Dear George,
Greed is getting a bum rap. To begin with, it is one of the seven deadly sins, so that puts it in the minus column from the start. Sure, there was an attempt in the go-go eighties to float the sound byte, “Greed is good,” but between the dot.com bubble and Enron, it ran out of steam.
Without greed, there would be no America, as we know it today, so we have to find a way put a positive spin on it. It is a marketing axiom that when a brand falters, you rebrand it.
George, we have to reposition greed as a “fiduciary trust.” When a multi-billion dollar bank buys stock in a corporation, the corporation is holding the bank’s money in a fiduciary trust. This puts the corporation under a legal obligation to do everything it possibly can to maximize its profit, by either increasing the price of the stock or paying a higher dividend. The idea is to achieve infinite growth in a finite world, which one writer pointed out is the doctrine of a cancer cell.
Therefore, it is not greed when a corporation screws the public or lays off half its workforce or moves its operations overseas. The corporation is simply exercising its obligations under a fiduciary trust. And this shines a completely new light on the subject. Greed is bad; a trust is good.
Now, I grant you that, “A trust is good” doesn’t have quite the zip as “”Greed is good.” But, hell, we can tweak that a little bit. After all, what slogan appears on all of our paper money: “In God We Trust?” It all fits together in a seamless whole.
Is not our relationship with God a fiduciary trust? We give him our faith and expect Him to maximize its return, hopefully with material manna.
Trust is growth; growth is trust. They are the twin jackasses that are pulling our imperial plow through the scorched sands of the earth.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
6:21:05 AM 
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