Did greed cause the economic crisis?
We are all aware of the dramatic nosedive of the stock markets, which has eroded trillions of dollars from the value of US and foreign corporations, and is causing economic stress globally. A CNBC TV series suggests that a major cause for this situation, at least in this country, is American Greed. Others blame our government for loosening regulations and ignoring their role of oversight, as CEOs of now bankrupt Wall Street firms walked away with the hundreds of millions of dollars bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers. Listen to this excerpt from my lecture on quality improvement in September 2007 (4:09): Unjust Rewards: Compensation for Failure.
Is greed the only negative core value (of the five: lust, anger, greed, attachment/possessiveness, arrogance) that caused this crisis?
Can you discuss, with examples, how all five negative core values have played a role in creating this crisis?
Corporate greed caused the current economic situation.
In a nut shell, corporate greed caused the imbalance leading to the current economic situation. While corporations steadily decreased quality of products &services, to make higher and higher profits, they steadily increased prices until they priced themselves right out of the market of what the middle class income could afford or the price we were willing to pay for junk.
In the past, if you paid a little more, you usually got a better quality product but, NOT ANY MORE. Weather you pay a higher price or not, you still get junk. Say you decide to spend more on a shirt or dress thinking this time maybe I’ll get my moneys worth and it will last a little longer but, again NO SUCH LUCK. You take it home, wear it and the first time you launder it or send it to the cleaners, it either falls apart, shrivels up or all the buttons fall off. If you buy a vacuum cleaner or electronic device and it actually works when you get it home, with poor quality parts, it only lasts for half the life things use to or until right after the warranty runs out. Then if you are lucky enough to have purchased something that lasts that long and lucky enough to get a live person, who speaks some form of understandable English, to help you with parts or service, they tell you the product is obsolete and parts and service are no longer available. It’s all becoming disposable crap designed to make you have to purchase the same product again and again.
Service? Ha, that’s another joke I could fill a page with but, won’t as we all know how that has been going. Besides what I mentioned above, we all know, you can always seem to find the person to take your money in a store or pay your bill in a restaurant but, have a question or need something and no-one can be found. If you are able to corner someone, they haven’t a clue or are just standing around on their cell phone waiting to collect their paycheck. It’s sad that we now have to pay that price, for the extra buck companies make by hiring new people at minimum wage rather than keeping the conscientious hard working employee that will get my return business or when they think eye candy rather than service, is more important.
One way the government may be able to help the economy might be for them to step in and put a cap on the percentage of profit companies can make on products and services according to a standard or on the actual cost of what it takes to produce a product, to restore a balance. Unless something is done or some sort of minimum standards are set, nothing will change. The average American citizen is a lot smarter than you give us credit for and we’re fed up with way things have gotten so, wise up.
We also need to oust the evil that has taken over our media and reinstall morals, ethics, honesty, pride and honor in a hard days work back into our children. Even if it takes a light flop on the butt now and then to get their attention. Yes, a flop on the butt. There is a big difference between abuse and discipline and a light pat on the hand or butt, done thru love, never hurt anyone. Children that grow up feeling unloved with no structure or discipline in their lives are usually the ones who grow up selfish and self centered with no respect for their elders, or anyone for that matter and are more likely to be the ones to kill policemen, their parents, fellow students or bully, berate and badger someone else into that state of mind. We are tired of people who were never around or have never raised a child telling us how to do it, when we already know mild punishment, now and then, for wrong doing or bad behavior, along with plenty of love is a lot better than raising children with no manors who grow up to be animals with no respect for themselves or live in general.
Most of us are not asking for a lot. We just want what greed and the selfish will of a few have taken away from us. We want our children, quality of life and value for our money returned to us. And, some of us would also appreciate a warm place to have a darn cigarette in peace if it makes us happy and we choose to. That’s all.
What spurned the current economic crisis, considering the power of the US economy, infrastructure and the fact we shouldn’t even really be in such a position?
The simple answer is greed. A smooth talking politician will try to tell you it’s simply market forces at work and things would magically get better.
http://actionnooz.com/news/?p=1889
Greed itself is a negative term.Greed has no barriers.It is destriuctive and demoralizes human values.Once the human values are lost then there is no meaning in life.The degree of greed can vary by person to person,organization to organization,yet….its greed.It is one of the self destrictive negative core values.
Wow,54 comments on greed cause the economic crisis.That’s great.It shows little bit thinking of people comments more on negative core values than positive core values.This discussion was pretty good.I appreciate all the guys who participated in the blog discussion.I agree with swathy’s point that greed comes naturally to a person depends on human virtue. Nikki’s point about the CEO’s is quite interesting.Everyone has approached with they own idea and informative.
Greed knows no ethnic or regional boundaries. Greed is a human virtue which is satisfied only if there is a means to satisfy the gluttony. It is not an exception to a single society(here American).
Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals. The institution here, which is the government has an endowed responsibility of protecting the public interest.
In a capatilistic and free economy, given an opportunity there would be scores of unethical Enterprenuers willing to make business through bad practices. The blame cannot be made on the people who took incorrect decisions but should be on the single entity which is supposed to regulate the economy for allowing these bad practices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institution
Good point, Swathy. Do you really mean that “greed is a human virtue?”
PC
I considered virtue as an inherent nature of humans. Greed comes naturally to a person but may differ in the degree of attachment to one’s own self.
The following article is a perfect example of not only greed but also lust, attachment, and arrogance. It discusses the high pay that some CEO’s are receiving while the company is having cutbacks and layoffs. A CEO who can take millions in pay while laying off hard working people is self serving and is performing actions driven by only core values. This interesting thing is this article discusses pay levels and cutbacks from 2001 and 2002. The same trend that is still going on today! This economic crisis has been brewing for some time it seems. Societies lack of morals and accountability is partially what has allowed this to take place. People get too busy, too wrapped up in themselves, and too greed to see what is really going on before it becomes a national crisis. An interesting quote from this article “CEO pay packages were just 200 times what the average worker made in 2002” shows the amount of greed in corporate America.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/136574_ceopay26.html
Here is yet another article that highlights the actions of negative core values in the CEO’s of corporate America. In this article it discusses the high pay these executives receive while neglecting to take care of the workers first. It discusses how some of the companies with the most under-funded pensions are run by CEO’s being paid in the millions. Not only is it bad enough that the employees are being short-changed now, this shows that even their futures will be affected by the greed of those running the company.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P119362.asp
Verying informative articles Nikki, but don’t the CEO’s report to a Board of Directors. So if the CEO’s have these negative core values, the Board must approve of the CEO’s action or they would get rid of the CEO
You are so right Roy. The board of directors have to live by the same standards, or in this case lack of, as the CEO or they would not allow the CEO to run the company. Usually the lack of integrity comes straight from the top in the company. It is hard for a company to display purposeful actions when the leaders are not. When leading by example is bad examples it tends to spread company wide. People with high morals and values usually will not continue to work for a company lead by someone with lack of morals and values.
Yes, Nikki … and this brings the number of comments to 400 …
This does not suggest that quantity trumps quality, but flow requires volume to support navigation …
PC