Charles Eisenstein

the paradigm of greed is rife with judgment of others, and with self-judgment as well.

Our self-righteous anger and hatred of the greedy harbor the secret fear that we are no better than they are.

It is the hypocrite who is the most zealous in the persecu

sions, your addictions, you will have a perfect life. Until then, you are just going to have to try harder.
In the same vein, the problem in economic life is supposedly greed, both outside ourselves in the form of all those greedy people and within ourselves in the form of our own greedy tendencies. We like to imagine that we ourselves are not so greedy—maybe we have greedy impulses, but we keep them under control. Unlike some people! Some people don’t keep their greed in check. They are lacking in something fundamental that you and I have, some basic decency, basic goodness. They are, in a word, Bad. If they can’t learn to restrain their desires, to make do with less, then we’ll have to force them to.
Clearly, the paradigm of greed is rife with judgment of others, and with self-judgment as well. Our self-righteous anger and hatred of the greedy harbor the secret fear that we are no better than they are. It is the hypocrite who is the most zealous in the persecution of evil.

Externalizing the enemy gives expression to unresolved feelings of anger. In a way, this is a necessity: the consequences of keeping them bottled up or directed inward are horrific.

In biology it is the gene seeking to maximize reproductive self-interest;

economics it is the rational actor seeking to maximize financial self-interest.

Based on the story of the separate self, both biology and economics have therefore written greed into their basic axioms.

An indication that greed reflects the perception rather than the reality of scarcity is that rich people tend to be less generous than poor people.

While it is tempting to conclude from this that greedy people become wealthy, an equally plausible interpretation is that wealth makes people greedy.