Hacker News Reader

Comment by snemvalts | Hacker News Reader

Greed is innate to humans and you can't even take it away with communism, people will still find a way to collect and hoard. The problem is the low interest rates from central banks flooding the economy with money.

View on HN

That's not an excuse. Lots of undesirable traits are also innate like violence, tribalism, etc. Does that mean we give those a free pass?

Exactly. We've got laws to mitigate or redirect any harmful innate traits that we've got. Greed, like violence, is definitely among them.

>Exactly. We've got laws to mitigate or redirect any harmful innate traits that we've got. Greed, like violence, is definitely among them.

And what about envy? That's clearly a big problem among commenters in this thread.

It's not. You're mistaking the will to live and prosper with envy. People are correctly identifying all across the world that centers of power and capital are objectively worsening their lives, and they are taking action against them in their own, perfectly justified self-interest. The difference between that desire and greed is that greed cannibalizes the existence of others to sustain its own existence. No one is confused. We're seeing a revolutionary period approaching that will be comparable to "The Enlightenment." Let's hope it happens because I think the unavoidable alternative is 1000 years of darkness, another longer, world dark-age.

I didn't claim it was an exhaustive list. I suppose you could include all of the classic "mortal sins", though I don't see the others as having quite as devastating social impact as greed and violence. Maybe envy or pride might relate to society's obsession with social media and celebrity worship? I don't think those are quite as easy to legislate without infringing on personal freedom of expression, though.

If you raise interest rates then people hoard money. How does that solve anything?

Some greed might be innate, but what we're seeing today with billionaires is not normal greed, it's extreme greed, something me (and many others) don't think is innate.

And where does "communism" come from? No one mentioned it here on HN nor in the article. People are so quick to label things, even if they are not even related.

In this case, Dutch people seems to had enough of expensive prices so now they are on the lookout for a solution. Just because this solution involves the government stepping in to adjust the market, doesn't mean that the Dutch government is suddenly "communist".

> what we're seeing today with billionaires is not normal greed, it's extreme greed

No, it's normal greed and, if anything, inequality is lower now than it has been in the past. What we have today is fat, comfortable people looking at billionaires and screaming greed because the billionaire has a yacht while they only have 3 cars and one massive house. Who's the greedy one here?

I was looking for data for inequality per country (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_...).

What location and timeline are you thinking of for now being less inequal? Do you have a data source I could look into? Cheers

Edit: grammar

Data of current inequality isn't very useful. I don't have any data, but I wasn't the one claiming things were more extreme now than they have been in the past. If I look at the UK I see even the poorest people have shelter, food and free access to healthcare. In the past the poorest people were literally starving and in very poor health while the richest lived in huge manor houses that would make even a billionaire blush today.

> if anything, inequality is lower now than it has been in the past

So, sorry for rephrasing it, your claim is that the poorest have better conditions than before (I don‘t know if that is the case), not that inequality has decreased. It is an interesting point.

There are plenty of people starving in the UK. Food banks can't keep up with demand. There are also the "new homeless" who once had stable jobs but are now part of the gig economy. Some are out on the street but most are couch surfing somewhere.

> What we have today is fat, comfortable people looking at billionaires and screaming greed because the billionaire has a yacht while they only have 3 cars and one massive house. Who's the greedy one here?

This is the weirdest straw man, isn't the entire point of the issue that no one can afford housing? What are you even talking about?

Sadly, it is inculcated in modern capitalism that anything is permissible as long as "it is just business"

I don't think it is greed. Rather, money and real estate has become a status symbol. It's just as dumb as trucks and SUVs being a status symbol among the middle class.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com