Had a recent discussion of “greed” with a libinlaw.
Her position was emotional, that all greed was bad.
She was livid that I insisted that we would be instilling the virtue of self-interest in our children and recognizing the systemic value of individuals acting in self-interest.
In other words, we’d be teaching them “economics”.
Greed is a negative word and frequently used to misinform the ignorant. For example, if you work your backside off to get ahead and make a decent amount of money, the government (and the pope apparently) calls you "greedy" On the other hand if you're a government demagogue who has never worked a day of your life in the private sector and you're calling for those who do work to "put some skin in the game" you're not greedy even though you're stealing from those who earned it. Likewise, if you're a worthless drone who by choice sits around, drunk, high, watching daytime TV, smoking dope and cigarettes, scratching off lotto tickets and squirting our dependent children to get a bigger check, why then you're not greedy at all.
The use of the word greed in the context that the pope and some of the posters here use it is an absolute moral inversion of the reality.