Difference between greed and legitimate self interest

Someone close to me said I was greedy which honestly hurt me a little, I think that I am trying to better myself and my families life thru legitmate and reasonable steps. When Packer or Buffert buys a company nobody few call them greedy for doing so even if they are already loaded.

What does the forum think when does legitmate reasonble steps to improving your personal circumstances cross the line and become greedy?
 
AL

I think you're a bit vulnerable to that stuff at the moment and the next time some dill makes a silly comment like that tell them to go forth and multiply - after all, it will mean more tenants for us all.

MB
 
No problem at all with working to accumulate wealth for oneself and family, i dont think its 'greedy' at all. I have been accused of the same thing.

"Isnt one investment property enough?"

The problem i have is when the pursuit of material wealth is made in disregard of social or moral issues, on a personal or societal level.

The latter is the problem i have with the recent election result.
 
Greed, according to the dictionary, is about wanting to possess MORE than one needs or deserves.

Well, considering that humans really only need regular meals & shelter anyone wanting more than this could be considered greedy.

And anyone aspiring to better themself is also greedy.

It's a word invented to put down those people who wish to do better for themselves & their families, a word that puts down almost every human achievement.

Always_Learning, you really need to get out of Japan and back to a culture that recognises and appreciates those who strive. If you stay there much longer you'll be pushed down into a mediocre rut, abandon your dreams & hopes & live in fear.

If your family cares for you they will be encouraging you to be in a place that is right for you.

Cheers,

Aceyducey
 
my mum called me greedy because of my interest in investing a few years ago and I was gutted.

from time to time she's said the same thing... then I decided "enough's enough" and a few months ago wrote an 8 page letter outlining what I was trying to achieve... she finally came around. Probably shouldn't have had to do that, but that's beside the point... everything's clear now.

My point is as long as YOU know what you want and the reasons behind it, then that's cool.

Cheers
r
 
A guaranteed way to avoid criticism:
Say nothing. Do nothing. Be nothing

"So long as you are still worried about what others think of you,
you are owned by them." - Neale D.Walsh


The idea that someone chasing success is "greedy" stems from the concept of a finite prosperity, the idea of the pizza economy.
What is a pizza economy? Imagine all the wealth in Australia is a big pizza. If I take one slice for me, there are still 7 slices left for you, yet if I take two slices only 6 remain available, etc. Ergo...if I take more than what the others consider correct, I am greedy. I am taking away from what could be yours.

The above geared with a bit of victim-hood, makes up for a large proportion of the population model of thinking and it is not surprising to hear the wining and moaning that you hear and see every day all day long if you listen to others and ask what they think.

Reality is that prosperity is all around us for the take and we can create millions or not. It is our choice. Prosperity is not taken away from others it is created.

Ask yourself the following: How much is too much?
is 10,000 a month too much?
100,000 a month?
What about 100,000 a week? getting warm?
10,000 an hour? is that greedy?

If you think there is a limit to a "decent" income and that beyond that it is immoral or greedy, your thinking is no different from others only you have shifted the threshold a bit... but you still think that rich is evil and wrong and that above so many zeros it is wrong to progress.

So what is the solution?

Dig out all the bad programing in your subconscious and replace it with good positive values. Stop judging others and suddenly you will not be bothered but what others think or say about you.

Just some thoughts.
 
Many would be aware that:

a/ I am not confident that the status-quo (internationally, ie Big Brother America) is going to see out the current decade.
b/ I believe that gold/silver/oil (amoung other resources) could give the individual some very valuable negotiable currency, should my WORST FEARS be realised.

We gold bulls are constantly accused of wishing to profit from other's misfortunes. Not true. None of my friends or relies are taking what I believe to be appropriate steps, but to believe I wish to profit from their (potential) misfortune is wild fantasy. How hollow would such a "victory" be? It is my right to organise my own affairs and my obligation to protect my family's finances in any legal manner I see fit.

So just do it!
 
Last edited:
marc1 said:
Ask yourself the following: How much is too much?
is 10,000 a month too much?
100,000 a month?
What about 100,000 a week? getting warm?
10,000 an hour? is that greedy?

I like that marc1, you need to push the boundary and blow the thing right out of proportion to get a good understanding of what is possible.

I think 10,000 an hour is greedy, but what if you didn't aim for that, what if it just happened. Are you greedy because you get it or because you want it?

I'm greedy, I want more than food and shelter. The question is how greedy am I?

always_learning, you can deal with the crap from aquaintences better than from those close. Is it wrong to want to support yourself rather than rely on others?

This is a good thread.
Cheers
quoll
 
Once there was a man riding a mule. When he noticed that
there was a man in front of him riding a horse, he began to
feel inadequate and jealous.Then he looked behind him and
saw a man dragging a cart by his own labour.
When he noticed how hard the man behind him was working
and how much he was sweating,he began to feel better about
himself and his mule..
good luck..
willair.
 
AL , that's BS.

If you were going around and buying houses for half their value offunsuspecting pensioners about to go into nursing homes and then selling them for double their value , someone might have a case.

I had my own midlife crisis the day after my 40th birthday when I realised that unless I did something different financially ,life wasn't going to begin until around 65. I decided that I needed to change or I was going to get highly frustrated with my life and at some stage things could well reach a breaking point.

I suppose my frame of mind would be best summed up by Mark Twains saying

" Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did . So throw off the bowlines , sail away from the safe harbour . Catch the trade winds in your sails . Explore. Dream. "

I was in a rut and wanted to get out of it.

Luckily my wife was supportive of making a change and apart from a few initial pangs of regreting selling our nice new house we've had no problems.
At that stage we were both working and initially we used to spend most of our evenings with our plans. Now we 've got to the point were she been able to close her business ( self employed job) and now does most of our paper work during the day, and I'm spending my evenings either relaxing of fiddling with my share trading plans which is the next step in our wealth creation program.

Greedy ... no way ...

If I hadn't made the decision to change , and hadn't been able to follow through with it , I'd be a very frustrated , angry little vegamite at this stage.

See Change
 
quoll said:
I think 10,000 an hour is greedy, but what if you didn't aim for that, what if it just happened. Are you greedy because you get it or because you want it?

I'm greedy, I want more than food and shelter. The question is how greedy am I?

What is greed?
"To desire money for its own sake, and in order to hoard it up, avarice."

So why do you think that $10,000 an hour is greedy?
We get paid for adding value to other people's life.

I have two inventions in my head that when patented should be worth a fair bit of money. One of them I came up whilst sitting on the throne and keeping my left side of the brain working for a few minutes. How much will I get paid for that little bit of work? Certainly MORE than $10,000 an hour. Put to an hourly rate more like 1,000,000 an hour.

I hope you don't think I am being greedy because you see the money I will be (hopefully) paid is of my own creation and does and will not take away from your chances of making it big, in fact will add to the overall economy and if things shape up will even increase the chances you have to make a buck or two.

So to put it in perspective my prosperity does increase your prosperity. The more millionaires live in Sydney the better for Sydneysiders. So really we should be celebrating other people's success and not point fingers or setting thresholds for "financial decency".

PS 1 million an hour is OK but 5 million is filthy, disgusting, pewww :p
 
Hi all
I've been hiding away and thinking greedy thoughts for the last few months re-financing in order to buy another property.
Or;
I am trying to organise our financial circumstances for retirement.
I am trying to organise our financial circumstances so we wont be a burden to our families on retirement.
One could also say, it is greedy to expect the Gov. (people) to support us in retirement if we are quiet capable of supporting ourselves.

Just a thought starter. I wonder if all those people who are employed by somebody else, thinks their Boss is greedy because he/she has a business making enough money to hire them. Hope they think about that one really well.

My favorite is Bill Gates. He now has at least FOUR funds in America generating tens of millions for charities each year. Some of the recipients of that aid may well be starving, or in serious need of medical help etc

I know. For the next thread, lets talk about the definition of lazy. :eek: :D

Al. Do your own thing with the knowledge of right attitude, and let the others do their own thing, but I don't think they will pay your bills, or fund your retirement. ?!
jahn
 
Greed

Families are the worst, except for my sister-in-law we haven't told anyone in our family. Already, as I am a higher wage earner we are told to help our less well off siblings (Who have digital TVs/Foxtel/PS II and work half the hours I do). They also believe all debt is bad and would think that having $1m is rich (even though the property cashflow would barely be an average wage). We'll have some explaining to do when I retire before I am 55 (I Hope).

From friends and aquaintances you get the sideways look as if it is UnAustralian to make money other than by the "sweat of the brow" which I suppose is from our English background as my Asian and Mediteranean friends don't seem to see a problem with it.

I suppose it would be even tougher for those living from the proceeds of their invetments/trading. Once you reached a desired income it wouldn't take many hours a week to maintain your cash flow. I don't think it would be appreciated by many at parties to be told that you work 5 hours a week.

Off topic, like most my original goal was to get a semi-passive income from share trading and property investment equal to my current income. Although I am many years away from this yet, the journey is so interesting that I would probably actively keep investing to see how much I could accumulate. Has this happened to anyone who has reached their original goal? I can see people would see this as greedy but to me it get's more like trying to see how low you can get your golf handicap down.

Michael
 
We're all just as "greedy".

The difference between me now and me five years ago is that now I'm on my way to getting some of those nice extras in life. Back then I could not have dreamed it was possible.

And it's those people who are now the way I was then (not seeing any way that they could get somewhere to) who would be the ones to call me greedy. I'm getting things they will never get.

I think the correct word is envy rather than greed.
 
marc1

Why is 10k/hour greedy? I drew a line in the sand, it was on the wrong side. Your line seems to be bit further to the (choose a direction on the increasing side).

But saying that, I guess if you are greedy to point where you will rip others off to make some bucks, that's bad, but if you're greedy and it makes you think about different ways of creating income that are with in the bounds of the law and my morals then that's OK.

Hope the invention/patents does/do well.

My 2c
quoll
 
I'll get your off topic remark on topic.

mjanos said:
Off topic, like most my original goal was to get a semi-passive income from share trading and property investment equal to my current income. Although I am many years away from this yet, the journey is so interesting that I would probably actively keep investing to see how much I could accumulate. Has this happened to anyone who has reached their original goal? I can see people would see this as greedy but to me it get's more like trying to see how low you can get your golf handicap down.

Our original goal was to purchase property to pay off the mortgage on PPOR. We are currently there, we could sell all the IP's we have and pay out our mortgage. Am I greedy because I've change the original goal and the new goal is self funded retirement by age 40?

Maybe I am greedy! I'm also a child of the 80's when greed was good!

I'm sure the current goal will change before I turn 40.

quoll
 
Jahn, while I agree with your sentiments, I would choose different heroes.

Bill Gates hires so-so programmers (OK, I accept they were good when they left college) but the best lawyers in the world. His product has taken 15yrs to be passible quality but only if you ignore security issues which seem to overwhelm Windows.

Dick Smith, on the other hand, has an innate ability to turn "projects" to "profits" and returns a "larger than normal" proportion of his wealth to the community, and chastigates his contempories for being tight.

Speaking of corporate largese, would you be surprised that one single company accounts for 8% corporate charitable donations in Aus? The staff involve themselves directly in community projects and the "foundation" matches their dollars. This is not a top 50 company and it is possible one or two these do better but the maths say it can't be more than that.

T
 
quoll said:
I'm sure the current goal will change before I turn 40.

quoll
Don't ya hate "fat fingers"? Wrote a wonderful reply and it's lost in the bit bucket!

But, yes, your goals will change.

Ask any teenager and they will say they want to burn out by then. They write songs to effect of "I wanna die before I get old". (they were the teenagers 40yrs ago) Ask any 39yr old and they will sing a different song. Ask Grandad what it's like being 80 and he will tell you sure beats the alternative.

Don't get hung up on delayed gratification. There can be little sillier than a 60yr old retiree fronting the golf pro with his new graphite shafted Big Birtha asking how to use it. It's the journey that matters. The destination may well be not of your choosing! :D

T
 
Thommo,

Sorry but your pressumtions speak volumes in this regard, comments follow;

Bill Gates hires so-so programmers (OK, I accept they were good when they left college) but the best lawyers in the world. His product has taken 15yrs to be passible quality but only if you ignore security issues which seem to overwhelm Windows.

Bill Gates, I’m sure you are referring to Microsoft, hires some of the best and brightest on the planet as far as programmers go. Ok, there may be other programmers out there who may be brighter or ‘better’ in their respective fields. However be aware, in a world where Microsoft dominates the desktop these others, numbers wise, are the minority, believe me I’m one of them.
Security issues are something else again, Microsoft has any number of flaws, and they are exploited simply due to the popularity and widespread exposure of the OS. Are other desktop OS less vulnerable or are they simply less popular and thus represent a minority, which as itself represents no more or less security, how many people realistically run Linux? And in all honestly it is only a matter of time, Run an Apple, well ok maybe you want to do some graphics stuff and today that edge is already losing ground.
There is only one OS that has thru the years been able to demonstrate a consistently high security rating and you ain’t going to find it on your average desktop, well you might, but that’s my domain and it ain’t for the masses and you could do stuff all with it anyway, unless you were in my game which is unlikely and it isn’t going to give you any typical desktops apps that you would find useful.
I agree that a Corp the size of Micro$oft can afford to hire good legal bodies, so do IBM, Sun, HP, etc etc. I don’t understand the point you were making with that comment.

Dick Smith, on the other hand, has an innate ability to turn "projects" to "profits" and returns a large proportion of his wealth to the community, and chastigates his contempories for being tight.

Dick Smith, on the other hand can hardly be compared to a Corp like Microsoft, or any of the others I mentioned. Although he maybe well intentioned, his ventures of late have been rather less than successful, sorry but true, I agree his heart may be in the right place, however that does not necessarily equate to a successful business.

Speaking of corporate largese, would you be surprised that one single company accounts for 8% corporate charitable donations in Aus? The staff involve themselves directly in community projects and the "foundation" matches their dollars. This is not a top 50 company and it is possible one or two these do better but the maths say it can't be more than that.

I have no idea what you are talking about in the last paragraph, the rest of the above sounds like assasination by magazine article, and ill informed articles at that.

astro
 
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see_change said:
AL , that's BS.

I suppose my frame of mind would be best summed up by Mark Twains saying

" Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did . So throw off the bowlines , sail away from the safe harbour . Catch the trade winds in your sails . Explore. Dream. "

Greedy ... no way ...
See Change

See Change,
Very well said.
ab
 
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