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The Gifts and Costs of Greed
Greed is famously thought by some people to be good. In his essay ‘The Virtue of Greed', Walter Williams, an economics professor at George Mason University, maintained that without greed, our current economic and social structures would simply collapse. Many economists agree with him.
We are all free market economists now. They think we are more likely to be motivated psychologically by greed than anything else- indeed, they say it is the only consistent human motivation. Sadly, that may well be true. And that is the justification for regulating markets, for imposing, in the interests of a wider collective interest and benefit, limits on how far greed is allowed to motivate us, and how far its clutches can go.
If greed is good for the economy - and right now it appears that it has done us harm rather than good, with soaring oil prices and too many people playing markets in such a way that others are harmed, as in the sub-prime market, and in house repossessions- it may be bad for human beings. Greed makes us all consumers, all searching for the next thing, the next experience, the next possession. But, as Richard Layard and others have pointed out so forcefully, this consumerism, this restless seeking after yet more possessions, does not make us happy. Richer we maybe, but happier we are not.
So the conclusion has to be that greed may well fire economies, but old wisdom, in all our faiths, about giving 10 percent of what we have away, about social justice evening up between the haves and the have-nots, has real relevance today. It cannot be right that disparities between rich and poor are growing. If that's the effect of greed, whatever is does for the economy, it is appalling in its impact on humanity- and we should temper its effects still more, and realize that it may be the consistent motivation, but that does not make it right.
By
Julia Neuberger
|
May 30, 2008; 12:33 PM ET
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Posted by: Anonymous | June 3, 2008 5:37 AM
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The Emptiness of Theology
by Richard Dawkins
A dismally unctuous editorial in the British newspaper The Independent recently asked for a reconciliation between science and "theology." It remarked that "People want to know as much as possible about about their origins." I certainly hope they do, but what on earth makes one think that theology has anything useful to say on the subject?
Science is responsible for the following knowledge about our origins. We know approximately when the universe began and why it is largely hydrogen. We know why stars form and what happens in their interiors to convert hydrogen to the other elements and hence give birth to chemistry in a world of physics. We know the fundamental principles of how a world of chemistry can become biology through the arising of self replicating molecules. We know how the principal of self replication gives rise, through Darwinian selection, to all life, including humans.
It is science and science alone that has given us this knowledge and given it, moreover, in fascinating, over-whelming, mutually confirming detail. On every one of these questions theology has held a view that has conclusively been proved wrong.
Science has eradicated smallpox, can immunize against most previously deadly viruses, can kill most previously deadly bacteria.
Theology has done nothing but talk of pestilence as the wages of sin. Science can predict when a particular comet will reappear and, to the second, when the next eclipse will appear. Science has put men on the moon and hurtled reconnaissance rockets around Saturn and Jupiter. Science can tell you the age of a particular fossil and that the Turin Shroud is a medieval fake. Science knows the precise DNA instructions of several viruses and will, in the lifetime of many present readers, do the same for the human genome.
What has theology ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has theology ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? I have listened to theologians, read them, debated against them; I have never heard any of them say anything of the smallest use; anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false. If all the achievements of scientists were wiped out tomorrow, there would be no doctors but witch doctors, no transport faster than horses, no computers, no printed books, no agriculture beyond subsistence peasant farming. If all the achievements of theologians were wiped out tomorrow, would anyone notice the smallest difference? The achievements of theologians don't do anything, don't effect anything, don't mean anything. What makes anyone think that "theology" is a subject at all?
"The Emptiness of Theology" by Richard Dawkins published in "Free Inquiry" Spring 1998.
Posted by: Anonymous | June 3, 2008 1:45 AM
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NOTICE TO SUE "INTERFAiTH YOUTH CORE", onfaith-W.A.P.O., Harper-Collins, Ny-Post, Post Global...Et al!
Posted by: Hello Ruport Murdoc, et al: | June 1, 2008 3:08 PM
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Julia you are letting numbers get in the way of reality. The rich will always get richer except when we are all standing in bread lines.
Posted by: Garyd | May 31, 2008 1:07 PM
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Journalists Richard Behar of Time Magazine and John Sweeney of Panorama BBC UK wrote about greed in a "religious" context. Your reflection from a religious standpoint is important.