The problem with GREED

"Greed is good!" Gordon Gekko, fictional character. "Greedy people, competing, make the world go round." Paul Krugman, nobel prize winning economist. “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” Jesus Christ, Savior, son of God. For the record, I am not an economist or an MBA, but I think I can grasp the basic principles of how modern economies are supposed to work. If you want to make money you provide either goods or services that people are willing to pay for. In order to provide those goods or services you need to pay other people to help you. If the demand for your goods or services rises you need to hire more people. These people use the money you pay them to buy goods and services, yours and others, which creates more demand and more jobs. As more and more people start doing this and more and more people are needed to create those goods or provide services you need to pay them more and more money to come work for you which gives them more money to spend and buy more goods or services and everyone lives happily ever after. If you decide to cheat or shortchange the goods or services, or slack off in any way, or stop improving, the people who pay you for those goods and services will stop paying you and pay someone else who does it better. This creates efficiency and self-regulates the economy. While there might be someone out there, I personally know of no one who shows up to work with the desire to make less tomorrow than they did yesterday. Off the top of my head I can't think of anyone who spends any time trying to figure out how to pay more for services and goods than they are worth. Bad business fail, good business succeed, everyone benefits and lives happily ever after. Greed, as Gordon Gekko and Paul Krugman say, is good. One small problem. We are all flawed beings. I think that's what the Savior guy might have been alluding to. I've always found it more than just a little ironic that, for example, usually the same people who want to unregulate GREED want to regulate LUST and those who want to unregulate LUST want to regulate GREED. Why one one and not the other? Wouldn't both wreak the same havoc with our decision making?