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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (13687)	3/27/2009 11:22:28 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24758

I had a conversation on greed with my mother the other day on another thread. I stood by the "greed it good" philosophy. She thought (and probably still thinks) that I am nuts. I lost a fair amount of money trading in 2003 that was attributed to "greed" by some. I countered that the reason I lost a bunch of money was that I got lazy. I believe that the real sin that is often labeled as "greed" ends up being sloth. My argument is that, if I had paid attention to all the signs in the stock market going into March 2000 and March 2003 and done my homework, I would have walked away with a lot more money. If I had truly been greedy, trying to amass as much wealth as possible, I would have got out of my longs in 2000 and out of my shorts in 2003. But instead, I believed my own bullshit and came out with less. Frankly, I would have applauded myself had truly been more greedy. And living in southern california, I don't know anybody who didn't know that the housing prices were absurdly inflated. And yet people were taking equity out of their homes based on those inflated values with crazy negative amortization loans and now they are upside down on their mortgages. Was it greed or was it just being too lazy to do the math? I think the world would be a better place if everybody acted just a little bit more greedy. Then I wouldn't have to worry about the other person's needs and me looking out for my own needs would keep yours' in check (and vice versa).

To: DMaA who wrote (13687)	3/28/2009 10:35:52 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 24758

Maybe we should start with a definition. Here is one definition: excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves How can we define how much a person needs or deserves and what is excessive? If a third of the world's population is trying to get from one meal a day to two, does that make everyone who has three meals a day greedy? Or do we say someone like Bill Gates is greedy because he has so much material wealth, far beyond what he needs to simply exist, without actually taking into account just how much material wealth he created for everyone else in the process of acquiring his own? I think you'll see just how difficult it is to draw a defining line between greed and "wholesome self interest" because almost everyone sees their own wants and desires as self interest but they look at someone else's and see greed.