[ajkjk]

I think it's useless to believe that the explanation behind everything is "greed". It's so easy to blame greed; it's amorphous and meaningless; it gives you nothing you can do; it's the logic of a people who are sure nothing can change, that the way things are is inherent: the rich are greedy, the bad things in the world are powerful people taking advantage of us for benefit, sad for us.

It seems pretty clear that the forces at work are designed to incentivize, reward, and rationalize "greed", and so if one just does their job, so to speak, they will end up doing the greedy thing at every turn. And really we are fine with it! -- what we value more than anything is value creation (on paper). No matter if the actual world is getting worse as long as it appears to be getting better: the economy/investment accounts/stock grants are going up.

[Earw0rm]

There is immorality, there is amorality, and then there is architecting systems intentionally so that none of the actors within the system are constrained by their personal mortality.

"We were only obeying orders" all the way up. And even when you get to the top, they're only obeying the orders of the market.

At least, that's what they'll tell you, and that's what they tell themselves.

[staunton]

The two paragraphs seem contradictory to me...

The fist paragraph seems to say: "greed is not a good explanation", while the second seems to claim: "greed explains everything and we are all OK with it".

[ajkjk]

No, I'm saying: greed is not a good explanation; what looks like greed is essentially required by the world we've built; blaming it on greed alone is an attitude of hopelessness. The problem is our ambient value system, which demands corporations act greedy.