Greed Is Good

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Greed Is Good

I know you have very interesting views on it, greed. Greed, I’m talking of in the corporate context. We’ll explore many views as we go along of greed. I’m sure we would all … very curious to hear your views.

To use the word greed, what it means is you’re operating market economy with communism going around in your head. Only if you’re a communist you can talk about greed. If you’re a market economy, don’t talk about greed. Talk about better loss. If somebody is making a billions dollars per day, let’s tax him. $900 million you can tax him, and that will be distributed anyway, but enough to give him incentive to go on. Not to take away his spirit.

This is how capitalism is managed. Here you don’t talk about this whole corporate social responsibility. I think it’s funny. It is just an eyewash. Instead of that, the government, if the administration if it has the necessary sense, you can bring the right kind of policies where businesses can grow unbridled, but it will naturally benefit the rest of the society. This can be done with simple laws, taxation, and other kinds of laws. Business laws can do this. There is no need to talk about service. There is no need to talk about greed. Everybody can live with dignity, because if you are the receiving end of the service, you lose your dignity. If you are at the giving end of the service, you go to heaven. Both are wrong.

What I hear that guru is saying is profit is a good motive, and if you call it greed, that greed is good.

Greed is good.

That is something that … profit is something that..

No. If you look at the definition of greed, what is greed? See, for somebody who is walking to his workplace or his home, somebody who rides a bicycle and refuses to take him on the bicycle is greedy man. Somebody who’s riding a bicycle sees a man driving a Maruti car and he thinks he’s greedy, just single man driving a Maruti car. It would take me, his family, and my family in the Maruti car, because Indians are able to squeeze. A man was driving a Maruti car when a Mercedes or a BMW whizzes past him, he says, “Vulgarity of greed.” A man was driving BMW looks at the man who was driving a Bugatti and he thinks that is greed. So, who is to say this definition for what is greed? I am saying once you have chosen market economy, there is no room for that vocabulary in your life. You understand greed is the driving force, now it is for the last to manage the greed so that your greed benefits everybody else.

There’s an, in African lore there a saying, “When the lion feeds, everybody else gets fed.” So, if you’re a lion you have a big capability. When you feed, it is the loss which would make it such a way if you make profit, everybody should live well. Yes, I’m talking about greed, and service, and corporate social responsibility. I don’t know why they’re deriding themselves into all this.

So, stay focused on maximizing profitability?

Yes.

Tax appropriately, and let everybody grow.