truth
Diane, it is my feeling (no more than that) that Buffet does what he does because it is for him a very meaningful and self-defining game. I suspect that when he dies he will leave billions to charities. I don't see him as greedy in the sense that he is willing to injure others for the sake of wealth. Skillful investment is his pleasure, an end in itself rather than a means to obtaining spending power.
JLN, thanks--that is what I was thinking, but wasn't able to put my thoughts into words as well as you. It's so handy being surrounded by brainy people!
I don't know if we should use the one definition of greed. I think we should separate the definition into the three parts. I think a lot of the problem here is that people define anyone who fits into any of those parts as greedy, and treats all "greedy" people as though they fit into all three. So you have people assuming that, for instance, Warren Buffet must be torturing small children in a third-world country because it is just not possible to make that much money honorably. So I propose that when you speak of greed you spell out the whole definition instead - either you are talking about the accumulation of wealth (we can gloss everything good and obtainable as "wealth" here), the injury of others for the purpose of obtaining wealth (or, as JL pointed out, the willingness to do so), or the accumulation of more wealth than is necessary. I personally have always defined greed as the first, for simplicity's sake.
Now I have a question for JL - what is the problem with obtaining wealth for the purpose of spending it? I really don't see the point in making money for the sake of making money. For instance, I make money for the sake of paying my rent and having a reasonably confortable place to live. If I earned money for the purpose of spending it on a much more comfortable place to live, I wouldn't consider it any different. A want is no different than a need - it's just a psychological need, not a physical need. In other words, we need it to be happy, not to continue living. People need to be happy so tha they can still function in society. Without happiness, we would all be alive, but we would all go berserk and wind up in mental institutions. Money doesn't satisfy needs at all. It has no value, except what it can buy. If you had all the money in the world, and there was no food to buy it with, you would starve.
rufio, You do know how to ask questions that has no easy answers. Three parts of greed? We are all capable of looking up the definition of "greed" all by ourselves, but no dictionary nor encyclopedia can detail all the different forms of greed. It's almost impossible to determine "injury to others" in every instance of greed. Different folks have different strokes, and never the twain shall meet.
truth
Rufio, I think of definitions as neither right nor wrong. They are just our constructions, our ideas about aspects of our experience. In other words they are not pictures of the world, they are pictures of our minds. You define greed such that most expressions of it are o.k.. I define greed such that most expressions of it are unethical and destructive--these are entailed in my definition. This does not mean that one of us is right and one is wrong; it's a questions, however, of the relative usefulness of our definitions. I can't comment much on that.
By the way, I'm sorry for throwing you off. I never intended to communicate that gaining money for the purpose of spending it is bad. To me it's the only rational reason for working for money. I was saying that Buffet earns money for its own sake. That reason is neither rational nor irrational; it is arational. That's o.k., too.
I guess I should expand on my last point. To me rationality has, pragmatically speaking, to do with a means-end relationship. If certain means effectively achieve certain ends, they are "rational." If they do not, they are "irrational." Buffet's earnng behavior exists for its own sake. It is not a means to an end. It is an end in itself, and therefore Arational.
CI, are you saying that just because we assign our words differently, we can't communicate? That's a load of crap. If we just say exactly what we mean, we can communicate just fine.
I agree, JL, there's not a "right" way to define greed. "Right" does not figure into it. It's just not a good idea to use words like "greed" for which we don't agree on the meaning, to discuss things like this. And yeah, I'm sure we've all got different definitions of "harm" too, but sometimes it's not really necessary to go that deep, haha. I would say that "greed" is quite a bit more versatile than "harm".
Also, I didn't mean to interpret what you said - it just seemed like you were saying that the only reason he wasn't a bad guy was that he made money for the sake of making money. I personally don't think he does - he probably makes it for the game of playing the stock market. Some people find that fun, I guess.
By the way, you're means/end stuff that you're saying here is exactly what I'm talking about with actions/objectives on the other thread. Everything's got an end. It's just not always intuitively obvious, or materially beneficial.
rugio, You're getting carried away: your quote, "CI, are you saying that just because we assign our words differently, we can't communicate?" Where did I say that? You see, you're misreading what I'm writing in these posts.
"Different folks have different strokes, and never the twain shall meet."
