Desire for profit (broadly defined, in this sense I'd include wages and salary as profit), is a great incentive. It works for those with "empathy and enlightenment", and those without. Combined with a free market system it enables and encourages "people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another" (part in quotes from Milton Friedman).
And its not just an incentive to work, or trade, or invest. The prices in the free market system, convey information, and with the desire for profit incentivise people to work, trade, or invest in ways that produce what others need or want, in a way that is more accurate and reliable than even charitable motives, and certainly more accurate and reliable than the normal political process, which among other problems is itself invested with greed, greed for money of course, but also another type of greed, greed for power and control.
Which is not to say that desire for profit does not lead people to do negative things. Fraud, rent-seeking, theft, extortion etc. But more honest ways of profiting are typically less risky, and often more reliable in the long run, and the benefit created by the seeking of profit is far greater than the harm caused by the negative side.
I taught my kids to be kind, and generous and would have felt terrible if they had turned out differently.
"Kind" and responding to profit motives, are not mutually exclusive. As for generosity, if you have more to give (because you have worked to create wealth), then you have more ability to create benefits for others with your generosity.
Getting back to Sowell's point the profit motive drove men like Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, etc. to do a tremendous amount of good. Not just, or even primarily, with their generosity with their fortune once they had earned it (although that happened as well), but mostly by creating their businesses, and serving their customers.
(I know I said "desire for profit", and you said "greed". Greed, broadly defined, is essentially desire for profit (also broadly defined). But greed is commonly used more narrowly to include only desire for profit at the expense of others or in ways we consider negative. I avoided the term for that reason.) |
