Well let's not all run around chanting that it's "good" this time, like we did last time, OK?
What a pity to be informed merely by Stone or Voltaire or even Rand.
“Well let’s not all run around chanting that it’s ‘good’ this time, like we did last time, OK?”
Listen closely to what Michael Douglas says. “Greed, *for lack of a better word*, is good. Greed works.” He’s using the word greed to describe self-interest and the profit motive. Mostly because that’s the word socialists use—because it comes to them ready-made for propaganda purposes—and it’s not easy to get anyone to listen to you when you come up with your own euphamism. Better to accept the word, tell us why it’s not so bad, and thus redifine it.
He’s attempting to steal the word away, just like homos call eachother fags and we like to call ourselves capitalists. Perhaps it’s not good longterm strategy. Even for those who bought into Ayn Rand’s elevation of rational self-interest, it was tiresome to read fifty straight pages damning altruism and brother-love. Also, in Gordon Gekko’s case, he actually was greedy in the bad sense, which didn’t help his speech in retrospect.