I don’t understand greed

I don’t understand greed. I really don’t. Well, I understand the definition – I just don’t understand the motivation.

I get that we all want to maximize our return. That is natural. It’s when people want to maximize their return at the expense of others that I struggle with. I suppose that it has always been around in one form or another – buying a car is a great example. The buyer wants to get the most value for their money by paying as little as possible. The seller is trying to get the most value for his money by selling for the highest price he can get.

I have no problem with that. Until one of the parties resorts to lying/cheating/etc to inflate their advantage. I believe this is a big part of the reason that used car salesmen are held in such low regard. They have a reputation for saying or doing almost anything in order to get the sale done. I was once looking at buying a used pickup truck. The seller told me that it had never pulled a trailer. When I pointed out the holes that had been drilled in the bed for a 5th wheel hitch, he swore that’s not what they were – though he had no explanation for them. I didn’t buy the truck, so I wonder how that worked out for him.

A story of good

A story has been in the news recently about a couple who ran a very successful fundraiser for a homeless vet who helped them out. It was a classic story in the vein of The Gift of the Magi, where the homeless man uses his last $20 to buy gas for a stranger, who was stranded in the middle of the night.

The lady and her boyfriend were so grateful, they decided to use one of the many “crowdfunding” websites to try to raise money to help get the man off of the street. The fundraiser was a massive success – bringing in over $400,000. The woman and her boyfriend became minor celebrities, appearing on various TV talk shows to support their effort and glorify them for their generosity.

Until it started to go bad

Then it turned out that things weren’t as rosy as they appeared. The homeless man sued the couple, claiming that he had not received most of the money that had been raised on his behalf. He said that the couple had been mismanaging the money. He claimed that he had only been given about $75,000, and that the couple had squandered the remainder – buying purses and a BMW for the woman, vacations, gambling, etc. The crowdfunding site committed to making sure that he received all of the money, even if they couldn’t recover it from the couple. Local authorities started investigating the couple for fraud.

And then it got really bad

This week, we find out that the whole thing was a scam from the beginning. The woman never ran out of gas. The homeless vet never used his last $20 to rescue her. It was all made up. The three of them capitalized on the kindness of strangers. The doubled down on that by concocting a feel-good story about the selflessness of someone who is down on his luck giving up his last thing of value to help another.

Now, they could have split the whole take evenly, and no one would have been the wiser. But apparently the couple needed more than $133,000 each (tax-free, by the way). And they were willing to screw their co-conspirator to get it. On the other hand, the homeless guy, who had supposedly been down to his last $20, wasn’t satisfied with “only” $75,000 – and by suing made sure that nobody ended up with anything. Dog in the Manger, anyone?

I think this is the basic reason that most criminal enterprises aren’t really that successful. Someone always wants more. And since criminals generally aren’t averse to ignoring the rules, they try to drag others down in order to move up.

Much of politics plays on this instinct by suggesting that the only reason that you don’t have more – whether that be more money, a nicer house or car, a better job, well behaved children, whatever – is because someone else has those things.

It’s not a zero-sum game

I was standing with a small group of coworkers one day, who were commiserating about how poor the pay was. I had an epiphany while listening to them share their misery. It occurred to me that if I wanted to drive a Mercedes, I needed a job with Mercedes pay. Nobody was ever going to pay Mercedes money to me for doing a Yugo job. So, what did I do? I didn’t look for ways to tear down the people who were making more money than me. I took it upon myself to start finding ways to increase my value to to the company. To make sure that I had skills that made me unique, and therefore valuable. It wasn’t a fast solution, but it worked. And I bet most of those guys are still standing around bitching about their pay.