Perhaps the best reason for advocating that greed is good would be its ability to spur a person, a firm or a society for success. It can be noticed easily when we examine how many influential inventions of today have come about. Most of them are products of their inventors’ desperate desire to earn profits. Many Research and Development by firms have undoubtedly played a crucial role in bringing in more efficient services and satisfaction to their customers, regardless of the firms’ primary motives for money. Thanks to the firms’ strong drive for better products and services, we, customers, have been able to enjoy a more convenient lifestyle.
However, psychologically, one’s ethnic judgment can be disturbed by greed. Because the yearning for achievement is so intense, one often neglects or overlooks moral values, blinded by the powerful psychological drive to succeed: Air, land and water pollution caused mainly by inconsiderate, profit-driven firms producing too much and recycling too little; America’s ‘self-initiated’ war in Afghanistan for crude oil; Human experiments carried out by the Nazi and Japanese during the World War II for their own medical research. Far too often, the people and firms who have crossed the ethnic lines for greed have resulted in woeful consequences in one way or another: Global warming and climate change is happening at an accelerating rate, affecting lifestyles of almost all creatures, including us, on the earth. Thousands of innocent Afghanistans are killed, subjected to racial discrimination or denied of basic necessities during the war. Through the human experiments, the victims and their descendants have experienced their human rights being grotesquely violated and developed resentment towards particular groups of race. These examples may seem to be a mere extreme representation of greed but still, they clearly alert that the significant risks of being greedy lie in almost all aspects – in environmental, political and social aspects. Thus, it may not be as well wrong to assume that similar forms of destruction can happen anytime in any scale as long as humans’ greedy behaviours continue.
Another rising concern would be the changing paradigm of what we previously understood ‘greed’ was. With better accessibility in obtaining of information in today’s much wired world, the public has started grasping the role of greed as a motivator spurring people on to succeed in achieving their wants, biographies and television and magazine interviews about successful, greed-orientated people being some of the dominant sources. Therefore, ‘greed’ may no longer be considered a principle that should be utterly avoided but rather, a principle that can hopefully spice up one’s motivation. What is troublesome about this justification is that the value of greed can be largely inflated and misunderstood, causing the risky pools of greed to expand further. This means the potential damages, harms and number of victims resulted by greed-initiated activities might soar, which are often destructive in one way or another. Although admittedly greed may guarantee one’s achievement of goals, if being greedy is taken for granted for anyone’s desire to succeed, the chance of greed abuse may soar. Eventually, the blatant ‘worshipping’ of ‘greed’ may bring in more disastrous consequences than ever.
In conclusion, it can be observed that greed can be both good and bad in terms of its consequences and motives. However, in my opinion, greed has got more harmful impacts on us and our surroundings than its benefits. A single person or firm’s excessive desire to achieve something disseminate undesirable impacts on many others. Furthermore, once people’s general view on greed starts to shift from ‘disapproving’ to ‘relative’ or even ‘approving’ due to its attractive ability to spur them on, the risks and number of ‘victims’ might even soar further. Therefore, as far as greed’s outweighed harms and destructive potential is concerned, I do not believe that greed is good to a large extent.