A few months ago I had a discussion with my brother on how greed in western society, and even in economics, had changed so much, even just in my lifetime.
Dominant thinking with respect to greed used to be that it is an unpleasant human trait, and it is a remarkable fact about economics that, for certain very specific situations, individuals acting in a greedy fashion can make everyone better off.
We have seen this change to the bizarre idea that everyone, always acting as greedily as possible, in all situation, will improve everyone’s lives.
Of course, if you look more closely, you will see that there is an asterisk attached to this claim. In fact it is the rich, and corporations, acting greedily, that will lead us to the New Jerusalem. The poor acting greedily is not part of this deal. Thus we have moron Megan McCardle telling us that it is unconscionable that the poor behave as HBS teaches economically rational actors to behave, by simply refusing to pay off their mortgages, because a mortgage is not just an economic contract, it represents your very soul, or something. Unhappy with the reception her poorly thought-out rant received, she tried again with this where we are told (seriously) that people who refuse to honor economic contracts (poor people, that is) are communists.
You’ll note that nowhere in Megan’s paean to the wonders of contract law does she ever discuss such issues as corporations reneging on their deals to their workers, or insurance companies denying coverage…
Anyway, I was going to write a post on this thought, when I discovered that I’d been anticipated by this@ which states pretty much exactly my thoughts on the place of greed in the thought of modern policy manufacturers.