Avarice versus Greed
90Bosch's The Seven Deadly Sins
L'Avare --The Miser
Video Clip of L'Avare
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Avarice and greed are often used as interchangeable synonyms, with greed having the higher frequency of use and avarice appearing only rarely. However, if you look at the finer distinctions in their connotations and their etymology, you will find that they describe completely different mindsets.
Now, you won't find this distinction explained in most dictionaries, and you can forget about getting the Catholic Church to recognize the difference between the two. In fact, maybe I am the only one who makes this distinction. So bear with me while I explain.
To me, avarice is a word that means "miserliness". If you are avaricious, you behave a little like Harpagon in Moliere's L'Avare. You just can't bear to be parted from your money. Avaricious people refuse to consume, even when they could and possibly should. They are like anorexics who have a refrigerator full of food, but refuse to eat.
Greed, on the other hand, is a close sister to gluttony. People who are greedy try to get money because they are addicted to spending money. Sometimes they even try to get it unfairly.
By my defintion, avarice is a very strong desire to hold on to what is already yours, even to the point of living in a state resembling poverty when you have plenty of money saved away. Greed refers to the extremely strong desire to acquire more, even to the point of taking it unlawfully from others.
In the current financial crisis, those who have savings, if they insist on holding onto what they have and maintaining its value, might be labeled avaricious by those who oppose this policy. We have been encouraged to spend money for the sake of the economy. People who have money but don't spend it are setting themselves up for an accusation of avarice.
On the other side of the same coin, those who haven't got any money, because they spent it all, and are now asking for government sponsored handouts, are open to an accusation of greed.
Now I know that many people believe that moderation in all things is the best path. One should be neither an anorexic nor a glutton for optimal health. But if you had to choose, which is your vice? Avarice or Greed?
And here's an even more interesting question. Which is best for the country as a whole? Avarice or Greed? While you are pondering that, ask yourself this: which vice is best for Planet Earth? Avarice or Greed?
The Entire Text of the play by Moliere
Avarice -- a grievous but not a mortal sin
- CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Avarice
The inordinate love for riches
Where I got the definition of Avarice
Where, you may ask, did I come up with this completely idiosyncratic definition of avarice? Well, when I first started writing this hub, I thought my definition was the standard one. That's what I understood avarice to mean. The difference between avarice and greed was obvious to me. Then I started looking it up and found that none of the dictionaries supported my view of the matter. Finally, in despair I tried my old Petit Larousse. Here's what it said:
AVARICE [avaris] n.f. (lat. avaritia). Attachement excessif aux richesses.
"Excessive attachment to wealth." Not desire to get more wealth, but the unwillingness to part with what you've got. See, I didn't make that up. I just had the wrong language.
Anyway, I think avarice sounds so much better than miserliness. So bear with me. Etymologically, at least, I'm right.
Motivations for Avarice and Greed
People's choice of avarice or greed is never made in a vacuum. It may depend on the history of their lives or the society they live in. It may also depend on their most basic inclinations, talents and pleasures.
Some people enjoy productive work, not because they expect to be paid for it, but because they feel a compulsion to engage in it. They may be gardeners or painters or people who are very much into animal husbandry. They could be writers or pilots, singers, composers or craftsmen.They could be scientists or seamstresses. They could be auto mechanics or baseball players, horsemen or fishermen. Whatever their area of interest in life, what they chiefly need and want is time. Time to do their own thing. For these people, money equals time. The less they spend, the more time they can milk out of every dollar so that they won't be forced to do something they don't like to do.
Now occasionally one of these people actually gets a job where he or she is paid to do what they like. However, often conflicts with the employer crop up concerning how the work is to be done. Employers who try to motivate this type of employee only by means of a salary find that they don't get the results they want. Because of this, many employers prefer workers who are motivated primarily by greed.
To someone with a vocation, true pleasure comes from the work, and working for anything but pleasure is experienced as pain. Because of this, such people try to live frugally, and their vice of choice is avarice.
On the other hand, there are people who don't have a favorite line of work and for whom work is chiefly a way to get money. For them, the joy in money is the ability to spend it. No sooner is it spent than they need more money. It's a never ending cycle, and some people call it the business cycle.
For a very long time now, our economy has been fueled by greed, and avarice has been frowned upon.
If you haven't guessed till now, I'll confess: my vice of choice is avarice.
Coexistence and Cooperation between Avarice and Greed
Both avarice and greed can be effective motivators. In a free economy people motivated primarily by greed can exist side by side with people motivated primarily by avarice and everybody can be happy. Some people will simply do whatever pays the most, and their choice of occupation will be determined by supply and demand. Some people will insist on doing everything their own way, and they will be willing to live more frugally, when doing things their own way is not in high demand.
Yes, occasionally some of these self-motivated people will hit the jackpot and find that what they like to do is suddenly in demand, and then they can be well compensated. Occasionally, when things are not going so well, even the people who are willing to do anything for a buck will find that their earnings aren't so high. The ratio of people motivated by avarice to people motivated by greed will fluctuate, and these fluctuations will create ripples in the marketplace
In an economy that is not entirely free, the market can be skewed in the direction of either avarice or greed by means of govenment intervention. In the United States, the following measures have been put into effect to give greed the upper hand over avarice:
Government Sponsored Measures to Promote Greed and Discourage Avarice
- Corporations were granted limited liability so that large business entities could control large amounts of capital without being responsible for damage caused to others. This encouraged investment and discouraged savings.
- Money was not allowed to be indexed against anything of permanent value, like gold or silver.
- Wages were given a minimum below which they were not allowed to drop.
- Employers therefore had to pass the extra outlay onto consumers, because they couldn't act like Harpagon and try to pay their employees less.
- Because consumer prices went higher, other employees, who earned above the minimum wage to begin with, began to bargain for higher wages to compensate themselves for what they lost in purchasing power.
- Every time an employer had to pay any employee more, this was again passed to the consumer, and again the consumer, who was an employee himself, asked for more money. This created an endless cycle of inflation.
- Lenders were prohibited from charging a high enough interest rate for money so as to keep up with this inflation.
- People depositing money in the bank lost value, so it seemed that the only way to maintain value was to invest in something else.
- People invested in stocks, real estate, and other specualtive ventures in the hopes of not losing their savings.
- Taxes, at the local, state and Federal levels kept going up, but as long as people kept trying to make more money, there was some hope for them to make up the difference.
- People worked longer and longer hours in order to earn money that was worth less and less.
- Because people who were motivated by the love of their work could not be bought, they were not promoted, and less and less was produced by the companies who employed all these wage-earners who were working only for money.
Alternative Scenarios
What would the alternative have looked like? What would a country that promoted avarice be like? More people would be independent. They could be, because no matter how poor they were when they were born, they could save money from their earnings to buy themselves freedom from wage slavery. Fewer houses would be built, because people would not have access to easy credit, but more older houses would be refurbished. Fewer trees would be cut down. Fewer forests would be denuded.
There would be less business, but what business there was would be sound. People would buy things only after serious deliberation. They would make quality products that lasted a long time, and these products would be costly, but they would be worth it. If you couldn't afford to buy something made by someone else, you could always make it yourself. There would be less mass production, and people would make less money, but the money would be worth more and its value would be stable. People could afford to build up a nest egg for retirement.
This hub explains how people can be motivated to work in a mixed economy, instead of going on strike and retiring to Galt's Gulch
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This hub explains that without a mortgage, the writer was less motivated to work
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This actually happened to us in 2005. My family and I owned a home in California and owed 325,000.00. We sold it for 498,000.00. We moved to Texas that same year, and purchased a home that was...
What makes a Person Prefer Greed or Avarice
Are greedy people and avaricious people born that way? Can they change? Can they be motivated to alter their behavior? You bet. We are not all equally set in our ways. We have conflicting motivations, and we can be induced to take a different road when presented with a different set of circumstances. Many people who are motivated by greed today have chosen this path, because, given the government interventions that I listed before, avarice didn't pay and greed did.
Anytime someone proposes a measure to "stimulate the economy", what is really involved is setting things up so that not spending money doesn't pay. More and more people are induced to adopt the lifestyle of greed and to give up avarice.
What is the lifestyle of greed? It means working for a living all the time and trying to spend as much money as possible. For some people this is easy, because they can't imagine not having a job. In fact, if they don't have a job, they can't find enough things to do. They get bored. They need someone to fill their days with activity and fill their bank account with money they can spend till the next paycheck. These people are happier when they are in debt. They feel strangely out of sorts if they're not. For them debt is not a terrible burden, but rather a way to find meaning and purpose in life.
Others really suffer when they are forced to live in an economy that promotes greed, because their avarice is so ingrained that they can't change to help themselves. They can see that things will work better for them if they just go with the flow, but they can't.
Unfortunately, people are trapped by the majority in whatever system seems to please the most people. We can't all be happy all the time, and this is the era of greed. It's all just a matter of preference, right?
Well, not completely. There is one other important factor that needs to be considered: depletable resources.
The Economy and the Environment
Like all other animals, man has a habitat. We live in the real world on a planet of finite proportions. This planet is full of valuable resources, many of which are renewable if properly managed, but some of which are depletable and, once consumed, will not be replenished.
What are some of the depletable resources? Coal, petroleum, natural gas. Gold and silver. Can you think of anything else? How about land?
Any economy is based on two things: (1) natural resources and (2) human effort and ingenuity. An economy that promotes avarice will conserve natural resources and encourage human effort and human creativity. An economy that promotes greed is going to grind on until it consumes all the depletable resources, and then it will have to stop.
So the bottom line is: greed is not sustainable as a primary motivation for an entire society. Avarice is.
Or, to be less dramatic, one might say this: avarice is an important ingredient in any functional economy.
The Solution: A Balance Created by the Marketplace
I don't actually believe that all people can be divided into two categories, nor do I believe that avarice is always best and that greed is never good. I intentionally used the names of two vices, rather than the name of a virtue and the name of vice. I could have said it was thrift versus greed, for instance, but that would have made it seem that one motivation is always good and the other is always bad. I don't believe that. It takes all kinds to make a world, and greed wouldn't exist if it didn't serve a useful purpose.
If it weren't for greed, we couldn't get anybody to do any work that is not creative. We would have all chiefs and no indians. It's good that some people are willing to do what other people ask them to do in return for money. It's also good that there are other people who will not do anything for money, unless they think it is right. It takes both kinds to make an economy run.
So the fact of the matter is that we're not dealing with two vices here: both greed and avarice are virtues. In a free economy, they would balance out naturally, and things would not get out of hand.
Money would maintain its value and some work would always get done, but we would not all feel we had to work all the time until we used up all our resources.
It's not us versus them. It's us versus us. If we could just stop for a minute and realize that, we could bring everything into balance.
Which vice is best
Which vice is best for planet Earth?
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Comments
Issues Veritas, could you elaborate? Are you saying that you are not convinved? Or are you saying that other people will not be convinced?
Aya -- Having been once married to the kind of man who must have been in mind when it came to coining the word "Avarice" in the extreme it gave me a good frame of reference. However, I understood completely what you were getting at, and it seems the world needs balance. I thought this hub was a breath of fresh air. I'll be bookmarking it.
Thanks, Jerilee! In fact, when I was reading your hub about the gentleman in question, I'll admit that while I was generally in your corner, a tiny bit of my heart went out to him, because we share the same vice! When taken to extremes, any virtue can seem a vice. That's why the market, and not legislators, should find the balance.
Aya -- I have to admit a bit of him rubbed off on me and he would find it most hilarious to know that I have to admit he was dead on right about a lot of things in life.
His extreme was what did him in with me, otherwise there never was a more intelligent man as far as I'm concerned. He could no more help his extreme than I could help not being what he needed.
Aya,
I'm not sure if this is useful to you, but in the theoretical finance literature much of what you are writing about is referred to as risk tolerance (or on the flip side, risk aversion.) Bureaucrats are often quite explicit in saying that they want to increase (or reduce) the "appetite for risk."
Just for atmospherics, and not to make any particular point, I add this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQnCFdjLJAM&fea
Aya,
I had written a whole response to your 12 points and annotated them in my answer, but when I posted the comment only half of it made it into the comment. So nice try was the result of the comment editor hosing my response.
Corporations are not bad but they have been mutated over the years by Congress. Over the years they relaxed mergers and acquisitions which resulted in Super Corporations. These Super Corporations are getting bigger and bigger and they also became multi-national corporations like AIG that are global.
These corporations can't be controlled or adequately audited. These corporations are the poster child for "greed".
Jerilee, I think things tend to rub off from other people we know well, even when we didn't agree with them at the time. My parents were always very thrifty, and I didn't always appreciate it as a child, but they were right.
Nets, I was really inspired to delve into the different and conflicting motivations of market participants as a result of your hub about Supply and Demand. I suppose avarice can be seen as an extreme form of risk aversion, but it doesn't capture the way in which producers behave differently from consumers. Do the economic strategists take into account that more productive workers might also be more risk averse and more likely to decide to become defectors? Or that being a defector is likely to make you risk averse?
That's an interesting clip. Do you recommend the movie?
Issues Veritas, I'm sorry I didn't get to see your complete comment! Talk about the computer editing the comment and changing its meaning!
The clip from the movie that Nets posted above deals with both greed and accountability where the management of corporations is concerned. I haven't seen the movie, so I don't know the context. I'd be curious to see what it had to say about limited liability.
Anyway, I still believe that if you remove limited liability, then stockholders, who are the real owners, will have to oversee management. That will restore accountability.
But this hub isn't primarily about that. This hub is about the motivation of people in the marketplace and how that has been skewed by government intervention.
Notice that I did not mention either the graduated income tax or welfare recipients. I didn't find it necessary to do so, because I believe that the differences between greed and avarice can be accounted for even without that.
Aya,
The most common usage of risk aversion is in reference to investors. But it is a technical term and could be used more generally.
I suppose it would be too much to hope that there might be an etymological connection between avarice and aversion?
The movie is Oliver Stone's Wall Street. It's a classic. I recommend it highly.
Nets
Aya,
Don't you think that the greed of the corporations in how they make money and the greed of the government and how they tax have tracked each other. As the government increases taxes the corporations buy other corporations and try to be bigger than the rest so they get all the bananas. (800 lb gorilla).
I think we agree on the problem but differ radically on the solution. I want to include the government as a big factor in the problem and you can't fix the problem without fixing them.
Aya - I think it is always a good thing to rescue disappearing distinctions between words and concepts. Avarice and greed can become blurred in careless usage. But for most of us, we learn about greed at a much earlier age and then it usually applies to sweets, or similar, where the fusion of acquiring and consuming more than our fair share is very clear. Avarice is a more grown-up word that nearly always applies to money. I don't fully agree that it just means holding on to what you've got though. Attachment after all can be akin to lust (for the things of the world) and an avaricious person is likely to be driven as much to acquisitiveness as to retention. The nice old word for the acceptable face of avarice is "thrift". I don't think there is an acceptable face of greed, but it's opposite is probably "restraint". Good thoughtful hub.
Aya - I love the way you've distinguihed between the two and yet not thrown one out for the other. Yes, in an evolving world we need both - but balance as you say is the key.
Based on your definition I would go for avarice to be the lesser of the evil (but sometimes it may become a virtue too). And going forward in those lines recently I had a discussion where a couple who were earning pretty high and the house they wanted to buy was only about 2.5 times (less than thrice which is the good rule of thumb) but still didn't go for it. But they feel when they are paying the high taxes why the government should bail out those who are "irresponsible" to take the loans which work out to 5/6 times there annual house hold income. I was till then pretty sympathetic towards the cause of those families who are facing foreclosures but when they raised that issue then I was thinking about this other dimension too.
Maybe in US society avarice isn't necessarily a virtue by itself. Thumbs up for a thought provoking hub.
Nets, I would have been quite happy if "aversion" and "avarice" were related etymologically, but they're not. Historically, averse/ a-vert means turn away from something, while avar means to crave.
I will try to get a cheap copy of Oliver Stone's Wall Street for Sword, Bow and me to watch.
Issues Veritas, you write:
"I think we agree on the problem but differ radically on the solution. I want to include the government as a big factor in the problem and you can't fix the problem without fixing them."
My point was that we need to get rid of all the government interventions that I listed, so my hub does suggest fixing the government.
Paraglider, thanks for stopping by. You write: "I don't fully agree that it just means holding on to what you've got though. Attachment after all can be akin to lust (for the things of the world) and an avaricious person is likely to be driven as much to acquisitiveness as to retention. The nice old word for the acceptable face of avarice is "thrift". I don't think there is an acceptable face of greed, but it's opposite is probably "restraint"."
You are right that my usage is not the standard one, but the distinction that I am trying to make, whether the realm of discussion is fiscal, nutritional or romantic, is between the motive to retain or the urge to get more.
Greed in the nutritional realm means "appetite." Any mother can tell you that when a child has no appetite, that is cause for concern. Children who aren't born with a healthy appetite experience "failure to thrive." Sometimes they will not expend the effort necessary to suckle, because they don't experience a sufficient inducement from the nutritional content of the milk.
There is such a thing as healthy greed. All it really means is an appetite for life and all that makes life enjoyable. When not taken to excess, greed is good. In my book, it is never evil, unless it involves unfairly taking from others.
You mentioned that the word "attachment" has an application in the area of romance, which is true, but you mistakenly named that application "lust." Actually, "lust" is like greed, a reference to healthy animal appetite. Attachment refers to bonding, and is more akin to avarice. The ugly side of bonding or attachment is jealousy. The ugly side of lust is profligacy. They are not at all the same. But there is also a healthy side to each.
I wrote a hub about romantic love a while back that explains that not only are attachment and lust different emotions, there are actually specific neurotransmitters that target different area of the brain responsible for generating these emotions. In fact there is a third one, which is much more rare: attraction (or limerence). Almost all people experience lust and attachment, but only a rare individual experiences limerence. The name of my hub about that is "Love and Limerence."
In the same way, most market participants are motivated partially by greed and partially by avarice, to different extents. But it is a rare individual who experiences a true vocation!
Shalini, thanks! What we need is a balance, but each person has to find his own balance, because each of us has a different balance point, depending on our different needs, talents and inclinations. One person can't find the balance for another. That's why the government should stay out of the market, and let things sort themselves out.
CountryWomen, thanks for stopping by. Neither greed nor avarice are bad, as long as they don't involve harming others. If the government would just stay out of the market, people would be able to make their own cost/benefit analysis and decide according to their own internal needs and their own situation what degree of risk they are willing to take in order to provide for themselves and their family.
John, thanks for your comment.
Aya - you know that's so profound. If each person found his own balance without it being imposed from outside, that really woud be true freedom, wouldn't it! I love the sound of that!
Aya,
Your comment "My point was that we need to get rid of all the government interventions that I listed, so my hub does suggest fixing the government."
I really didn't see anything in this hub that fixes the government problems that I am concerned with. The government is too large and too costly and it is ineffective in benefiting the people. The government is the worst of the greed mongers and changing corporations to unlimited liability is not going to change the government. The government, cannot go bankrupt by definition, they exempt from most if not all liability from their acts, and they are exempt even from the laws that they pass for the country.
The members of Congress and the President an his administration don't even have limited liability, much less unlimited liability.
You asked....
Shalini, yes! That would be true freedom!
Issues Veritas, the government could indeed go bankrupt, if the dollar were indexed to the gold standard. The government could not get too big, if it couldn't keep raising taxes. The government could not devalue the dollar, if it didn't engage in all the practices that I mentioned. Every wrong you see could be remedied this way.
Now, implementing it -- that's a whole different question. In order to implement it, we would have to get the majority to agree that it's a good idea. But that's true of your suggested reforms, too. My reforms, if implemented, would make your reforms unnecessary. But your reforms would not touch the heart of the problem.
They're like thinking that limiting the presidency to two terms will combat tyranny.
It does no good to tell people or entities that they are too big and they should be cut down to size. What works better is to create a situation where it pays for everyone to rise to the occasion and find the best within them.
nice hub... I think that people can argue about sins and virtue for ages... It's a very philosophic theme...
Gin Dalloway, thanks for your comment. I certainly mean these terms in the widest possible philosophical sense. ;->
Aya
Issues Veritas, the government could indeed go bankrupt, if the dollar were indexed to the gold standard.
Aya: But the dollar is not indexed to gold or anything else
The government could not get too big, if it couldn't keep raising taxes.
Aya: Nothing you have suggested, would stop the government from raising taxes.
The government could not devalue the dollar, if it didn't engage in all the practices that I mentioned. Every wrong you see could be remedied this way.
Aya: Your 12 points don't hit on the government. For example, the minimum wage is not the real problem. The real problem is giving welfare and aid to those that don't make the minimum wage. Your other 11 points also don't point to a solution on the government issue. Now, implementing it -- that's a whole different question. In order to implement it, we would have to get the majority to agree that it's a good idea. But that's true of your suggested reforms, too. My reforms, if implemented, would make your reforms unnecessary. But your reforms would not touch the heart of the problem. They're like thinking that limiting the presidency to two terms will combat tyranny. It does no good to tell people or entities that they are too big and they should be cut down to size. What works better is to create a situation where it pays for everyone to rise to the occasion and find the best within them
Aya, there is no such situation for the government.
Aya, I guess we are still on different wave lengths. I want to modify the government and keep the spirit of the founding fathers but I get the impression that you want to change the government type to something other than a Republic..
Aya
Issues Veritas, the government could indeed go bankrupt, if the dollar were indexed to the gold standard.
Aya: But the dollar is not inexed to gold or anything else
The government could not get too big, if it couldn't keep raising taxes.
Aya: Nothing you have suggested, would stop the government from raising taxes.
The government could not devalue the dollar, if it didn't engage in all the practices that I mentioned. Every wrong you see could be remedied this way.
Aya: Your 12 points don't hit on the government. For example, the minimum wage is not the real problem. The reeal problem is giving welfare and aid to those that don't make the minimum wage. Your other 11 points also don't point to a solution on the government issue. Now, implementing it -- that's a whole different question. In order to implement it, we would have to get the majority to agree that it's a good idea. But that's true of your suggested reforms, too. My reforms, if implemented, would make your reforms unnecessary. But your reforms would not touch the heart of the problem. They're like thinking that limiting the presidency to two terms will combat tyranny. It does no good to tell people or entities that they are too big and they should be cut down to size. What works better is to create a situation where it pays for everyone to rise to the occasion and find the best within them
Aya, there is no such situation for the government.
Aya, I guess we are still on different wave lengths. I want to modify the government and keep the spirit of the founding fathers but I get the impression that you want to change the government type to something other than a Republic..
I have written a hub on one part of what I think is the problem with government.
I know that you will disagree with it but it is at
Issues Veritas, I want to return the governmental form to that of a Republic! In a republic, not everything is open to government intervention. There are some ground rules that everyone agrees to, which are not negotiable. I think the following would be reasonable ground rules:
1) Money issued by the government will be indexed to gold
2) the government many not legislate about or regulate interest rates, wages, the price of goods, or any other contractual term between consenting adults.
3) The government will not grant to groups of people collectively rights that they do not have individually. (This applies to corporations and many other artificially created entities.)
4) The government may not seize the property of one person and grant it to another, except in fulfillment of contractual obligation or to compensate for a tort commited by the one against the other.
These four ground rules cover the (12) matters that I discussed above which gave greed the upper hand.
Greed would still be okay -- and it would be a good motivator -- but no person could hope to acquire anything at the expense of another without the other person's consent. This would allow a balance between greed and avarice.
Correction: In 2) change "many not" to "may not". ;->
Aya Girl, you sure do get the comments. Eamonn de Valera had in mind an ideal agrarian society for Ireland where everyone lived "light" and was able to buy what they need but not get involved with excessive greed. I don't like miserliness as you define "avarice", because those people who keep their money in a sock are not contributing much to the economy or society. Not only do they not spend their money in the local economy, but they spend inordinate amounts of energy figuring out how to avoid doing so and as such avoid getting involved. However, the "buy buy buy because it's patriotic" that has been the USA mantra for most of our lives has played out. Not only is it not sustainable ecologically, but it's not sustainable economically. Personally I really like de Valera's Utopian ideal but it would require a major cultural upheaval to achieve it. People today all over the world just don't have those values, except in a few remote and economically insignificant places.
And I beg to differ with your statement that the Catholic church is no help. Sure if you read the popular twaddle it's pretty brain dead. I just had a long chat with my spiritual advisor because I was upset at such things and he told me to ignore the stuff that's written by people who are so steeped in the acquisition mentality that they can't see clear to write dispassionately about such matters. But reading the fathers of the Church, Augustine, Francisco de Assissi and others will give you a pretty good idea of the context in which the people of that day regarded avarice, and you're right there is a subtle distinction, which is why avarice is themore general term than greed but for most purposes either will suffice and they are interchangeable when it comes to sin because either one reflects an attitude that causes sins against the virtue of generosity. It is a very fine distinction that you are making.
Hot Dorkage, thanks for stopping by.
None of the problems associated with wealth would exist if not for the possibility of creating a surplus. Neither greed nor avarice would be at issue if we couldn't keep for tomorrow what we had hunted and gathered today. Agriculture created this problem. Hunter-gatherers do not suffer from it.
I have a hub called "Bread: The First Fast Food" that explains, in realistic terms, how the discovery of agriculture led to social stratification, and that the story of the garden of Eden and fall from grace was all about the invention of bread.
I long for that simpler life myself, and I see it in the lives of chimps in the wild. But... since we do have agriculture and industry, we need to allow greed and avarice to be kept in balance. Risk aversion is a good thing, and it helps us to keep from using up all our natural resources. It helps to keep greed in check.
Sophieqd, thanks for your comment.
This hub blew me away it is a force of nature. I think avarice is tragic in that you hear about people who lived like miserable beggars even though they had a lot of money. I think avarice holds people back from taking a chance toward happiness or a chance that leads to a more fulling life.
Raven, thanks for your comment! Yes, in its most extreme form, avarice is pitiable. But there is a balance, and a society that is balanced is best achieved by allowing avarice and greed to motivate different people to different extents. Another, alternative motivation is that of a true vocation, where we are productive not because we hunger for the fruits of our labor, but because we enjoy the process.
You bring up many good points. Japan's economy is more "avarice" based, and ultimately, it did not bring good results either. So as you and many others have said, in all things, balance is needed.
The devil of course, is always in the details. How do we achieve this balance and how do we sustain it? Free markets *do* automatically balance for these opposing forces, but they do not necessarily project a smooth trajectory. If we were to leave everything free, we would probably get ourselves into a never-ending cycle of boom and busts. To smoothen things out, some controls are needed.
Then, the issue is what controls, and who controls, and all that muck; and that is when I try to leave the room :)
Shibashake, thanks for your comment.
Maybe we should be willing to accept some booms and some busts in our pursuit of natural balance. If the booms and busts are a normal part of the way people behave in the marketplace-- and not something contrived by special interests -- then maybe the best thing to do is to let them play out.
The natural booms and busts may be mild compared to the contrived ones, however hard it may be to go through one of those busts, when it happens.
Interesting hub, although I agree with most of the dictionaries you consulted: avarice is synonymous with greed.
If you want to talk about miserliness/thrift vs avarice/greed, however...
Livelonger, I know it may seem counterproductive to go against the dictionaries, but I actually feel that I have a good reason to do so. Sometimes the connotations that words have are derived from the value system that is prevalent in society. Then a particular denotation gets stuck in the good bin or the bad bin. This makes it really hard to talk about things more objectively, and outside the value system of the society.
Most people agree that thrift is good and miserliness is bad. They don't notice that they're the same, only the connotation is different. Most people agree that being industrious and working for a living is good, but that greed is bad. They don't notice that these are essentially the same things, only one of them has a bad connotation.
Until we break out of that cultural trap, we'll be stuck with the same values that the Catholic Church is pushing when it gives the same definition for both avarice and greed.
To break out of a value system and see beyond it, we sometimes need to redefine old words more precisely, disregarding their connotations.
I'm certainly all for getting away from dogmatic definitions set forth by the likes of the Catholic church. And actually I don't think trying to maximize your earnings by itself is wrong (although some may differ). I think greed and miserliness both have connotations of selfishness; whether this is the Catholics' doing or not, I don't know.
Greed connotes amassing wealth at the expense of others--taking more than your fair share of a limited resource--while industriousness can certainly lead someone to have the same wealth, but without the sense that something is being taken from someone else.
It's the same with thrift and miserliness; you can be thrifty but use the money you save not only for yourself, while miserliness implies that you'll save money to the detriment of even your loved ones.
Now where people draw the line between greed & industriousness, and thrift & miserliness, is completely personal, but that's what happens with these subjective types of terms, right? Personally, when I see a multimillionaire televangelist asking pensioners to send him money to get into heaven, I think greed, not industriousness. Likewise, when Hetty Green had her son's leg amputated instead of paying for proper medical care, when she clearly had the money, I think miser, not thrifty.
Livelonger, we are not that far off in our personal judgments, and when it comes to what degree of thrift becomes pathological or what degree of ambition to earn or acquire is too much, I agree it is in the realm of the personal.
Where we differ is that my mission here is to go further than that. To conflate avarice and greed in many instances leads people to argue that 'the rich' are rich at the expense of the 'poor', equating every attempt to acquire, and every attempt to hold on to what is acquired, as somehow being part of a zero sum game where all wealth is ill-gotten. Under this scenario not earning and not saving both become somehow virtuous.
The balance that I mention would be between two competing natural impulses that are currently being treated as one and the same impulse -- and a vice at that.
I completely agree that wealth, earning and profit are considered dirty words by many, because value creation is poorly understood. But there are also many exalted people who've made millions on the backs of others and without creating value, so there are opportunities for the corruption of words on both sides.
But yes, I agree completely that value creation is the key to understanding why the creation and accumulation of wealth is not a zero-sum game. Wealth is not a finite resource.
Livelonger, we are agreed on this. It's not a zero sum game.
issues veritas says:
8 months ago
Aya
nice try