Greed is the market’s forgotten vice

Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street… from the American dream to greed untold. Photo: Supplied

Where do Easter and business intersect? Well, what about at greed.

But what is unique to our age … is the cultural acceptance, even encouragement of insatiability. 

According to Dr Brian Rosner, principal of Ridley Melbourne, an Anglican theological college, greed has been glamorised by the market economy and is a forgotten sin.

Illustration: Michael Mucci.

Maybe it’s this that allows those Christians who are business people, economists and politicians to share their colleagues’ commitment to unending economic growth and an ever-rising material standard of living.

In his book, Beyond Greed, Rosner defines greed as ”wanting more money and possessions”, a refusal to share your possessions and ”the opposite of contentment”.

Greed has always been with us, and insatiability isn’t unique to modern Western civilisation, but we’re certainly giving it a workout. To us, money is the simplest measure of whether you’re winning at the game of life.

But what is unique to our age, according to another author, is the cultural acceptance, even encouragement of insatiability. A survey of regular churchgoers in America found that whereas almost 90 per cent said greed was a sin, fewer than 20 per cent said they were ever taught that wanting a lot of money was wrong, and 80 per cent said they wished they had more money than they did.

It seems that, by comparison with the past, greed is regarded as a trivial sin. A retired priest has recounted that, in his long years of service, all kinds of sins and concerns were confessed to him in the confessional, but never once the sin of greed.

But Rosner’s having none of that. He says greed is at the heart of three major threats to our existence as individuals and societies: pollution, terrorism and crime.

Pollution is caused by human unwillingness to pay the price for the cleaner alternative (ain’t that the truth, Tony). ”On any reckoning, climatic change due to the effects of pollution could cause major ‘natural’ disasters in the days to come,” he says.

In most cases of terrorism, each side accuses the other of some form of greed, whether involving people, land or property. ”Greed also fits both sides of the equation in many cases of crime,” he says. ”Thieves steal because they want more, and often because they perceive the victims as having more than their fair share.”

The greedy are those who love money inordinately, trust money excessively, serve money slavishly and are never satisfied with their possessions.

Rosner says greed is a form of religion, the religion of Mammon. Literally, mammon means wealth or possessions, but it could just as easily be taken as the biblical word for the economy. And if greed is a religion, that makes it a form of the greatest of all sins: idolatry. (First Commandment: you shall have no other gods before me.)

In Western society, the economy has achieved what can only be described as a status equal to that of the sacred.

”Like God, the economy, it is thought, is capable of supplying people’s needs without limit. Also, like God, the economy is mysterious, unknowable and intransigent,” he says. ”It has both great power and, despite the best managerial efforts of its associated clergy, great danger. It is an inexhaustible well of good(s) and is credited with prolonging life, giving health and enriching our lives.

”Money, in which we put our faith, and advertising, which we adore, are among its rituals. The economy also has its sacred symbols, which evoke undying loyalty, including company logos, product names and credit cards.”

Rosner says we have to distinguish between the legitimate enjoyment of material things, which the Bible takes for granted, and an illegitimate and unhealthy attachment to wealth as an end in itself.

But if we don’t want to be greedy, what should we be? Contented.

”To be content is to be satisfied, to enjoy a balance between one’s desires and their fulfilment. To be content is in effect to experience freedom from want,” he says. But note, it’s being content with your own lot, not those of others less fortunate than you.

And the other side of the contentment coin is giving. Rosner says that if Charles Dickens’ Scrooge epitomises greed, giving is epitomised by Victorian jam maker Sir William Hartley. Hartley regularly and voluntarily increased wages, practised profit-sharing and supplied low-cost, high-quality housing to some of his employees and free medical attention to all of them.

He was also concerned for his suppliers, and would amend contracts in their favour if a change in the price of fruit and economic circumstances conspired against their making a decent living.