Is greed good?
Yes
Side Score: 8
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No
Side Score: 10
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3
points
Surely any 'non-evil want for more' doesn't constitute greed. Greed does not recognize satisfaction, it is "an excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves". This 'excessive' character cannot reasonably be deemed 'non-evil'. When one has had what one needs, deserves, or requires, greed or satisfaction follow. Any genuinely 'non-evil' want for more would surely have to correlate with not yet having achieved what one needs, deserves, or requires. Side: No
1
point
2
points
The wealthiest are indeed becoming wealthier, but society in general only becomes wealthier as a function of averages. Mean and median averages will show increases with the progress of the wealthiest whilst potentially hiding a complete lack of change, and even reduction, in the mainstream income. Side: No
1
point
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3
points
2
points
Greed is not a good thing, all it does is prop up the ego which always has detrimental ramification's, our modern supposedly civilised world runs on greed in the form of the monetary system, and our consumer capitalist culture which produces the kind of materialism and waste that is systematically destroying the planet. Human greed is the origin of this behaviour, and greed is a manifestation of the ego. "The outsider cannot just barge in like Santa Claus and put things to right—especially our kind of outsider who, because he has no sense of belonging in the world, invariably smells like an interferer. He does not really know what he wants, and therefore everyone suspects that there are limitless strings attached to his gifts. For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment. I am not saying that American and European corporations are run by greedy villains who live off the fat of the land at everyone else's expense. The point becomes clear only as one realizes, with compassion and sorrow, that many of our most powerful and wealthy men are miserable dupes and captives in a treadmill, who—with the rarest exceptions—have not the ghost of a notion how to spend and enjoy money." "The Taoist philosopher Chuang-tzu described such efforts to be egoless as "beating a drum in search of a fugitive," or, as we would put it, driving to a police raid with sirens on. Or, as the Hindus say, it is like trying not to think of a monkey while taking medicine, on the basis of the popular superstition that thinking of a monkey will make the medicine ineffective. All that such efforts can teach us is that they do not work, for the more we try to behave without greed or fear, the more we realize that we are doing this for greedy or fearful reasons" Alan Watts, the taboo against knowing who you are Side: No
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