On Tuesday, I wrote that money is a means to an end.  It’s not the root of any evil, and it can actually help people be happy. 

After writing that post, I thought about movies and where I could find a vivid illustration that would turn these familiar “money is evil” concepts upside down.  After some searching, I found the perfect scene from a classic movie.

The scene, of course, is Michael Douglas’s famous “greed is good” speech at a shareholder meeting in Wall Street, (which you can watch in the video below).  In the film, Douglas plays a wealthy corporate raider named Gordon Gekko.  Charlie Sheen plays a young stockbroker, Bud Fox, who is desperate to succeed on Wall Street.  He gets involved with Gekko, who is ruthless and who Bud’s father (played by Martin Sheen) does not like.   

Bud is caught in the middle of this tension, but he pitches his dad’s company to Gekko with a plan to save it and help all of themselves get rich.  Things get hairy from there in a series of double-crosses best left for watching the movie. 

But the real juicy part of the film is Gekko’s speech before a group of shareholders where Gekko utters the now-famous line, “greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”  The speech offers a glimpse into the philosophy and mindset that drive people like Gekko.

Greed can certainly be bad, particularly in business.  When greed leads to embellished balance sheets and engineering an inflated stock price, it’s not very good.  (In fact, it’s just not bad.  It’s illegal in those circumstances!)  However, greed takes on this bad form when the sole focus of it becomes money.  But if you view money as simply a means to an end, and that end result is something that benefits society, greed becomes a good, healthy euphemism for wealth and success. 

This is why Gekko’s speech is so enticing.  Gekko suggests that greed–even a very ruthless form of greed–can drive inefficiencies out of corporations and the market.  According to Gekko, when greed cuts fat from corporations, it increases profits and creates overall market success. 

 

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