Greed

Last night on television I happened upon a PBS documentary on The American Experience which focused on the birth and growth of Silicon Valley in California.  In particular, it chronicled Bob Noyce’s co-invention of the integrated circuit and how he grew a small division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument (Fairchild Semiconductor) into a giant which then spawned dozens of other semiconductor companies throughout this region (watch it HERE ).  It was a fascinating walk-through the growth of this technology: semiconductors, integrated circuits, microprocessors, etc (most of which I was peripherally involved with) … and the players that made it happen: William Shockley, Bob Noyce, Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, etc. etc.

Bob Noyce, after seeing dozens of his co-workers found their own companies … and become uber-rich in the process, and, being unable to convince his higher-ups to do the same for his employees, took a few key players out of Fairchild Semiconductor and founded Intel Corporation.  He and thousands of other players around the Santa Clara area became insanely rich as a consequence of the dog-eat-dog competitive atmosphere that developed around this and ancillary technologies.  To me this was and is Capitalism personified … all driven by greed (economic self-interest if you will) and the need to one-up your competitor in this high-tech race … and get wealthy in the process.

This story has been repeated many times in the United States … the steel industry, the car industry, the telecommunications industry, the computer industry, etc., etc. … all driven by Capitalist greed.   Ergo, greed can be both good and bad.  Obviously stealing candy from a baby is bad … and this type is one of the seven deadly sins.  But the kind of greed as described by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, where he coined the term “invisible hand,” is a good that few liberals understand.  He says:

By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he [the Capitalist merchant] intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

Adam Smith’s disdain for those “who affect to trade for the public good” is well taken and the results of such squishiness can be seen over and over and over again in the policies espoused by our current President (Solyndra, for instance).  Isn’t it funny how, generally, the people who become insanely rich in a Socialist society are generally found in the government.  Perhaps this is a corrupted variant of Adam Smith’s invisible hand.  This greed (avarice if you will) is akin to the candy-stealing kind and is what causes societies and their economies to rot and collapse.  I do believe we are currently knee-deep in same.