Day 1

Roman Day
Dr. Colombo
UWRT 1104
January 30, 2017

The Drive for Greed

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed Works. Greed Clarifies,

cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms has

marked the upward surge of mankind. The purpose of this paper is to seek to answer the

question Is Greed Good? The quotation, taken from the film Wall Street, serves as an example

to one side of the argument surrounding greed. Human nature strives to find more. On a basic

platform of life humans seek food, water, and shelter. The modern individual seeks that

previously listed and money, houses, cars, education, wealth, bigger houses, luxurious cars, and

greater wealth. The idea to strive for more, and therefore to want more stems from ambition and

drive, but at what point does it become greed? And is Greed bad? Modern day consumerism

would have the majority people in the United States believe that the only way to live is to

maintain a life loving gadgets and using people. Traditionally, society has done the opposite; love

people and use things. The desire for more of any one thing is a goal, attainable through drive.

The bigger the goal, the greater the ambition. Drive and ambition combine without a foreseeable

end, this, in-turn, creates a constant and cyclical tendency for more. The mentality of the Next

Best Thing or NBT is all too common in the lives of modern individuals. A prominent driving

force for teenagers continuing into upper education is the promise of a higher income. A higher

income which builds the ability and financial strength to acquire more resources. I argue that
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greed is a product of ambition and drive toward a better life. Greed has many aspects, as the

opening quotation denotes, greed does not apply to just wealth or resources. Furthermore,

ambition can apply to all aspects of life, spiritual, intrinsic, and even emotional. The drive to be

ambitious and achieve or greed and hoard can pierce into an individuals spirituality or faith.

Greed can apply to abstract concepts. Thomas Christianson, a writer for Relevant Magazine and

a Public Speaker, defines the line between ambition and greed as he writes Ambition says I

want to get this, Greed says I dont want anyone else to get this (2). The previous quote serves

as a reference to the inherent ability to cross the line between ambition and greed. The line

between greed and ambition lies in the individual.

Greed is a driving mechanism. The curiosity that follows why people strive to do better

and thus consume more is a growing topic. The idea of a better life is a commonality among

people. How much better in life is enough? Goals are essential to productivity, motivation, and

work efficiency. However, when goals are met with larger more ambitious goals the original goal

is stifled. This cycle generates a constant creation of new benchmarks to achieve, ultimately

leaving the user in a cycle of needing more. Furthermore, the generation of millennials have been

raised with technology and the mentality that whatever is new is better and must be acquired.

This accessibility to technology, and all goods, at an affordable price has made the want for more

less and less expensive. In this way, the system of supply and demand thrives from greed. The

want and pursuit for more means acquiring resources, normally through spending. Spending

leads to economic stimulation and therefore more earning. So is this greed for more really bad?

If greed can empower individuals to work hard and then work harder, greed could yield a

positive outcome.
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Humans have an innate predisposition for more. Through a historical lens, one could

argue that greed is attributed to grand conquests of human history- the Roman Empire, Genghis

Khan, Settlement of the Americas and more presently the rise of social media and tech moguls.

The success of marveled individuals is attributed to a strong drive and great ambition, but the

term greed often does not appear with a positive connotation. Moreover, the advancement of

the modern U.S. economy could be viewed as built up on greed. The Carnegies and the Mellons

are renown for slightly greedy tendencies through the notion that enough is never enough.

However, these are the men and families who pushed society toward the notion of capital

development and big business, which spawns more greed, a bad thing? Not necessarily.

However, American Entrepreneur John D. Rockefeller, who is held among the prestige

associated with the Carnegies and Mellons, once said If your only goal is to become rich, you

will never achieve it. While remaining introspective, the previous quotation is an example from

a man who carried a label of greed as the first individual to have to disband a monopoly he

created, as such serves as a firsthand account that a greed for wealth will not fulfill an individual.

This is the same man who had the ambition and drive to start an oil company that would grow to

be the largest in the country and the world at one point in history. One argument is that the

furtherment of society is propagated on the greedy seeking more knowledge, more power, and

creating more wealth. The counterargument stands in greed of profits and withholding of

information to have a competitive advantage. For example, the conspiracy exists that the

treatment for cancer exists but big healthcare companies are withholding this information since

cancer treatments generate 125 Billion dollars annually, according to Cancer Research UK. In

this case, greed has a negative impact. In this withholding of information for the sake of profit,

greed has a negative impact, but this is not always the case.
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Greed equalizes. This is where the third argument rises which is that greed equalizes. For

example, an individual would find a lust for knowledge and information and would not be

satisfied until finding said cure for cancer, in which case he would be driven to find and share the

secret. It is in this way that greed can serve a purpose. The latter argument of an equalizing force

is the most common as can be seen through competition. Competition in any form stems from a

want for and a want for others not to have (a goal, trophy, point, market, etc.) In the case of

competition greed stimulates growth and success, the social media market, for example, has seen

immense growth through competition. Fifteen years ago social media was an abstract concept,

but the current reality and development grows through the fight, hunger, and greed for more

users. Competition breeds greed, and therefore development.

Are ambition and greed related? The argument begins with the link between an

individuals drive and ambition developing into greed, or considered greed, and where the

accumulation of resources and assets is harmful. This proposition is full of questions. The first of

which, what is greed? Greed is defined as a selfish and excessive desire for more of something

(such as money) than is needed (Greed). This only clouds a definitive answer. Greed is

generally understood as an excessive want. The term excessive is relative. This means that

greed is subjective to an individuals goals. The quantity of money, land, knowledge, or any

resource would need to be defined and applied to the specific individuals case. As a wealthy

lifestyle requires many more resources than does a minimalist lifestyle. The case of greed would

vary from individual to individual. The purpose of the argument is to examine if greed is good.

To reach a conclusion, the factors of greed need to be defined. As previously mentioned, drive

and ambition are the two contributors to greed. Ambition is defined as an earnest desire for

some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to
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strive for its attainment (Ambition). To strive for an achievement does not have a negative

connotation, nor does it warrant any constraint as achievement is regarded as good or just. Drive

contributes to ambition as it is defined as a vigorous onset or onward course toward a goal or

objective (Drive). The inquiry surrounding greed stems from the correlation of the three

components that are ambition, drive, and greed. How do the three factors coexist? Are ambition,

drive, and greed directly related? To refer to the earlier quote from Author Christianson,

harboring or hoarding a resource or idea could be labeled as greed or greed-like, but what if your

ambition is the driving source for such actions? As though the ultimate goal requires information

be withheld or resources stockpiled, does this justify greed? Ambition and greed can divide a

goal as easily as they combine to hide one.

The quest for more. Greed, ambition, and drive are all human tendencies to work toward

a sense of more. Greed can be seen as an outcome of an extremely driven individuals ambition.

However, greed can also be the result of a selfish want to conceal information or resources. As

the paper addressed, history is littered with examples of greed contributing to the development of

the world and U.S. Economy. History also documents those who grew too greedy, such as

Napoleon, driven to conquer more land and obtain more power than anyone else in history, fell

due to greed. I propose that greed is subjective and relative to the individuals goal., which adds a

level of difficulty to research. However, information on the subject is widely available and

accessible as this modern era is fortunate to have many ambitious and relatively greedy

individuals. This introductory inquiry into the balance that must exist between the want to have

against the want for others not to have has raised more questions than answered. I propose that

greed is good and a driving force of society. Constant drive and ambition lead to innovation and

invention. Greed drives the world forward.

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Works Cited

Ambition. Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/ambition?s=t.

Christianson, Thomas. Where's the Line Between Greed and Ambition?

RELEVANT Magazine, RELEVANT Media Group Inc., 14 Oct. 2015,

www.relevantmagazine.com/life/maker/wheres-line-between-greed-and-ambition.

Drive. Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/drive?s=t.

Greed. Dictionary.com, Dictionary.com, www.dictionary.com/browse/greed?s=t.

How Much We Spend on Research. Cancer Research UK, Cancer Research UK,

10 Aug. 2016, www.cancerresearchuk.org/how-much-we-spend-on-research.

Wall Street. Directed by Oliver Stone, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 1987.