Only in a Perfect World

I would like to start out this blog simply with this, I disagree with greed on a moral standpoint, but greed is what drives the “invisible hand” in a free-market economy. Whether we like to admit it or not, greed is the primary force behind a healthy economy in a non-perfect world. For example, in a perfect world, everyone would work to help out their fellow man and everyone would benefit from “specialization.” Unfortunately, there are the couple of selfish people who don’t want to be “team players” and have found out they could benefit from taking advantage of their fellow neighbor. In economics, this is called an “unattended incentive.” Once everyone starts figuring out that they can do the same thing, they lose the incentive of hard work and the economy ultimately collapses (just like communism). As I stated before, in a perfect world an economy would flourish when everyone looks out for one another, but the same thing goes that if everyone followed the Ten Commandments, we would not need a government in “a perfect world.”
This is what brings us up to our imperfect world. What happens when everybody becomes selfish, a.k.a. greedy? Simple, adjust to an economy that uses the incentive of greed to benefit the economy. The solution? A market economy. As the theory behind the “invisible hand states” in a story about London, nobody really cares if there is enough bread coming into the city, the only thing the baker cares about is making money. How does he do this? By making sure his customers receive bread in order to make a profit for himself. In actuality, he could care less that you come from a low-income family or you are best friends with the president, if you are going to pay him, that’s all that matters. As we can see, greed is what holds a capitalist economy together, like mortar in a block home. The thing that’s ironic about the whole deal is this, by being selfish you are actually helping out your fellow man like in the analogy of the baker and his customers. Go ponder over this for a while.
As I stated before, I still believe greed is bad and is one of the seven deadliest sins (glutany) and I have to disagree with those who object to charity. I do believe if you are bringing in a surplus of money, you shouldn’t be greedy, but use your talents (your “specialization”) given to you by God and use them for good. For example, many of you agree that just giving does not aid in the long run, but investing in charities such as missionaries and other organizations that go out in rural third-world countries and teaching poor communities the needed skills for survival, this does help them in the long run and it does make you feel good on the inside. Like the old saying “give a man a fish, and he will eat for a night, but teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime.” As we can see, even though our economy is held up by the pillars of self-interest, we still need to balance it out with a little giving and not let money and greed take a hold of our lives.