Greed: Applying The Utilitarianism Theory

The Natural is a book about not only baseball, but all the little things that go along with the game. The main character, Roy is already 35 years old and is just starting his career in professional baseball. He is surrounded by numerous shady characters that influence him in a bad way and cheat him out of what he is rightfully owed. Baseball at this point in time is not a very lucrative job and that leads to a lot of greed among all parties. Throwing games because of bribes from bookkeeper’s was absolutely rampant at this point in time. This book shows baseball in a different light than many think of, as the business and gambling part of the game are amplified in this book showing the greed of many characters in the book and as a way to reflect

In the lead up to the current recession, when the real estate market began to fall, there were so many investors shorting stocks and securitized mortgage packages that were already falling, that the market simply fell further. There were no buyers at the bottom, and the professional investors made millions off of the losses of others. Beyond this, there was no real federal regulation for securitized mortgages, since there was no real way to gauge the mathematical risk of any given package. This allowed the investors to take advantage of the system and to short loans on real people’s homes. Once these securities were worthless, many of the homebuyer’s defaulted on their mortgages and were left penniless. No matter from which angle this crisis is looked at, the blame rests squarely with the managers who began the entire cycle, the ones who pursued the securitization of mortgages. Their incompetence not only led to the losses of Americans who have never invested in the stock market, but to losses for their shareholders.

What would you do for fourteen million dollars? In Carl Hiaasen’s novel Lucky You, JoLayne Lucks, an African-American veterinarian, and two friends Bode Gazzer and Chubb each win a lottery ticket. Bode and Chubb soon realize they have to split the twenty eight million dollar jackpot with JoLayne, and become angry because they want all the money. Tom Krome, a journalist for the local newspaper, is on a mission to help JoLayne make sure that doesn’t happen. Greed is defined as the desire, most of the time selfish, for prosperity, power, or status. Most of the time, greed is created when insecurities and troubles in a person’s life lead them to believe they can improve their life through selfish means. It often causes people to transform in a negative manner.

We, as humans, are not unique because we all want to be different. If communism is present in America, yes, we will all have the same products and paychecks, but we will still have classes. Whether classes exist in the form of race, education, or jobs, classes will always exist, so can communism truly eliminate the conflict of classes?

“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change anything”(Levitt 20). What professor Steven D. Levitt (a professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s dictum here is that the incentive has a lot of power in this world). And that the metaphor of comparing “incentives”to a bullet really speaks wonders to their strengths. They can change almost any situation by motivating someone to do something in a business situation, all the way to education fields. After many years of college, business and economics students are being taught how to be greedy in college. It is only a matter of time before greed is too powerful. Incentives and greed both have favorable and critical effects on individuals and the populace, but when connected together both can have dangerous effects on future selections.

The article by Thomas Cassidy, points out the instrumental role that greed plays in the modern corporation. Modern Economists have always seen greed as not only a necessary element in the corporate environment, but as also a vital part of the successful evolution of a public company. As the article points out, “Economists from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman have seen greed as an inevitable and, in some ways, desirable feature of capitalism. In a well regulated and well balanced economy, greed helps to keep the system expanding”.

Steve Carell’s character, Mark Baum, played a key role in this situation. Baum’s team consisted of young, sarcastic, initially skeptical analysts who decided to conduct their own real estate market research. They are the few who worried about the extent of damage this financial collapse would have on the common American. They decided find the truth, and ultimately they realized that, whatever happened, they would not lose since taxpayers would have to pay the bill. They were right. All those bankers who took risky bets on products that they did not even understand completely ended up hurting so many people. Actually in this financial collapse there was no deliberate deception, banks were as ignorant and negligent to all the effects of these

Just as a virus overrides the bloodstream, greed is a universal idea that infiltrates the mind, and is all-consuming of one’s thoughts and impulses. Greed for power is an age-old concept that spans from the earliest primitive leaders, through Ancient Emperors, to Presidents in the modern age. Despite a few detectable differences, Brave New World and Heart of Darkness express the same message through crimes of human nature regarding greed of power over other human beings, and the idea that the creation of artificial castes and social standing is immoral. Through characterization and development of the world surrounding the characters, both Conrad and Huxley are able to vocalize the idea that greed for social power is an idea that spans from

In 2007-2008 the US went into a recession, a financial crisis that has since then taken five years to rebuild. During that time millions of Americans were unemployed and faced many economic struggles which negatively impacted the real estate market causing a multitude of foreclosures. The reason for this recession was because there was no authority over banks and they were not being monitored properly. Banks were able to gamble with the finances of millions of people with no consequences towards their actions. The Dodd Frank Act Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was put into place to make sure that nothing like this ever happened again; The Dodd Frank Act implemented and set laws into place to make sure that banks and financial

In Ayn Rand’s famous novel Atlas Shrugged, society is crumbling. It is being crushed by government restrictions, regulations, and policies that are supposed to help the people but only end up hurting them to feed their own never ending greed. The majority of the citizens are out of work and bankrupt.

Utilitarianism: “The idea that an action is right, as long as it promotes happiness, and that the greatest happiness of the greatest number should be the guiding principle of conduct (Oxford Dictionaries).” This theory was thought up as far back as the 17th century, but didn’t become well known until late into the 18th century when Jeremy Bentham a legal and social reformer gave a powerful presentation of the idea. “Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains (Jeremey Bentham).” Deontology: “An ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether

As well as the the institutions such as the big banks that constrain the people of the U.S economy through their bad loans forcing people to take out multiple loans on their house, and fueling itself through these bad loans. This then sets up the smaller systems such as mark’s team and Dr. Burry to short the housing market and make their fortunes when it

When one hears the word “Greed”, the first thought that comes to the mind is the thing that one desires greatly and will do almost anything to have. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins. When people want all the resources for themselves and care more about gaining those resources rather than the overall well being of others, they are showing traits of greed. While striving for success is generally seen as a positive thing, being greedy is a negative attribute that can either occur from too much success or a quality that should be reversed. Striving for success is seen as a positive thing, but being greedy is seen as a negative thing in society. Many people have different ideas of greed, but it all leads back to one thing-hunger, not a nutritional hunger but an unethical hunger that can lead to many conflicting situations.

Numerous moral theories have surfaced in the past years. They have been widely debated by philosophers and social reformers. It is important to understand what these theories are because of their influential tendencies in the way people act, especially in making morally right or wrong decisions. Utilitarianism is one of these many moral theories. Upon further analysis, problems with utilitarian thoughts are revealed. It has been widely debated by many philosophers, including G.E. Moore and Immanuel Kant. Like these two philosophers, I argue that utilitarianism is inadequate because of its contradictory nature as a moral theory. It highlights the principle of utility in seeking the greatest pleasure, allowing egotistic and hedonistic actions to be considered moral.

The theory of Utilitarianism states that actions should be judged as right or wrong depending on whether they cause more happiness or unhappiness. It weighs the rightness and wrongness of an action based on consequences of that action.