A new word for it...

       I have had many conversations with a close friend about whether greed ruins things for everyone.  He always has asserted that it has.  I have stated that it does not.  We argued a few times before I noticed that we weren't talking about the same thing.

       I contended that greed was what made me not live in a tent.  Greed is why I accumulated wealth.  (well, try to, anyway)  Greed is, simply put, the desire for more than the basic necessities.  Greed is wanting more than you have.  Wanting more is what drives humanity to ever-greater endeavors, and therefore cannot, inherently, be bad.  This definition is acceptable to most.

       He stated, that the greed he was talking about, is the drive to have more, at the expense of another.  It is what drives a business to lay people off when they have a 10 figure reserve fund.  It is what makes millionaires cheat, lie and steal to become billionaires.  It is what is behind the statement: "to build shareholder value".  This is also an acceptable definition, to most.

       Dictionary.com says that greed is "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions".  While this seems to agree more with my friend's definition, much depends on how one defines excessive.  What amount of wealth is enough; that wanting more means you are greedy.  I imagine you all have a dollar amount in your head.  Know that, for someone, somewhere, that number makes you terribly greedy.

       The problem is that the two equally valid definitions, mean almost the opposite of each other.  The desire for more than you have is certainly a good thing.  The desire for more than you have, at the expense of another is something else entirely.  The first is what illustrates that Libertarians are right.  The second shows that socialists are.  (The two major parties being so thoroughly corrupt as to not even serve as examples; since they both only represent consummate greed.)

       Now, taken at face value, the two types of greed are really just the desire for more.  One side is tempered by morality, and the other by selfishness.  The selfish person will be driven to acquire more, even at someone else's expense.  The moral person will work harder to improve their lot.but not by cheating others.  How people define cheating others is subject to debate as well.  If you fast-talk someone into a bad deal; have they been cheated?

       I'm not, as anyone who is currently having conniptions from my colloquial writing style will attest, any kind of authority on language.  So I will not be so forward as to suggest a new word, phrase, or acronym, for our language.  But the definition of greed is too broad to use in discussion, without modifiers.  Otherwise, you can't be sure what sense of the word is actually meant.

     

     

The cost of everyone winning.

       A recent conversation with someone got me thinking.  See, this person was insisting that they could be good at their job, despite not knowing anything about it.  Now this was not a doctor, thank God, but still a position that REQUIRES a degree of knowledge.  I will not spill the profession, because it might embarrass the person, (see, I can grow), but essentially this would be someone claiming they could be a chef, because they know how a microwave works, and no one ever orders eggs Benedict anyway.

       This person was boastful about the depths of their ignorance, and unfazed by the fact that this not only makes them bad at their job, but speaks volumes about their character.  Someone who refuses to even crack a book, open a web page, or listen to a book on tape, about their current position, will likely never be good in any position.  "Been doing this for years, and only needed to know that stuff a few times": kind of thing.  Possibly it isn't needed, possibly word got out that this person was not able to perform.  Either way, I was reminded of two things.

       First, this was someone raised in the generation of participation trophies.  You know, 35 kids in a competition, it would hurt someone's feelings if they didn't win something, so everyone gets the same trophy.  First off, you aren't fooling the kids, they know if they did a good job or not.  Second, not only does this reinforce to the ones who would not have won, that losing is just as good, there is a, much worse, more insidious effect.

       Also, from the perspective of someone who performed well enough to win: why did they bother?  If all rewards are the same, regardless of performance, there is no incentive to try.  Ask a human resources person if this attitude is reflected among people of a certain age and you will hear a resounding: "Yes".  I've talked to small business owners who will not hire anyone under 30, because of this groomed, generational, defect.  

       "What business does this have on a mostly political blog?", I can hear you asking.  What type of quality production was the old Soviet Union known for?  What quality are Chinese-made goods now known for?  Is there an incentive to do better when everyone gets the same reward?  We have a generation that was groomed to have the same work ethic as someone from a communist country.  Since they had the idea reinforced at a young age, most have never given anything enough effort to see it disproved as adults.

       As a parent, I am seeing this trend now reversing.  Children are being rewarded when they do well, not just for showing up.  So there is hope.  But we will have a lost generation of people quite happy to never try, to never know success, and never know failure, which is what makes the success worth trying for.  They will happily never achieve success, and be critical of those in their generation who do.  (Note, if you are one of the ones who do try, it doesn't take much to shine).

       I will leave you with the words of a much more inspirational, and likely smarter, certainly braver, man than myself:  Theodore Roosevelt.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

How we got here, and how to keep it going. The long view.

       Prior to the Baby Boom, America was much like any other civilized country.  We had multiple generations living under one roof, many industrialists making the lion's share of the money, and the working poor staying that way.  Something changed with the second world war though.

       The Deaths

       So in looking at the lovely chart compiled by our friends at Wikipedia, you will note some statistical oddities.  First, that Allied civilian deaths far outstrip military ones.  That says something for how the Axis fought.  Next, you will see that Axis military deaths far exceeded civilian ones.  That says something about how we fought.

       But this is all academic to the point.  Due to our remote location, (relative to Europe) and our late entry to the war, and frankly our technological advantage, we lost relatively few people.  The numbers to reference to see this are the deaths as a percentage of the country's 1939 population.  Of all the major powers in the world, we lost the lowest percentage of our population.

       This had an immediate impact on our country.  (On a  historic timeline).  The low number of American civilian deaths, compared to the rest of the world players, meant that when the post-war world needed goods manufactured, we were the only ones left who could do the job.  When the needs of the world outpaced our workforce, we effectively doubled it, by re-adding women.  (They got a taste of the working world during the war and apparently enjoyed it)

       Suddenly, (in historic terms), every generation was living separate from each other, there was the option for both partners to work, and a relatively high amount of wealth for working-class families, compared with the rest of the world.  So in historic terms, what our grandparents, parents, and ourselves experienced was a brief period of unusually high prosperity.

       WWII eliminated the competition, essentially.  While I would not advocate the same method of doing this today; this is what we need to do, as a country.  How do we put ourselves ahead?  Unlike the mid-east we do not have a monopoly on a scarce good.  Unlike China and India, we do not have so many laborers that it is cheaper to hand build, as opposed to automation.  (Also we mostly enforce our environmental laws...)  Our advantage is our inventiveness,  When you take in all the ideas of the world, and put them together in one place, it is a natural fit.  Yet, we are not the clear-cut technology leaders that we should be.

       So here is my suggestion.  The President (Obama as of the writing of this article) has recently suggested that community college be "Free".  Again, that word is misused, but I have been shouting that same idea at anyone who can hear (and writing it down for those who can't) for decades.  I would not limit this to community college, though.  But there is one single condition...

       The only taxpayer funded post secondary schooling you could get, would be things that benefit the country.  (I know, that sounds socialist, but hear me out).  No one is saying you can't get that degree in underwater basket-weaving, you just have to pay your own way.  If you want Joe and Jane taxpayer to foot the bill, you need to pick a field in which there is either an essential need, or one that would improve the competitiveness of America, in the international market.

       This would eliminate the need for protectionist policies, as it would draw business here.  It would also provide a benefit to taxpayers.  (unlike most government programs).  Even those who can't, or who choose not to, go to college would benefit, as the available jobs would be better, due to the influx of manufacturing, and technology.