Greed Is A Personality Disease
For some, the more they have, the more they are likely to want
By David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
Greed Takes Many Forms
Overeating
A while ago I was having a medical problem and I took a look at my life style. I realized that my discomfort was caused by greed.
Greed is pursuing more of something than you need, more than you can use, more of something that, once you get it, will not improve your life in any meaningful way, and that might even make your life worse.
Greed is wanting more simply for the sake of having more.
In my case, instead of eating two slices of pizza, which were all I needed to satisfy my appetite, I grabbed a third one and maybe even a fourth, and crammed them into my stomach because they tasted good, because I didn’t want them to “go to waste,” because they were there, because I could.
Greed.
Once I started eating only as much food as I needed to eat, I lost several pounds and my digestive problems disappeared.
Buying More Than You Need Because It’s Cheap
You’re on vacation and you need two day’s worth of suntan lotion. You can get an eight-ounce tube for $6 or a twenty-ounce bottle for $8. Even though you won’t be able to take the unused lotion back on the plane, you buy the twenty-ounce bottle because it only costs $.40/ounce while the eight-ounce tube costs $.75/ounce. What a deal.
You go to one of those Brazilian steak houses that serves all the meat you can eat. You’re full. In fact, over full, but you’ve paid a hundred dollars and, by God, you’re going to get your money’s worth, so you cram down enough additional prime rib to actually make yourself sick.
Greed.
Greed Becomes Automatic
Many people give in to greed every day. It becomes such an accepted way of life that they don’t even think about it or question it any more. They do it automatically.
We assume that having more is always better. We assume that when more is available that taking more is always the smart thing to do, or more accurately, that not taking more when more is available would be stupid. And no one wants to be stupid.
Greed Becomes A Habit
We get into the habit of wanting and taking more of something even though whatever we’re getting more of won’t do us any good, won’t make us any happier, healthier, or improve the quality of our lives, more of something that often actually makes our lives, or someone else’s life, worse.
Wanting more becomes a habit.
Nothing exceeds like excess.
The More We Have, The More We Want
One would think that the more we had, the less we would want, but lots of people are just the opposite. The more they have, the more they want. In fact, often the richer people are, the greedier they become.
Wealth can be like a contaminated substance that infects its owners with the chronic disease of greed. How many times have we seen members of the top 1% complain that the government is over taxing them in order to waste their tax money on food stamps for people who don’t deserve to be given free food?
Of course, hanging on to that $500 or even $5,000 food-stamp component of his taxes would not make that $100X millionaire’s life better in any way, but for him, wanting more has become a habit.
He doesn’t want that extra few thousand dollars of tax money that goes to feeding hungry families because he needs it. He wants it because he assumes that more money is good in and of itself and getting more is automatically and always better for him than not getting more.
Greed.
Wanting More When You Can’t Use What You Already Have
I’m reminded of a famous athlete who, a few years ago, announced that he was going to move to a different state because he thought his current state was taxing him too much. At that time this person was earning about $22 million dollars a year and his net worth was in excess of $325 million dollars.
So, after taxes, this guy was taking home someplace around $1,250,000 per month, $288,000 per week or about $57,700 per working DAY.
Now, let’s think about that.
This person was taking home about as much money in ONE DAY as the gross amount that the median American family earned in an entire YEAR, far more money than he was able to spend, as proven by the fact that he had already socked away $325 million and every day that went by he was adding almost $60,000 more to the pile.
But he was going to go to all the trouble of moving his family to an entirely new state just so that he could have even more money.
Let’s say that he moved to a state where he paid a million dollars a year less in taxes.
Firstly, those taxes in his original state funded the fire departments, courts, and police agencies that were protecting him and his money, the schools and universities that educated the professionals who treated his family, the highways that allowed him to travel to earn that $22 million, well, we could go on and on, but it’s not a given that he wasn’t actually benefitting, directly or indirectly, from the those taxes he was so unhappy about.
But that’s not the real issue.
Think for a moment about how much he was willing to give up in order to get that extra million dollars.
Giving Up Something You Need To Get More Of Something You Don’t
He was willing to sell his house, uproot his family, change all his IDs, get a new doctor, a new dentist, etc., go to the time and trouble of finding a new house, buying new furniture, leaving friends and family behind, changing almost everything about his personal life in order to get that extra million dollars.
OK, what’s a big enough benefit to him to justify his going to all that trouble? Yes, he’s getting that extra million dollars, but is an extra million a year always, automatically, worth whatever you have to do to get it? The answer depends on who you are, what you need, and how much money you already have.
If you’re on vacation and you’ve eaten all the fresh strawberries you can eat, how do you benefit if the waiter brings you another big, free bowl of fresh strawberries? What good are they to you?
What could this athlete buy with that extra million dollars that he couldn’t buy with the $325 million he already had?
For a guy who already has $325 million dollars and who is adding to his fortune at the rate of almost $60,000 per day, getting an extra million dollars is as worthless as a totally satiated vacationer being served another bowl of perishable food.
Don’t tell me that the athlete wants the extra money so that he can give it to poor people. A $325X millionaire who’s going to uproot his whole family because he thinks that he’s paying too much in taxes is not the kind of person who gets up every morning thinking about how wonderful it would be to have more money that he could give to the poor.
When Need Is Replaced By Want
This athlete can only eat one meal at a time, sleep in one bed at a time, and drive one car at a time. The harsh reality is that the extra million dollars won’t improve his life in any meaningful way. The only thing getting that money is going to change is one of the numbers in one of the cells in his accountant’s spreadsheet.
But he’s still willing to do a lot of things that are tedious, unpleasant, time consuming and that might even make his life worse just for the sake of having more of something that he doesn’t need and won’t make him happier or improve his life in any material way.
That’s Greed with a capital “G” and it’s everywhere.
By the way, Gordon Gekko was wrong. Greed is not good. In fact, in the long run it is actually harmful, especially for the people who are infected with it.
— David Grace (Amazon Page — David Grace Website)
