You hear people like Bernie Sanders say this all the time. “The problem with America is too much greed.
This is one of the most useless observations and here is why. Greed like Gravity is a Constant.
Gravity is a constant in any physics model. Greed like gravity is a constant in any economic model. In case of airplane flight, gravity is offset by another variable generated by the airplane called lift. Similarly greed is offset by other variables in economics, one such variable being competition, or risk. If the airplane’s mechanisms that generate lift are broken, or removed, or limited, then gravity wins and the airplane crashes. The same thing occurs in economics. If the mechanisms generating competition are broken, removed, or limited, then greed will win.
Now imagine that instead of a congressman, Bernie Sanders was an airline spokesman. Imagine that every time an airplane would crash, he would go on the news, and say that the cause of the crash is gravity. You would think he is a moron. “Well duh! Of course airplane crashed because there is gravity.” You would say. Obviously the airplane is designed to overcome gravity by generating lift.. So the real question is what caused the airplane not to generate enough lift?
Now imagine further that not only was Bernie Sander’s blaming the airplane crashes solely on gravity, but he was also proposing solutions, such as shortening the length of the airplane’s wings. We would immediately recognize this as a self defeating proposition, wings are in fact essential at generating lift, that which offsets gravity. Yet we, as the general public, do not seem to have as much common sense concerning matters of economics. Bernie Sanders consistently proposes self defeating solutions, that would only exacerbate the impacts of greed on our economy rather than reduce them, and we cheer him on.
