Making use of greed? (western)

[Cida]

Now, that's a nice idea. I don't know how likely it is, but it's a good thought.

“You get visionaries, you get dreamers, but Jonathan is also a realist, and intensely practical.”
Each of Ledgard’s projects appears to be animated by a single question:
What if human greed could be harnessed as a kind of natural resource, and redirected to mitigate its own effects?

Jonathan Ledgard Believes Imagination Could Save the World
His strategies for a more equitable, sustainable future range from practical and humanitarian to fanciful and abstract.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...save-the-world

[jonesg]

Originally Posted by Cida

Now, that's a nice idea. I don't know how likely it is, but it's a good thought.

“You get visionaries, you get dreamers, but Jonathan is also a realist, and intensely practical.”
Each of Ledgard’s projects appears to be animated by a single question:
What if human greed could be harnessed as a kind of natural resource, and redirected to mitigate its own effects?

Jonathan Ledgard Believes Imagination Could Save the World
His strategies for a more equitable, sustainable future range from practical and humanitarian to fanciful and abstract.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...save-the-world

I'd tell him, relax, God's in charge.

[ukrkoz]

Great idea.
There is only one problem with it.
Few things - human stupidity, ignorance and greed, have no limits. Tey are like cancer - one cell will just keep growing and growing, spreading, only wanting one thing - MORE.

Trying to harness greed is like trying to harness a black hole. It will simply swallow you. And nothing will come out.



Also, whatever that idea is, it is apotheoses to Western "gain or bust" culture, where acquisition of physical goods is one and only goal, at any means one can get away with. Silly things like conscience have no play here.

[Cida]

Originally Posted by jonesg

I'd tell him, relax, God's in charge.

So, you believe in sitting back and doing nothing, and that everything in the world is perfectly fine and will always be perfectly fine?

[silibran]

Isn’t unregulated capitalism “harnessing greed”?

Haven’t we tried this before with damaging societal results?

[purehuman]

I think that it's regulated capitalism that would be "harnessing greed".
And you're right...socialism does suffer "damaging results", especially when the rich take their money elsewhere, thus less taxes paid, which is what happens when you harness it.

Socialism only works until you run out of other peoples money.