *
The US military was a part of it, but the development of commercial networks in England and the scientific networks of France were also the foundation of the internet, saying that it was Bill Gates and his fellow industrialists is missing a lot.
All should check this good and short History of the Internet in animation form to learn the basic history:
- (BTW, Gore was indeed involved in the funding of the development of the graphical interface for the internet as we know it and the National research and education network, one of the first providers and an important piece of the current internet)
Indeed, it was Al that basically opened it up for commercial use. Which was what you see here. I had some access back in the early days of bang paths, before that, but it wasn’t the same. (better, in some ways… but hey.)
Bill had nothin to do with it.
That’s the summary version hitting the highlights. It is simply obscene what Paulsen and dare I say Geitherner are letting the banks get away with. Paul Krugman has a pretty good oped piece in the NY times about this too.
Obama is getting snowed by the Wall Street money machine, and it’s pretty sickening to watch.
What I said in post 16 was this:
**Greed is neither good nor bad. It is however, a driving force behind achievement. Without greed, you would not be sharing your thoughts around the world on an easily affordable communication device. **
I didn’t say internet, I said communication device. The computer you are using today along with the system it’s used on is directly dependant on industrialists such as Bill Gates. He didn’t invent the computer, the internet, or the software that runs it but he is absolutely responsible for what you are using today. Before these early pioneers, computers were stand-alone devices that didn’t interface with anything. Early software required that all drivers be written within each application so if your word processor didn’t have the driver for the printer you wanted you were screwed.
The open architechture model allowed everything from scanners to joysticks to work together under agreed-upon industry standards. This was the revolution brought to us by the likes of Bill Gates. It wasn’t some socialist schmuck in the Soviet Union who got bumped up on the list to buy a Trabant as a reward.
from Dictionary.com
A desire to make money or gain power is not greed. Greed is making money or gaining power at the expense of others.
If you start a company with the intent of making money, that’s not greed.
If your desire to make more and more money leads you to cut pay, cut benefits, skimp on maintenance , disable safety features to speed up productivity, that’s greed.
Greed is a bad thing.
JPMorgan Chase To Spend Millions on New Jets and Luxury Airport Hangar - ABC News Yep we need guys like this. Who else is entitled to spending and using the peoples money . It belongs to them now. We should have no oversight . These are the best of the best. They are the engine that makes the economy go.
Bill Gates in favor of “open architecture”? BWA HA HA HA!
Once IBM started down the road of a published open architecture. Bill Gates could not monopolize his wish to keep things proprietary. Only later was Microsoft forced to accept some openness.
Really, greed was good for some things, but the internet and good chunk of the software software used today (Linux) was influenced by the progress made from “socialistic” nations like France.
Self-interest is excellent. Selfishness is not. Desire is excellent. Greed is not. What may be considered selfish or greedy may be quite contextual, but nevertheless, this is how it goes. Greed is not good.
You posted the definition of greed and then went on to reinvent it. Adding criminal activity such as safety issues may be an end result of greed but it is not the definition of it. **Greed is excessive or rapacious desire, esp. for wealth or possessions. **
Whether you like it or not, people are greedy. The wealth we accumulate far exceeds our needs and by not donating it to the poor it is then at the expense of others. The justification is that we “earned it”. It is a natural state of humanity and every attempt at modeling society without acknowledging this fact has failed. Some people like big screen TV’s, some people like me prefer to spend half the money and have a small TV in every room. Both are excesses. Hell, there are 65 inch TV’s on the market that could probably double as a tanning bed.
Greed, in the purest sense of the word, is a good thing. The desire to accumulate wealth leads to great leaps in technology and social wealth. To say that bad things can also be done under the guise of greed is true but it is not a specific function of it.
I agree with the second sentence. The first is morally bankrupt, pretty much by definition. Suggesting that greed is good is reworking the definition. There is no question that desire has driven societies to great things. There is no question in my mind that societies which have attempted to disagree with this have created quite a few problems. Still, greed is a bad thing. I am not suggesting people stop being wealthy or that they must donate all money above X to the poor. Wealthy people are not necessarily greedy and the desire to accumulate wealth need not imply greed. Black and white equivocations do not help the discussion.
That AIG greedhead who ran the London office : I have heard that he accounted for $599 BILLIONs in losses. He got a $534 million seerance, plus a $1 million/month “consulting” contract. This guy is being paid money to shut up-anybdoy know more about this?
I understand where you’re trying to go with this but greed as you’re using the word is in the eye of the beholder. I’m trying to point out that we are all greedy by definition and that this root human condition is normal, healthy and productive.
To say that AIG executives do not deserve the bonus’s they got for meeting specific goals (in this case generating over a trillion dollars) because of past corporate sins is a dangerous road to walk down. The current talk is to limit pay for ALL bank executives, regardless of financial condition. That is not the function of government.
The person you’re referring too is Joseph Cassano and he is responsible for the lions share of the mess. He got $349 million and the consulting contract was terminated in Sept of 2008 after Congressional inquiries (hey they did something right).
I would add that he is under investigation.