Greed
GreedGreed… what is it? Greed can be thought of a movement that drives people to do things for money. A person might be motivated by greed or selfishness and not even be aware if it. People believe that greed can be something good or evil; it is even considered one of the seven deadly sins. Nothing in excess is good and when greed gets out of control it can become deadly. Greed can drive people to so good things as it can also drive people to do wrong and evil things.
Let be honest. Why do most people go to college? Well the purpose of going to college is to get a better education and be ahead of the uneducated. Why do people want to get a better education and be ahead of the rest? The most logical answer is that these people want to get a better education and be ahead of the crowd so that they have a more fulfilling job. No one wants to be suck in a minimum wage job having to work 60 hours a week just to make the rent. Greed is behind people educating themselves more extensively. This is a good externality of greed. Since people want to have higher salaries and better jobs they go to college and educate themselves. When people educate themselves we live in a fuller society where people are more aware of what is going on and we are happier with our jobs.
Greed can have bad aspects as well. In the movie “The Boiler Room” Seth gets involved in the broker firm because he believes that he can get rich quick. He is told that he will make his first million in one year. After becoming deeply involved in the broker firms he finds out that the reason he can get rich so quickly is because they are scamming people into buying phony stocks. He is then faced with a tough decision: stay at the firm and be a millionaire or leave the firm and all of its money. It is very hard to resist the temptation that greed can offer. In the movie “Wall street” we can see how Bud Fox and Gordon Gecko are motivated by greed. In both movies people are motivated by greed and end up hurting innocent people.
To summarize, greed can be a dangerous thing to play with. Like everything in the world greed can be both good and bad. Most students that go to college are driven by greed in a sense, and this is a good externality of it. In the contrary greed can lead people to do bad things and hurt other innocent people as seen by the movie “The Boiler Room” and “Wall street.” Greed can drive people to do good things as it can also drive people to do wrong things.