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.