Greed to me can be defined as: An action derived from selfish desires.
Is greed an accepted part of etiquette?
Does it help communities more than it hurts them?
Why does it seem like people allow greed into their communities?
Do only people of spiritual faith believe greed is bad?
Has greed never been involved in the evolution of communities?
How would the world be different if greed wasn't a pat of it?
Isn't there a difference between innovating for necessity rather than lucrative purposes?
Is it greedy to want to survive?
Why should any people constitute equality if we are all greedy?
If we are all greedy nobody is equal to anyone because we all have values that put ourselves above another person according to our justified/unjustified greedy standards.
Shouldn't we just accept that we have superiors and let them do as they wish seeing as greed controls every aspect of life?
Wouldn't it be more prosperous if we invented and invested for social necessity instead of personal gain? Has it ever been tried? What were the outcomes?
Is there a point where it can be greedy to have faith in God?
Thank you to everyone who takes the time to answer each of these questions. I do appreciate the help in my quest for knowledge.
Well as Sunstone mentioned in the first reply, we could pretty much define all actions as being derived from 'selfish desires'. (Because who else bar the self actually acts?). This of course leads to the immediate contemplation of free will, which Ill touch on in a bit.
The interesting thing about the word greed is that it's already a morally loaded term. The intense and selfish desire for something that we commonly label as greed, reflects the very moral judgments that we make. Thus under such a definition or practical usage, the term 'greed' has an inbuilt guarantee of referring to immoral actions. It is the word we use when we refer to selfish actions that have 'gone too far'. The vice rather than the virtue.
You can test this the other way around in your own mind. Trick your brain into telling you how you interpret the term greed. By asking yourself to 'picture a greedy person', you will unlock at least a partial definition for the word in your mind, and a moral perspective revealing your own judgments (good and bad).
The real question is, in a world of selfish actions and 0 sum interactions, where is the moral line between what's right and acceptable, and what is wrong? What things decide that line, and how does it shift and readjust to an ever changing complex world?
I think that greed is a difficult word to use, for reasons Ive mentioned based on how it projects a judgment onto a selfish act rather than help isolate why such an act might be immoral or not.
In my opinion i think extreme selfishness can be a virtue, both to a person and a society. One only has to think of the great artists and musicians that through their intense devotion and focus have given the world so many great things. Equally think of the tireless entrepreneurs that actually better improve services and products available.
Notice how i used the word 'devotion' rather than greed to semi-humorously make a point.
You might say that this isnt greed. But why isnt it? You might associate greed only with things like food, money and wealth for example. But suddenly you've shown how you define greed through the arbitrary objects to be acquired rather than the nature/act of acquiring, which doesnt seem right. Yet again i think it simple shows how the word greed actually projects ones own judgments and preferences, such that greed only applies to say, food because thats what you have already judged to be a less than moral form of extreme selfishness.
The immorality of extreme selfishness happens when it directly or foreseeably harms other people and entities, harm in both physical and mental forms as well as the harming any freedoms and rights.
In a complex world things are not back and white, and most actions are always a cocktail of subtle pros and cons that can often be hard to disentangle. One can forgive the person who meant well but whose actions ultimately caused harm, as opposed to the person who knowingly cause harm through their selfish actions.
Another aspect of selfishness is of course honestly. To expose your selfish preferences to those around you is to be utterly transparent and authentic. In a world of lies and two faced appearances, such open selfishness might appear virtuous and quite morally innocent.
Finally (because this is already too long to have waffled on for), the issue of free will can alter how we look at phenomenon like selfishness and greed. Maintaining free will, greed makes sense in the way it throws blame onto the individual, much like with crime and punishment. But if we in fact lack free will, this judgmental use for the term seems unfair and misappropriated.
One could then look at selfish actions in a more scientific way, an economical way, assessing the patterns of behaviour that occur in different environments, the causes and what their consequences are. In doing so we might find hidden culprits to the problems of greed initially overlooked. Just think of the customer who buys the cakes and doughnuts placed near the door of a supermarket with a 3 for 2 offer on them. Who is most responsible for that purchase, the person (who might not have much control over their own desires) or the supermarket that created the set up?
In brief reply..."no" 
