Self-Interest and Greed

 

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Go here for a German variant of the below English post.

Hier geht es zu einer deutschen Variante des untenstehenden englischen Posts.

I have written this post in April 2012, at a time when I was still leaning strongly in the direction of libertarianism. However, there is little in it that I would retract or qualify.

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While I consider this article by Dwight R. Lee a good read, I differ with the author's conclusion

that self-interest is not good or bad, but an unalterable fact of life.

I would argue that self-interest is good - and not bad - in that it is a fundamental part of human nature and as such a requirement not only for man's survival but also for his continuous improvement, materially and spiritually.

There are two aspects to my argument, the first, I have written about before. So I touch on it only briefly.

I.

Every human being is an individual, separate from every other individual, and must therefore perceive and cope with the world in a way unique to himself. Inevitably, he has concerns alone to himself. Man quite simply does not have the perspective of another person but only his, he does not live the life of another person but his life, and he does not have the needs of another person but his own needs. If he does not know how to heed his very own concerns he cannot but (a) damage himself seriously and ultimately mortally, and he will (b) lose the ability to improve himself and to make his best contribution to the improvement of his fellows.

The idea of freedom is essentially the idea of personal freedom, the need of which is based on the recognition of point (b) above.

[In the meantime, I have come to support a broader understanding of freedom. Personal freedom remains a central aspect of liberty, but it is part of a network of interacting nodes representing other requirements of freedom — like the need for and the rules of scientific, economic, and political competition, all of which modify the scope of personal freedom.]

The constructive and conducive aspects of self-interest are manifold, complex and absolutely indispensable for human survival and advancement. Unfortunately they are only too often swept aside by crudely equating the concern of the individual for himself with greed or other forms of objectionable misconduct. This habit appears to be a remnant of the times when the individual was constantly and  brutally bullied and terrorised by the tribal collective. Today, the ideological war on self-interest is part of the efforts to turn human beings into mere means for the ends of the powerful.

II.

The second aspect that is even more pervasively overlooked concerns the nature of human needs. I mention this aspect because it leads me to the conclusion that man must and ought to strive for ever growing wealth. If this desire for more wealth is crudely equated with greed (which is silly) then greed is morally desirable - as one might argue for rhetorical effect, while correctly speaking greed is bad, of course, and self-interest good in the above sense. In fact, what is bad about greed is that it represents an overdoing, a transgression of the right measure of something, an excess beyond the harmless or wholesome, whereas an excess of self-interest does not make conceptual sense as defined above, since it would imply a violation of self-interest by self-interest.

The crux: the way in which human beings adapt to their environment is by having and satisfying desires/needs. The greater the variety, variability and degree of differentiation of a specie's ability to have and satisfy needs/desires, the greater its ability to fit successfully with the wider environment. So the ability to constantly renew, extend and grow this ability is key to survival and advancement.

Now, what is wealth? Wealth consists of things and practices that enable man to satisfy his desires/needs. Hence, if an open-ended development of desires is an anthropological sine qua non and the key to continuous successful adaptation to a changing and changed environment, then incessantly growing wealth is just as important.

If man's ability to adapt to and advance in his environment is damaged and curtailed, he suffers impoverishment (relative to the unhampered presence of this ability), even to a degree that may well lead to stark poverty, misery, and death.

Truncating, inhibiting or fully precluding man's ability to develop and satisfy ever more desires/needs and hence to build up more and more wealth is quite simply inhumane. Not to mention that resource-intensive ambitions like comprehensive environmental protection cannot be achieved unless a high level of wealth is achieved and maintained.