Gordon Gecko, the movie foreshadowing of Mitt Romney, once captivated an audience with the simple statement, “Greed is good.” The premise was that being greedy clarified what you needed to do and as long as everyone was greedy at the same time, something better would be achieved. In the end, of course, Gecko is exposed for cheating to get to his greedy goals, and sent to prison for it.
In the modern parlance, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who made a fortune buying out corporations and then selling off their parts, defines what he did as “capitalism”, much as Tony Soprano and Michael Corleone define what they are doing as “business.” And yet, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, the Varian brothers, Steve Jobs, and a host of other innovators made the world better while making fortunes. None of these guys was Gandhi or Mother Teresa in the slightest way, and yet nobody saw their desire to make money, their greed, as cheating or bad.
(At this point I will digress to tip my hat to anyone who ever worked directly for Steve Jobs. Several friends of mine have and while they are quick to acknowledge his genius at understanding what consumers would buy, not a one of them considered interaction with him a pleasant experience. And I don’t think any of the kids in those factories making iPODs would think he is a nice guy. Yet, the world thinks of him as a great contributor. Arrogant? Yes. Genius? Probably. Nice guy? Nope. Contributor to society? Definitely. Greedy? Yup.)
I guess my point is that greed on its own is a very broad term. The desire to make a lot of money and to have a lot of stuff is not necessarily evil, as shown by contributors to society that made lots of money for their contributions. The Wright Brothers, Glen Curtis, Henry Ford, Thomas Watson, Hewlett and Packard, all got into their business to make money. All made contributions that made the world better while making tons of money. Some of these folks were anything but saints. By the same token, making lots of money doesn’t mean that you contributed to society. One can make a lot of money as an assassin. Making tons of money only means that you were able to produce something that folks are willing to pay for. That might be a life saving medicine or it might be heroin.
All over Silicon Valley, and all over the world, people start businesses. Most care about how they make money, but they are all doing it to make money. It’s fundamental. People want to be rewarded for doing something right. You make take the Zen/Gandhi/Christ like view that you shouldn’t need any outward reward, but folks have to eat, pay the rent/mortgage, send their kids to school, etc. and so people want to be rewarded. Communism is based on the wonderfully idealistic view that people will work to their maximum for the group despite the fact that the person next to them is working only half as hard. It is a wonderful notion, but it doesn’t line up with any real people I have ever met. I couldn’t and wouldn’t sustain maximum effort for someone who was slacking off. I’m not sure why anyone else would. So, if you want folks to do great things, generally there is at least the possibility of some great reward, be that money, fame, love, respect, whatever.
In one of the times when folks took Charlie Sheen seriously, he screams at Gordon Gecko, “How many yachts can you ski behind?” How much is enough? How much is too much? The question as to whether greed is good or bad maybe should be rephrased as, “How much greed is good?” and “What kind of greed is good?”
Shouldn’t it matter how we make money, rather than just how much we made? If we pull a good profit by doing something that makes the world better, maybe our greed is good. If the money becomes the only metric against we are measured, then we are no better than Tony Soprano or Michael Corleone doing “business” and what we call “capitalism” is simply making money with no regard for anything or anyone else.