The Missing Word--Greed

The world's economic turmoil is incessantly discussed in terms of a host of economic and financial terms such as derivatives, liquidity, sub prime, hedge funds, supply and demand, elasticity of demand, etc. One word is virtually invisible and inaudible and is never even whispered in polite society-greed.

Although seemingly lost in all languages, the word "greed", and all that it conveys is the root cause of the failure of any economic system. Capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism, etc. are all susceptible to self-destruction caused by the insidious manifestation of the world's oldest viral disease--greed. All these socio-economic systems fail when the elected or proclaimed leaders view success in terms of "a little is good and more is better". Society takes up their leader's mantra, and soon everyone becomes part of the greed pack. We become delusional as a society, truly believing that more is always better. This stupefying condition is exactly what the leaders want so that they can maintain adherence to their own greed-driven ambitions.

All of the "isms" generate a ruling class that seeks more and more power. Absolute control is the focus of greed in the leader classes of essentially all social and economic systems, no matter how "advanced" or "primitive" they are. The more greedy the leader the more power becomes concentrated in a small group. Capitalism breeds the economic monopolistic concentration of power, rendering society completely dependent upon their leaders' economic and civil control, while they, the leaders, become evermore controlling and dominant.

Communism creates a similar ruling class that dominates in a very similar manner, concentrating control with more arbitrary force. Leaders in both systems generally promote their artificial benevolence while greedily assimilating more power for themselves at the expense of freedom, liberty, and economic parity for their subservient citizen class. No form of governance or economic system is immune to greed and the concentrated power it potentially breeds.

Greed is the root cause, except for natural upheavals, of societal failure in the 21st century just as it has been since Adam and Eve. We are entrapped within our own appetites for more stuff, more pleasure, more dominance, more of everything. The poorest members of any society are trapped by the greedy actions of the most powerful. The poorest tend to become poorer at the expense of the most greedy and powerful. We blindly become encircled by a spiral of greed sucking us into the vortex without being aware of our eventual pathway to self destruction.

There are no economic "bailouts" or euphemistic "rescue plans" that can have lasting beneficial societal outcomes unless we tame, and eventually overcome, the world's most deadly poison-greed. The so-called post industrial world is as sick as ever. Greed infects every form of government and virtually all societal groups. We are all vulnerable to the deadly outcome of its unlimited destructive reach.

The "missing word", greed must be recognized as the contagious disease that it is. We cannot overcome the consequences of its destructive power until we recognize it in ourselves and leaders. We can only become civilized and peaceful in this technologically unstable world if we can truly eliminate mankind's plague--greed, not from our vocabulary but from all of our actions.