ThePainefulTruth wrote:
or force .... you use it as applicable and it can be applicable to all those you listed, it's a general term if we went through the dictionary we'd find many general terms, I honestly don't know why I have to explain this?

Harm yourself - Eating to much detrimental to your health, becoming greedy to the point of obsession, greedy to the point of willing to commit a crime to get what you want etc etc etc.

ThePainefulTruth wrote:
A lot of things are subjective, self defence is subjective we could be here all night going through things that are subjective but I've lost what the point of this conversation is if I'm honest, I suggest we take the official dictionary definition and be done with it?

Diamond wrote:
Most dictionaries I've seen are corrupted, using variations of the two definitions I gave above. They use the same subjective terms. Yes, there are plenty of subjective terms, like beautiful, which are necessary but only communicate a concept, not what is or isn't beautiful. If we can't use objective definition, there can be no objective communication. I offer my objective definitions above. What is your objection to using them here in our discussion.

Bula!

Greed, by any dictionary definition I have seen, is not to do with having or not having - it is to do with desire or wanting to have. You can be poor and greedy, you can be rich and not be greedy. How much is too much is always a subjective determination we must make for ourselves, individually, as families and communities and as nations. If we overstretch the resources available to us, we damage ourselves individually and collectively. But if a person (or a country) has become wealthy by their own hard work and resourcefulness, why should it taken away? There are already laws against bribery, fraud and theft. There are international laws to safeguard the natural resources of nations and there are processes by which these laws are revised and reinterpreted to provide ongoing protection against inappropriate actions against others. If we get rich legally, what is wrong with that? Would we really help the unavoidably poor by preventing those who are able to generate material wealth from doing so? Or by penalizing their success? I am not sure if I agree entirely with TPT's JFK quote about the rising tide lifting all the boats. It may not lift the leaky ones - but is the solution to that to put holes in the sound boats, or would it make more sense to at least try and patch the ones with holes and make them more able to float on the rising tide? I do hope for a more equitable world in future, in which the available wealth is more evenly spread - but I think we will only achieve that by encouraging and enabling the individuals of future generations to be more productive, not by denigrating those of our own generation who have achieved success. Some very, very wealthy people have contributed far more to realizing that hope than I ever could - and I take my hat off to them.

Thank you for your comments on this subject. I will not be commenting further.

At first reading this statement made me very angry. Then I thought, hmmm, thank goodness for people that value things other than material things. If they are considered bums then so be it. I will hang with the bums then.

Siti wrote:
I agree, but as we've seen even here, there are those who want to do exactly that--and they want the government to do it. We're not talking about not providing for those unable to provide for themselves, but to bring all the boats up, or rather down, to the same level or size.

It may be straining the analogy, but the leaky boats are the ones unable to provide for their basic needs. The rest differ only in size, and of those everyone has the opportunity to enlarge their boat in a free market society. When the biggest ones get bigger, it actually helps the ones in the smaller boats enlarge theirs, even to be as big as the biggest.

Did you ever think about the taxes and the wealthy? Those of super-wealthy status often call for an increase in taxes. Why? because they've got theirs to the point that the taxes are a drop in the bucket for them, and such raises keeps the number of those achieving super-wealthy status small. So, on the surface they appear to be beneficent, when in actuality, they're being greedy. They want to use legalized government theft to keep others down. And you'll note, the subject of a wealth tax never comes up, and people down here at my level, believe that it's wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right. We can fix it other ways. Let it also be said that not all of the super-wealthy are that way--in fact I think they'd rather enjoy the company.

I've never agreed with you more. Well said.