Greed

I had the pleasure of attending a guest lecture yesterday at Waterloo, titled "The Curse and Potential of Greed: Social and Political Issues Arising from Acquisitiveness".

Talked about the evils of greed, which we're all acutely aware in society, as in capitalist corporations and their shameless exploits of their employees and smaller companies (which they bleed dry), all protected by this system of legality which they created for themselves. Or in modern post-secondary institutions, as we can all relate to with the ridiculous rise in tuition.

But then, the orator gave an interesting spin on it, and offered some positive results of greed: those who have more have the potential to do more; philanthropy is only meaningful because those few people with a lot of wealth are able to contribute a lot and make something happen. (As opposed to the meager offerings of "normal" people, and their unco-ordinated efforts, which ultimately result in little being done.

He quoted several figures from history, most of whom were religious. One very interesting quote which I liked was, "Virtue gave birth to Prosperity, but the daughter killed the mother".

The lecture was recorded, but I have no idea where and when it'll be released, so I'll need my trusty UW spies to keep me informed. :)
You can read more about the guy and the intro to the lecture here

A lot of the ideas weren't really new to me; I've actually found it surprising that he actually mentioned so many of those points that my friends had disagreed with me on (or simply not considered). The same statements or statistics that have been iterated time and time again. That North Americans spend 10 or 15 times more on our pets than we do on humanitarian aid, that we spend several billion dollars on movies and the cinema every year, when all that money could have saved the whole of Africa from poverty and starvation.

Oh, what decadent times we live in...