elwoodblues

I'd tend to agree with that, yeah, at least to some extent. I don't think greed and ambition are identical, but they are at least closely related. And, yes, I'd put greed under the virtue collumn, for what that's worth. However, if it's applied irrationally, then it goes all to hell. Bilking your own company out of millions of dollars by screwing over your stockholders, in my book, certainly falls under 'irrational'. Working hard and learning about the market before investing would fall under 'rational'.

I would definitely call it, at the very least, an extremely powerful motive force in human nature. If it's harnessed rationally by the individual, then I'd call it a virtue. But, if harnessed irationally, just like any other emotion or impetus, it can quickly turn sour.

I don't like the word 'greed' because of the many negative connotations it has attached to it (unthinking, trampling, at-any-cost desire for money for the sake of having money). There was a push to reclaim the word, but it largely failed. 'Rational self-interest' doesn't have all the accompanying baggage.

This is a complicated issue, and I'm by no means a scholar regarding Objectivism. I'm not going to try to put words in the mouths of other people, especially not dead people. I've just found something that mostly works, that makes sense to me, and matches up with many of the ideas I had before I ever heard the name 'Rand'. Or 'Heinlein', for that matter.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

I'm jumping in here, without having read all the posts.

Random thoughts:

I don't understand what is meant by 'the scale of objectivism'. Objectivists (and objectivists; most posters here seem not to recognize that there is a difference between Ayn Rand's Objectivism, and classic philosophical objectivism) recognize that some things are not either/or but exist as more or less, on a graduated scale.

Ayn Rand defined 'greed' as 'the desire for the unearned'. To my knowledge she never wrote that she viewed greed as a virtue. She saw selfishness and ambition as virtues, as well as hard work and integrity.

But not 'envy' or 'greed'.

Keith.

elwoodblues

She basically coined the phrase 'greed is good'. She also never would have called 'the desire for the unearned' a good thing, in any sense. Something is not right here...

I think the definition you're referencing was the straw-man that others painted about self-interest.

Keith Russell

Elwood:

Oops!

You're right. Ayn said that 'envy' (not 'greed', as I incorrectly stated) is the 'desire for the unearned', and you are absolutely right that she did not say that envy was good.

Keith.