Desire is not love but rather is only a sign of love. As Plato would put it, it points to a lack, a poverty of spirit, and it is not the thing itself. Those that base their lives on greed are like children who become so fascinated with the sign into Disneyland that they miss the park. Worse, they become ill tempered when the sign disappoints them. A sign promises great things, but is not the great thing. Desire offers hope for happiness, but is not happiness.

The greedy man mistakes the sign for the thing promised and is bitter when the promise goes unfulfilled.

Because his desire is unfulfilled, the greedy man always wants more. He keeps “score” with his money. More possessions are a sign of “victory.” At first, he scarcely notices that he is keeping score for a meaningless game and that his victory comes at a hideous cost. He will lash out when his god, some little idol of his ambition, fails.

The greedy man exploits the system to satisfy his desire.

Some people offer praise for “greed” because they confuse it with an ambition to create. However, the artist or the business leader who creates for love of her art or her profession is only superficially like the greedy person. She might achieve great wealth and social prominence, but unlike the greedy she will have harmed nobody in attaining it.

The person motivated by love will often do well, but because she loves what she does, she will never cast a shadow on it by associating it with cruelty or harm to others. Greedy people destroy the public reputation of their business by their misdeeds. If used car salespeople loved sales, cars, or people, then they would never destroy the public’s trust in sales, cars, or people.

Instead, greed causes them to infect their own systems with the destructive virus of greed. Soon their abuse of others leads to calls for laws, regulations, and a loss of liberty as the rest of humankind tries to protect their lives from the greedy. Greed is the systematic enemy of anyone who loves free markets.

Free markets are best, because they are free, but they can only be good when men and women use their freedom to do well by doing good. As the Founders would have put it, for people to continue to be free they must themselves be virtuous.

This is why advocates of free markets (and I certainly am one) who oppose public regulation must not tolerate private abuses of that same market. It is the conservative who prizes economic liberty who must pray and work for the private redemption of the Scrooge in our midst. We must apply private social pressure to encourage his reclamation. Too many Scrooges, too much greed, will bring the danger of the revolutionary reaction that produces monsters such as Lenin or Stalin. Of course, traditional Christians are not Utopians. We know perfection is not going to happen anytime soon. The greedy will always be amongst us, because greed resides in our hearts as well! We cautiously build systems that check the power of the greedy, always eager for power, with multiple social structures. If one system falls into greedy hands, then we pray another will rebuke it with prophetic urgency.

In Sacred Scriptures, a frequent part of the prophet’s call was to rebuke the greedy. This rebuke was to the rich and the poor. It plays no favorites, because the destructive error of greed knows no class distinctions. The poor man who wastes his family's wealth on lottery tickets out of greed for gain is no better personally and does as much harm to his soul as the rich woman who lies in order to “sell more product.” Since the societal harm is greater from the rich and the powerful, and the temptation to follow their example is likewise greater, the Christian will often emphasize the misdeeds of the great . . . but the problem is not the greatness, it is the greed.

Greed is not good. Whatever good it does, it does accidentally as it seeks its own selfish desires. Whatever it builds, it would willingly destroy in order to satisfy those desires . . . unfortunately the satisfaction, like the fabled money from the Nigerian lottery, never comes.