Greed, a Forgotten Vice?
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Journal of Religion and Business Ethics Volume 4 Article 10 October 2019 Greed, a Forgotten Vice? Kwok Tung Cheung University of Dayton, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/jrbe Recommended Citation Cheung, Kwok Tung (2019) "Greed, a Forgotten Vice?," Journal of Religion and Business Ethics: Vol. 4 , Article 10. Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/jrbe/vol4/iss1/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the LAS Proceedings, Projects and Publications at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Religion and Business Ethics by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cheung: Greed, a Forgotten Vice? SECTION 1: INTRODUCTION Is the notion of greed popular in today’s world? The answer is straightforwardly yes. Here is a recent example. Daraprim is a drug approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in 1953. It has been used to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection which is life-threatening to babies born to infected women during pregnancy, as well as to people with compromised immune systems. As of early 2015, this drug was selling at $13.50 per tablet. Shortly after the start-up company Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired the drug in August, its CEO Martin Shkreli decided to raise the price to $750 per tablet.1 In subsequent interviews, Shkreli promised to reduce the price and claimed that the income would be used to develop better treatments for toxoplasmosis: “I can see how it looks greedy, but I think there’s a lot of altruistic properties to it.”2 This remark did not find much sympathy from the public. Strong reaction came within two days of the New York Times’ report on Shkreli. BBC News suggested that Shkreli is “the most hated man in America.”3 The Washington Post called him “[a] new icon of modern greed” and ridiculed his choice of the word “altruistic.”4 Greed is not just found in individuals; it is also systemic. The banking crisis in 2008 showed that “the present system relies on motives of greed and acquisitiveness,” claimed political economist Robert Skidelsky and his son philosopher Edward Skidelsky.5 Government officials also are not shy to admit that greed is a problem. Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve during 1987-2006, said to the Senate Banking Committee that “by the 1 Andrew Pollack, "Drug Goes from $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight," The New York Times, September 20, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-increase-in- a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html?_r=1. 2 Ariana Eunjung Cha, "Ceo Martin Shkreli: 4,000 Percent Drug Price Hike Is 'Altruistic,' Not Greedy," The Washington Post, September 22, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to- your-health/wp/2015/09/22/turing-ceo-martin-shkreli-explains-that-4000-percent-drug-price-hike- is-altruistic-not-greedy/. 3 BBC, "Who Is Martin Shkreli - 'the Most Hated Man in America'?," BBC, September 23, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34331761, which was concurred by Forbes a month later. Matthew Herper, "Martin Shkreli Won't Suffer Because of That $1-a-Pill Competitor. Here's Why," Forbes, October 23, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2015/10/23/suckers-that-1-a-pill-competitor-wont- hurt-martin-shkreli-one-bit/. 4 Janell Ross, "Martin Shkreli: A New Icon of Modern Greed," The Washington Post, September 23, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/23/martin-shkreli-a-new- icon-of-modern-greed/?tid=sm_fb. 5 Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life (New York, NY: Other Press, 2012), 5. Published by Via Sapientiae, 2015 1 Journal of Religion and Business Ethics, Vol. 4 [2015], Art. 10 late 1990s the American corporate culture had become corrupt as regulatory mechanisms were ‘overwhelmed’ by the proliferation of ‘avenues to express greed [that] had grown so enormously.’”6 In 2012 the then British Chancellor of Exchequer, Rt. Hon George Osborne, publicly stated that “in the years ‘2005, 2006, and early 2007, [there was] evidence of systematic greed at the expense of financial integrity and stability’ and that the mischief of key players in London’s financial sector had ‘elevated greed above all other concerns and brought our economy to its knees.’”7 In 2013, Mark Carney, a former Governor of the Bank of Canada, “publicly criticized the international banking community for failing to safeguard society’s economic machinery from the personal voracity of its entrusted administrators: ‘These abuses have reinforced questions about the fundamental values of people in the system.’”8 Whether the above statements about greed are entirely accurate or not, there is no doubt that people understand them, and many accept them. With all these and many other cases in recent decades, it seems reasonable to presume that people are concerned about greed in business and combating greed would be one of the major foci of business ethics. After all, discourse on American business ethics is fueled by so many scholars from Catholic or Protestant universities.9 Avarice, or greed, is condemned in the Christian Bible as “the root of all evil,”10 a point Pope Francis reiterated recently, 11 and it is regarded in the Christian tradition as one of the seven deadly sins. Therefore, it is expected that greed would be under heavy fire in business ethics. 6 Greenspan’s testimony regarding the Federal Reserve Board’s Monetary Policy Report to the Congress, given before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, July 16, 2002. Cited in Mark Slatter, "The Secret Life of Greed," Anglican Theological Review 96, no. 3 (2014), 482. 7 Statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rt. Hon George Osborne, Mp, on FSA Investigation into Libor, by George Osborne (2012). cited in Slatter, 482. 8 Mark Carney, speech at the Cardus Speaking Series given at the Toronto Region Board of Trade, May 3, 2013, as cited in Slatter, 482. 9 To be sure, many other religious or philosophical traditions like Islam, Confucianism and Buddhism also would like to warn against greed. However, I am describing the phenomenon in the US where those religions are not prominent. 10 “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:10. And in the Ten Commandments there is this one: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” Exodus 20:17. KJV Bible. 11 "The Power of Money," L'Osservatore Romano, 25 September 2013, 2013, Weekly ed., https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/cotidie/2013/documents/papa-francesco- cotidie_20130920_power-money.html. https://via.library.depaul.edu/jrbe/vol4/iss1/10 2 Cheung: Greed, a Forgotten Vice? However, most textbooks on business ethics do not even mention greed, let alone take it seriously. Sometimes greed even comes across as complimentary, because greed is widely understood as the necessary driving force for capitalism. Could this be the reason why there is so little concern about greed? As economist John Maynard Keynes believed, the motivational basis of capitalism was “an intense appeal to the money-making and money-loving instincts of individuals.”12 Eventually, that leads to the popular belief that "greed is good," as exemplified by people like Ivan Boesky and the fictional icon Gordon Gekko. In popular writings, greed becomes indistinguishable from self-interest and the consuming desire of the former is justified by the pursuit of the latter. 13 However, a moment of reflection suggests that this view of greed as a virtue in capitalism, even if it may be true, cannot explain the absence of discussion of greed in the field of business ethics. One would expect that the discrepancy between the popular negative view that the business world is full of greedy people running amok and the positive view that greed is a virtue in capitalism would generate a lot of debates. Such debates are, however, absent in the literature. It is within this context that I investigate the idea of greed in this paper. The aim and scope of this paper is preliminary. The aim is to propose an integrated concept of greed that is relevant and useful in the contemporary world in which business and capitalism are ubiquitous. In Section 2, I examine some notions of greed from popular understanding and from the literatures of business ethics and humanities in general. Then in Section 3 I focus both on the Christian notion of avarice as listed among the seven deadly sins, and the more Aristotelian notion of greed, namely pleonexia. The latter notion is absent in the literature of business ethics but still alive in the philosophy literature of Aristotelian studies. In Section 4, I propose my own integrative understanding of greed and situate it in our contemporary business world. Throughout these sections, the approach I take is reflective equilibrium.14 I start with examining some popular notions and try to 12 John Maynard Keynes, Essays in Persuaion, the Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, 9 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 293. cited in Skidelsky and Skidelsky, 7. 13 For example, Robert Pagliarini, "Greed Is Good: Why You Need to Tap into Your Inner Gordon Gekko," CBS News, last modified Jun 2, 2011, accessed July 25, 2018.