[sayonaraman]

I don't think you can argue with Gordon Gekko " that 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..."

And btw this forum is hosted by one of the most prominent venture capitalist firms in Silicon Valley which funds thousands of (promising) capitalists.

That's what America is about, greed, the pursuit of happiness, whatever you call it, everything else is noise.

[jjulius]

>That's what America is about, greed, the pursuit of happiness, whatever you call it, everything else is noise.

The pursuit of happiness is not greed. What qualifies as 'happiness' is entirely up to each individual, and for many people that doesn't include being greedy.

[sayonaraman]

well as the success of the US economy shows, those greedy capitalists create millions of jobs and goods and increase overall "happiness" of millions (of perhaps less greedy) people.

Greed and free markets make for a healthy society.

As a counter-example see what happened with the Soviet Union, I can tell you first hand that didn’t work very well. Demonizing "bourjois" values of private property and prosperity, while fetishizing the “common good” and all-controlling government made the entire society very unhappy (except for a few fat bureaucrats) and led to its eventual collapse.

[AnimalMuppet]

I absolutely can argue with Gordon Gekko. His "philosophy" is intended to be a caricature of what's wrong, not a serious position.

> "Greed... captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit..."

But see, we don't want the evolutionary spirit. We want our kids to be able to play in the park without worrying about the survival of the fittest. We want cures for diseases. We want social safety nets. We want to live in a civilization, not in a "state of nature"; we want to be humans, not animals.