the new greed

(I've said this before, but maybe I can make more sense this time.)

There is a new kind of greed in evidence.

I'm not talking about food. Not talking about money or material things. Not really talking (directly) about power.

Well, yeah, it's about power, and it's indirectly about the rest, but we've learned to hide all those obviously evil greeds from ourselves.

Bill Gates and company, back around the y2k fuss, started a publicity campaign called "Freedom to Innovate". (Links to this kind of stuff tend to disappear as the people who pull these gaffs realize what they've done in public.)

The first time I saw Microsoft waiving the US flag proudly on their web site and demanding their (not our) freedom to innovate, calling the campaign "grassroots", pretending that this was what "the people" wanted, I about fell out of my chair.

At the time I was avoiding blogging like the plague it is. But I sure wanted to jump all over their "Freedom to Innovate Network" and ask

Where is MY freedom to innovate? I have an OS and a runtime and an application paradigm that make the Mac OS in all its expressions look pale and tired. (Should be implicit that Microsoft's software was not even in the same game.)

Fiscal realities are keeping that locked up in my head. Those fiscal realities include Microsoft's anti-competitive behaviors.

You've had your freedom to innovate, you've had it all over the map, and you've blown it in a non-deterministic loop. (Random. Random.) You've had your turn.

Where's my turn?

Well, Gates's blind spot there could be viewed as evidence that he is, in fact, a geek. Hubris. The assumption that, just because it makes sense to you it must be logical to everyone.

And there is the greed:

I want to do it all.

And the reasoning behind the greed:

My thoughts are God's thoughts.

Okay, no one in their right minds is going to be that blatant. How about this:

I understand what is right and wrong.

Actually, that's not a bad point of view. We all have to believe that to a certain extent. It's the applying the logic of sequence to that when we only have the first example (close to) correct.

This is the greed

• To want what is inside our own head to apply to everyone else. 
• To want to justify ourselves by (1) justifying our understanding of the world around us (our religion, really) by (2) making it apply to everyone else.

Incidentally, this is not what missionary work is supposed to be all about, even though evangelism is often (mostly, in the present tense?) misunderstood to be the attempt to impose one's personal religion on the rest of the world.

What does this have to do with the economy?

Well, it's the wanting to do it all. The unwillingness to share the "jobs that matter" (whatever we perceive them to be) with other people.

The thing that is most scarce in our current economy is not food, not material stuff.

The thing that is scarcest is jobs.

Now you know why.