Greed

One of the reasons people have problems with capitalism is that it encourages – indeed, relies on "greed".

In discussing this with my girlfriend yesterday, I recalled a Talmudic legend:

Every person is subject to the Yetzer ha-Tov and the Yetzer ha-Ra – the Will to do Good and the Will to do Evil. One day, the rabbis managed to trap the Yetzer ha-Ra and lock it away from humanity. With the Yetzer ha-Ra locked away, humanity was subject only to the Yetzer ha-Tov. There was no Will to do Evil anywhere in the human race.

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Everyone sat around being nice, and no one had the desire to do much of anything. Fans of Star Trek will recognize elements of at least two episodes here. In one, the Enterprise crew is infected by spores that protect them, and the colony they came to rescue, from deadly radiation. The spores also eliminated all negative thoughts and feelings, and everyone lived in perfect happiness. When the spores were eliminated, they realized they had also made no progress since they had landed.

In another episode, a transporter malfunction splits Captain Kirk into two people &ndash one containing only the "good" parts, one containing only the "evil" parts. Neither one was capable of doing anything productive. The dark Kirk could only indulge his animal pleasures and destroy whatever stood in his way. The light Kirk was a passive observer, too nice to take any action.

The moral (and Star Trek Classic had a large number of morality plays): The "evil" side of human nature is essential for progress. It has to be controlled by the "good" side, but it has to be present.

An article on Tech Central Station discusses intellectual property rights, and makes the case that you don't help third-world people by eliminating these rights and making intellectual property freely available to anyone who wants it.

It would seem that ownership of ideas is based in "greed" and making people share their ideas freely is a good thing. After all, greed is bad, and generosity is good.

To be sure, the initial effect is that all existing intellectual property will be freely available to everyone. The follow-up is that much less new intellectual property will be available to anyone.

Like people everywhere, people of developing nations can and do invent things. Indeed, when they immigrate to developed countries they are often among the most creative and inventive people in their new homes. The problem in developing countries is that there is little reward for innovation. In conversations with developing world businessmen, Sherwood found that they were well aware of the consequences of the lack of intellectual property rights. These businessmen often did stumble onto innovations, but rivals would soon copy them. In such circumstances, a smart businessman knows that putting resources into innovation and creativity is a bad investment. You cannot capture a return, and you have no property right in which others can invest. In the absence of intellectual property laws, innovation must remain accidental and creative work is for amateurs.

OK, call it "greed". But it's not going away. When people have limited resources, they will spend those resources where they get the most return. If there's no profit in innovation, there will be no innovation. Greed – or the sensible allocation of resources – drives invention when there's a profit to be made, and brings it to a halt when there's none.

You can rail against this fact of life. Or you can control it and channel it in a positive direction.