Peter Singer, an Australian-born philosopher who teaches at Princeton, created the animal rights movement back in the 1970s, and, more recently, launched a campaign to end world poverty. One can’t contemplate poverty without also considering greed, and that brings us to the clip above. Interviewed in 2009, Singer suggests that greed drives us biologically (as does social collaboration fortunately). Greed helps us survive and innovate. But there is also a point where it becomes pointless and pathological, and that’s what we have witnessed in the financial world. Greed brought us Bernie Madoff. But it has also brought us (my inferences) bankers who create a catastrophe one year and take record bonuses the next. And it has brought us to the point where our country has dangerously slipped off of its democratic moorings. Lloyd Blankfein, this clip is for you. Thanks Ted for sending this one along.
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Greed. Tantamount to proclivity run amok. And then what? Your enlightment most appreciated!
Let’s start with listening to what Singer has to say…