Selfishness and Greed

Roberto Diego

I remember when movie titles were called “Gone with the Wind” or “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” or “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Today, many movie names are short in order that the movie goer gets a clearer image of what the movie is about. It makes for instant recognition and also helps with the website domain: “Iron Man”, “Wicker Park”, “Troy”, “X-Men.”

This trend toward shortening titles has permeated everything from domain names to blog posts. “Selfishness and Greed” captures the topic clearly. “Greed” is a keyword searched in Google 368,000 times per month. “Selfishness” gets 40,500 hits per month and the word “selfish” 368,000. So there it is at the top: “Selfishness and Greed.” That ought to catch them.

But there is much more to the words than keywords. They promise an impoverished future if they are not understood by a large number of Americans. Barack Obama loves to use these words; selfishness and greed. They help him communicate the problems in our nation and our real enemies as he sees them. Not the government but selfish and greedy people are the problem.

Obama:

"This is a corporation (AIG) that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed. Under these circumstances, it's hard to understand how derivative traders at AIG warranted any bonuses, much less $165 million in extra pay. I mean, how do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?" [1]

This was said after the Obama administration requested that the AIG bonuses be left in the bailout legislation. It also precipitated protests by ACORN and unions (two Obama supporters) at the homes of AIG Executives. Where did ACORN get the money to hold these protests?

“What's required is a new declaration of independence. Not just in our nation but in our own lives. Independence from ideology and small thinking. Independence from prejudice and bigotry. Independence from selfishness. An appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels.”[2]

Of course ACORN and the unions are not ideologues or small thinkers. They don’t have any “easy instincts.”

“John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”[3]

I don’t want you to think I’m only against Democrats. John McCain also has his demons.

McCain

"We've got to fix the system. We've got fundamental problems in the system. Main Street is paying a penalty for the excesses and greed in Washington, D.C., and in Wall Street there is no doubt that we have a long way to go."[4]

These are some really bad words, selfishness and greed. They indicate that there is something really bad in our country that is doing great harm to people. Selfishness and Greed are what we need to eradicate, say the politicians. We need to fight people who are consumed by “easy instincts.”

Their solution is global sacrifice, the theft of all capital in the country so that we can give it to those who are not ideologues and small thinkers, the victims who are not rich, but who would be rich if they could just get their “fair” share; we are now being led by professional parasites who have already decided what they are going to do with the production created by people who are greedy and selfish. That most of the money will wind up in the hands of progressive organizations and politicians has nothing to do with selfishness and greed.

A growing few, myself included, have pushed back against the attacks on selfishness and greed. We have a different philosophy, precipitated by philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand, who understood these terms to be “package deals”, ideas that combine negative characteristics with positive in order to discredit or disparage the positive. “Package deals” are used by philosophers, intellectuals, journalists and politicians to deceive. Their goal is to destroy clear thinking and create confusion among people trying to understand the world.

When Obama talks about doing away with selfishness, and elevating sacrifice in its place, he wants you confused about the issue. If he succeeds, your confusion will move you toward appeasing him and demonstrating your willingness to “come together” to solve problems that Obama and his progressive predecessors have created.

A “package deal” that combines evil practices with moral practices confuses people about moral practices. Ms. Rand challenges our culture to understand that among the negative qualities associated with selfishness and greed is the idea of “rational self-interest” a concept that requires virtue.

Needless to say, the attacks on selfishness and greed are not new. Almost everyone, at one time or another, has been excoriated for selfishness and greed. Most of us are used to it, and many of us are stopped cold by such criticisms and strive not to earn it, even to the point of lowering our ambitions and expectations in life. Some parents even require that their children report to them at the end of each day what they have done for others.

Rand wrote that “self-interest” is only a motivation; that it does not prescribe what is actually in one’s self-interest. That is for the individuals to decide by means of rational thought. A truly self-interested person is responsible for deciding what will serve his self-interest and we have seen that in a capitalist society, rationality is the quality that comes to the fore, not conquest and plunder. This is why you see the abundance of life-serving products and huge industries that improve the lives of people in capitalist systems

Obama and his progressive friends think that the opposite of self-sacrifice is Atilla the Hun, a brutal murderer, plunderer and conqueror; they believe that Atilla was actually practical, which tells you more about progressives than it does about Atilla. These immoral acts engaged by Atilla are the “easy instincts” that Obama criticizes. In this case, selfishness is defined as consisting of brutality, the pursuit of short-term gain, disregard for the rights of others, etc. A selfish person is seen as someone who does not care about others and is “just out for himself.”

The practical result of this package deal is that people never learn that “rational self-interest” is actually the defining characteristic of the term “selfishness.” The result is a stereotype that many innocent people accept without question. When they think of selfishness, they think of Atilla rather than successful businesspeople. And when they think of successful businesspeople they associate them with Atilla. The media confirms this view.

Yet, without rational selfishness, you cannot have “selfishness” and if you believe that “rational self-interest” is evil, you won’t pursue it. This draws people into the “hater” camp and makes them unwitting moral bullies and collectivists decrying the harm done to society by stereotypes that include people who produce and do good. Hence, Rand insists on using the term “selfishness” in order to set the record straight; selfishness, pursing rational self-interest, is good.

Even though the President is considered by many to be an intelligent man, he seems not to have learned that our society runs, not on greed and exploitation but on “rational selfishness.” He does not seem to know that selfishness is the mind set that any honest person must have to achieve survival. Every man has to be rationally selfish in order to do well in a free society. And it was the pursuit of rational selfishness, to the extent that it was allowed, that made our society the success that it once was in the world…before Obama.

How does a rationally selfish person live his life? First of all, he accepts the premise that his life is his own responsibility. He also recognizes that his survival requires thinking and knowledge. In other words, he is a thinker who understands reality, is productive, honest and lives with integrity. He is not like the stereotype of the selfish and greedy person about which we hear President Obama and his minions speak. Yet, his business will probably be more regulated soon even though he is trying to live honestly. If he is an employee of a company, he may soon be required to join a union whether he wants to join or not. If his industry involves automobiles, he will soon be required to make “green” cars that no one will buy. If he works in the energy industry he may soon be out of a job because “cap and trade” may make it too expensive for his company to operate. And the “green” jobs will probably go to people who voted for Obama.

Yet, he knows that he must be as knowledgeable as possible in order to be successful, at the very least he must understand the business he is in and he must strive to work hard. But the government takes his earnings and gives it to people who have not put as much into their professions as he has put into his own. He understands that in order to be employed or to have customers he must be honest and do his best to satisfy the economic demands of his customers. Yet, the government is rewarding people with poor credit ratings who sign mortgage agreements promising to pay off loans they have no intention of paying off. If he is presented with a short-term gain that would involve dishonesty or deception of some type, he does not pursue it because dishonesty would ruin his long-term prospects and possibly harm other people. Yet, government officials engage in huge boondoggles to make their friends rich while they ensure their re-election by bringing taxpayer money to their districts. Then he hears that he is selfish and greedy and should be taxed more because he should be punished for taking money from the poor.

Where is the evil that he is doing? Is he being greedy and selfish when he educates himself to earn more money and be more valuable to his employer? Is he being greedy and selfish when he tries to save money in order to send his children to college? Is he being greedy and selfish when he creates a new product that will improve the lives of many people and make him wealthy? Is he being greedy and selfish when he invests his earnings to start his own business? Just where is the evil that he has done?

The government says that the executives at AIG operated in a greedy manner when they purchased loans that were poor investment risks. Yet, this view ignores the fact that the government had declared the bundled packages to be good investments, that the government had required banks to issue the loans regardless of the credit history of the borrowers and the government had said the loans were backed by the government. Where did AIG executives go wrong when they believed their government? Should the government, whose friends at FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC made millions of dollars in bonuses for these very loans be questioned about their greed and selfishness? How much of the money from these bonuses went to the Democratic Party? Where is the ENRON-style investigation of this corruption? In fact Obama, who filed a lawsuit that sought to lower lending standards, is the very individual who is excoriating businessmen for being greedy and selfish.

A fascist government is one where the government tells businesses what to do but the responsibility for making a profit lies with the management of the company. In a fascist system, the government may tell banks what types of loans they are required to accept (for social goals) but the management will receive the blame when the loans default. The banker is criticized for being greedy and selfish because of his high salary that he actually earned before the government lowered lending standards. He may even be fired by Obama; that is, unless he is a Democratic Party donor. What would a rational banker do in a case like this? Retire.

How could a society make the mistake of destroying the very people that are necessary for a thriving economy? The Soviets did it[5], the Nazis did it, the Communist Chinese burned down businesses and slaughtered business owners – and now we are punishing people who are doing nothing more than trying to live rationally and successfully. Societies that have eaten themselves alive, like those above, accused honest people of being of being selfish and greedy. Some were hung, others shot and others sent to concentration camps. Yet Obama seems not to know this lesson of history. There is nothing new in the “change” he is bringing.

When a society declares that an individual’s proper purpose in life is to live for others rather than himself, it must see the opposite principle, the principle of rational self-interest, as evil. This causes pogroms, riots, murders and storm troopers intimidating and beating citizens. This is where we are headed. Watch ACORN, and other professional parasites that are working with the government, as they transform society into a totalitarian system.

At the present time, President Obama declares that the solution to our problems is for everyone to work together and find solutions. What he doesn’t tell you is that he has already decided the solution (government power) and that when rationally selfish people come together to help, they must suspend their rationality; for them it is as cattle to the slaughter. Further, he refuses to acknowledge that a free society is not one where government can force people to come together to solve problems; it is a society where free people pursue their rational self-interest - and problems are solved by mutual trade to mutual benefit…without the involvement of government.

The allure of altruism is in the propaganda that has been used for it since time-immemorial. When you sacrifice, they tell you, you are doing something “good”; helping people; being a good citizen; fulfilling God’s charter, etc. However, we are learning, finally, that government-imposed “sacrifice” requires a violation of the very principles that create a free society and that every government program, from government regulations to massive boondoggles, has a negative economic effect. Not only are they immoral, not good, but they enable the most atrocious government corruptions and theft.

What Obama and other politicians are trying to do in criticizing selfishness and greed is to undercut and discredit rational self-interest. More than this, they want to undercut the ability of Americans to disagree with them. No one explains to Obama’s followers that one of the reasons they are not successful (or happy) in a free economy is because they accept the corruption of package deals like “selfishness” and “greed.” Their refusal to do things “for themselves”, their willingness to limit themselves, their sloppy thinking, can do nothing but lower their productive skills and their expectations, and even creates the hatred that they feel toward successful people.

For a President like Obama who never missed an opportunity to take advantage of a crisis, this is a crisis of his own making. He comes from a long line of progressives and socialists who have been working for decades to undermine the freedoms and protections embedded in the U.S. Constitution. Their method of destroying individual rights is to find individuals and accuse them of selfishness and greed.

Ayn Rand campaigned for decades about the horrors of government coercion and her novel Atlas Shrugged exposed the corruption of government actions intended to achieve collective goals. The novel clearly shows, as if it were prophesy, that government interventions are nothing more than the machinations of corrupt politicians trying to “game the system” and become wealthy on the backs of productive citizens. The following quote makes her view clear:

“there are two questions in ethics, which the traditional moralists lump together into an undifferentiated package-deal—a. What are values?—b. Who should be the beneficiary of values? Since all values have to be gained and/or kept by men's actions, any breach between actor and beneficiary necessitates injustice: the sacrifice of some men to others, of the actors or producers to the beneficiaries. Nothing could ever justify or validate such a breach. Therefore, the Objectivist ethics holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of the action—that man must act for his own self-interest—but that this right is derived from the nature of values and the nature of man, and, therefore, is applicable only in the context of a rational, objectively demonstrated and validated code of moral values, which determines man's rational self-interest.”[6]

It is time to say that socialism has failed and that the best stimulus package ever created by man is capitalism. As the famous Greek once said to the conqueror, I say to Obama: “If you understood what was honourable in life, you would avoid lusting after what belongs to others.”[7]

[1] Barack Obama http://www.profundity.net/taxonomy/term/13
[2] Barack H. Obamahttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99529782
[3] Barack H. ObamaBarack H. Obama, Obama's New Attack on Those Who Don't Want Higher Taxes: ‘Selfishness’
[4] http://www.javno.com/en-world/obama-mccain-quotes-on-financial-crisis-economy_186677

[5] “Those who think that the Soviet system was an aberration of socialism, please consider that it had been consistent with the principles of equality and the common good. Stalin's reign of terror was merely an inevitable end result of a collectivist utopian theory that contradicted human nature, vilifying people for "greed" and "selfishness," which were mere manifestations of their individuality, and punishing the desire to be free from state-run slavery.” From http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?p=61168%3Cbr%3E
[6] The Letters of Ayn Rand Letters To A Philosopher
[7] Leonidas

Selfishness and Greed

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