Customer Reviews

Greed: A treatise in two essays

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the most honest and intelligently written piece that you will ever read about greed. It focuses on bottom line issues and is a short read for those interested in American culture and Socio Economics. It is not a liberal appeal from the left, it comes straight from the middle, giving you the chance to discern and develop your own opinion.

Mr. Edney uses a a purely informative, non-judgmental approach, to outline the role of politics, corporations, social Darwinism, sociopathic behaviors and the evident decline of the middle class.

Are you willing to ask yourself some tough questions? Do you care about the greater good? You will be able to easily comprehend the degree of your own role in a greedy society, if you dare.

American society has bought into the prosperity craze so heavily that many of us have filed emotional bankruptcy in order to maintain a particular lifestyle, no matter the cost to our future and our children.

This essay helped me examine my individual role and how I sometimes condone greed as long as it helps me. That's hard to admit for many of us. If you live in America and you still care enough to have a conscience, you should read this.

Critics may dismiss the work as a superficial treatment of wide ranging topics, that include market economics, ethics, socio-biology, social psychology, et. al. After all, the booklet is only 72 pages, so a lot does get compressed. Then too, the many section headings with their widely spaced margins pad the remaining text. The booklet functions best as an entry in the long and honorable tradition of pamphleteering, raising critical issues of the day for public consumption and action. But, unlike typical pamphlets, Edney's text is neither preachy nor heated. Instead, the author lays out the case against our real national religion. Namely, the belief that it's the unfettered marketplace that produces the most, lifts the highest, and provides the broadest freedom for all. Against these Chamber of Commerce platitudes, Edney marshals wide-ranging evidence that the only guaranteed outcome is rampant greed and pervasive inequality. Moreover, recent statistics show these dysfunctions are growing. In that sense, the booklet functions as a crisp rejoinder to currently fashionable Libertarian claims. Perhaps just as importantly, the author would like to reinstate greed as a moral evil, which it was until replaced by the economics of rampant self-interest. Thus any economic system that runs on a variety of Social Darwinism, such as laissez-faire capitalism, would be condemned as immoral by revived moral standards. He's got a point here, judging from today's newspaper report that 35 million Americans are "food insecure", meaning they don't know where their next meal is coming from-- and this from the world's largest food exporting country! So much then for the market's capacity to humanely distribute its product. Anyway, the prose is elegant, the topic well-chosen, while the booklet as a whole offers a lot of the proverbial food-for-thought.

This is a topic both timely and essential. It is not for the faint of heart but should be required reading for those with open eyes and open heart. On the surface we are presented with a searing analysis of american (and by extension global) economics). This is an onion that is being peeled with increasing frequency yet Julian Edney states his case with a lucidity and eloquence that manages to avoids the apocalyptic hyperbole currently in vogue.

What this booklet helps me realise is that our present government has been adding socialist policies towards large private corporations (EX: Enron and most recently Fannie and Freddy) and removing any form of socialism from working families.

WHAT IS THIS GUY BLABBERING ON ABOUT??? There is ABSOLUTELY NO POINT to this text!

The author simply reiterates that there is a disparity between the top and the bottom and how it continues to grow! That's the point of the text, except he rehashes the same damn concept over and over and over and over and over and over for the entire 92 pages.

I read 8 pages and decided to stop reading! Nothing to gain from reading this book.

This "book" reads like a poorly written high school essay. Lots of unsupported assertions or cites to others who make unsupported claims.

You poor, poor lefties. Everything sucks, life is bad, people are mean and greedy, the hoi polloi just don't seem to be willing to hand over their personal choices to enlightened, smart, well-educated folks like you, who, after all, have their best interests at heart!

It is ironic, that conservatives, with their narrow, prudish, superstitious religiosity and mindless flag-waving always poll as happier than the libs! How could this be? Heck, conservatives even report more satisfactory sex lives!

Maybe the fact is the conservatives in general have no illusions about the perfectibility of mankind, and have made the decision to just enjoy life as it IS, not as we would wish it to be. Maybe we prefer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to some sort of collectivist utopia which does not now, nor ever has existed!