Greed, Justice, and the 25-Million-Dollar Question

Progress for the Sake of Progress

On a fictional tropical-island beach, a fisherman relaxes in the sun, leaning against his overturned boat. Next to him, a single fish glitters in the sand. A few hundred feet away, under the palm trees, a stereotypical American law-firm partner on her annual one-week vacation sips a Mai Tai while following the progress of a major deal on her Blackberry. After a while, she walks over to him:

- “Are you a fisherman?” the lawyer asks.

- “Yes,” the fisherman replies, reluctantly opening his eyes.

- “So why are you just sitting here?”

He points at the fish next to him: “Dinner is taken care of.”

The lawyer frowns and asks: “So why don’t you catch more fish?”

- “Why?”

- “You could sell it, make a profit, eventually buy a better boat, catch more fish, make more money, buy more boats, catch a lot more fish…”

- “Why?”

- “Well, ultimately you could pay other fishermen to work on your boats, and you would be so wealthy you could spend your days relaxing on the beach!”

- “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”

The Relationship Between Progress and Greed

Western civilization is caught in a global rat race. Obsessed with progress, we compete to build higher skyscrapers, engineer smarter computers, and extend life by means of science and medicine. On the level of the individual, we strive for better jobs, fancier homes, more extravagant vacations. Yet when we attain the objects of our desire they invariably fail to bring us lasting satisfaction; an impressive paycheck, a bigger house, and higher status bring us pleasure for a fleeting moment - until a new goal takes shape further away. This insatiable thirst, I believe, is a major cause of our unhappiness. We suffer because we crave.

Mostly unaware of our confinement to this metaphorical hamster wheel, we pursue what we think is our individual desire for progress and success. Like proverbial gerbils, collectively and individually convinced that there is a destination at the end of our pursuit of happiness, we run too fast to recognize when we pass the unmarked border between progress and greed. Indeed, we do not even know how to tell one from the other. Do they not both stem from the misconception that there is a causal relationship between material wealth and happiness?

A year ago, in Afghanistan’s central highlands, I met a potato farmer. Statistically, he will die at 44 and at least one of his four children will never reach age 5. His family starves if the crop fails, and their mud-and-straw house disintegrates in heavy rain. Despite my aid worker badge, however, I did not want to "help" this man. Because once we install plastic irrigation pipes, replace donkeys with cars, and build a courthouse in this remote outpost, will he have a way back to innocence? Probably not. Like us, the potato farmer will be blinded by the name tag saying "HELLO my name is Progress," and invite Greed in for a cup of tea and a rest in the comfortable crevices of his mind.

For Justice to Flourish, Greed Must Be Tamed

Justice, in its most basic sense, rests on the twin presumptions that all humans have a fundamental and equal right to resources and opportunities, and that all have a responsibility commensurate with one's advantage. In my opinion, justice requires a recognition among those born into privilege that their right to resources is no greater than the rights of those less fortunate. Regardless of religious and political creed, I believe that a true commitment to justice is a commitment to share: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Karl Marx’s utopian dream, however, has so far been the perpetual loser in the tug-of-war against human greed. Today, greed closes factories and ships jobs to countries with lower labor standards, it dumps barrels of toxic waste in the Arctic Ocean, and sells children into sexual slavery. Arms traders’ greed obstructs democracy and peace. Pharmaceutical companies’ greed lets millions die from curable diseases. And the lawyer’s greed effectively silences her gut, helping her believe that the game is fair as long as the law does not proscribe it.

The Pursuit of Meaning, Not of Happiness

But how do we distinguish between healthy ambition and unhealthy greed? How do we figure out what drives us? We may not think that we live in a hamster wheel, but how can we be sure? Maybe, just maybe, there is a simple answer. A few weeks ago, I was at a bar in the East Village with two friends. One of them runs a small non-profit organization that supports creative but disadvantaged young people; the other is a musician who supports a family by writing songs and playing the guitar. Our joint realization that evening was quite brilliant in is simplicity. At its most basic, it boiled down to the following:

- What would you do if you had 25 million dollars?

- Just more of the same.

Perhaps this is how we tell ambition from greed? If so, as lawyers, before we can serve justice, this is where we need to find ourselves.

• I think I'd have made more than the small revisions you've made. "Just more of the same" is a stopgap way of coping with the objection raised: it casts the burden of unimaginativeness back on your colleagues at the conversation, but it doesn't address the question whether that absence should really be thought a virtue, for example. I think there were opportunities to rethink, not just to rephrase, which were well worth the time and trouble to take, because the essay is a valuable one worth improving.

Eben - It took 6 months for the coin to drop: Now I think I understand what you meant when you said something along the lines of "given that greed and injustice are part of the human condition, now what do we do?" On my commute this morning I was marveling over the Dutch ability to combine social liberty with societal efficiency (I'm in The Hague), and something in that equation made me realize that perhaps the answer to the greed vs. justice issue is simply "law." That's how the Dutch maintain their equilibrium. You can't change human nature, but you can reign it in by means of the law. Now I think I can finally rewrite my paper.

09 Jul 2009 - 18:26:58 - AnjaHavedal?