Luigui Bleand: Greed Breaks the Sack

ROME, ITALY — There is a fable attributed to Aesop that has been told for centuries. A dog crosses a bridge with a bone in its mouth. Looking down at the river, it sees another dog with a bone that seems bigger. It does not know that it is its own reflection. It opens its mouth to snatch it, and the bone it was carrying falls into the water and is carried off by the current. It is left without the bone in the river, which never existed, and without its own, which was real. By wanting a bigger bone, it lost the one that was already its own.

Today I am writing about greed. When people are very greedy, the little they have, what they have for sure, they end up losing for being greedy, ambitious and covetous. Look, let me tell you: people cannot be like that, people cannot be so self-serving. Mind you: wanting to grow, dreaming of something better and working for it is healthy. What does harm is wanting without measure, never knowing when enough is enough, and seeing people as a means to get more. And I wanted to see how far the research backs me up.

To begin with, greed can be measured as a trait. In 2015, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Terri Seuntjens, Marcel Zeelenberg, Niels van de Ven and Seger Breugelmans published five studies to build a scale of seven statements, such as “I always want more” or “It doesn’t matter how much I have, I’m never completely satisfied.” In the first, with 6,092 people from four samples in two countries, those who scored higher on greed tended to have less self-control and less satisfaction with their lives. And in three games, with between 300 and 603 participants each, the greediest kept more for themselves. These are correlational data: they do not prove that greed causes that dissatisfaction. What they do show is that “always more” tends to go hand in hand with less restraint and less contentment.

Then there is the matter of stretching things too far. In 2002, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Carl Lejuez and his colleagues had 86 young people aged 18 to 25 inflate 90 balloons on a screen. Each pump added a few points to a temporary tally; with a button you could save them, but if the balloon burst, you lost everything gathered on it. The blue balloons burst, on average, at 64 pumps, the stopping point that gave the most points. But most people stopped short: on the blue balloons that did not burst, the average was 29.4 pumps. Those who pumped the most, though, tended to report more risks in their lives, such as smoking more or not wearing a seatbelt. There were only 86 of them, they knew the study was about risk, and what had been saved was never lost, only what you had not yet secured. Still, the authors did the arithmetic: past the 60th pump, one more risks everything on that balloon to gain a mere 1.6% more.

And what happens to the well-being of someone who lives wanting more? In 2014, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Helga Dittmar, Rod Bond, Megan Hurst and Tim Kasser analysed 258 independent samples together on materialism and personal well-being; they define materialism as putting the acquisition of status-conveying things at the centre of life. On average, more materialistic people reported somewhat lower well-being: a correlation of −0.15, modest but significant. Almost all of it comes from surveys taken only once, with no follow-up, half of them in North America; the effect varies widely from one study to another, and it is not known what causes what. So I am not saying that wanting more makes you unhappy; what I am saying is that a life centred on having and well-being do not get along as well as we think. For me, that is where greed begins: when nothing is ever enough and what you have stops being seen.

Greed, what is more, does not stay with the person who has it: it spreads. In 2014, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Kurt Gray, Adrian Ward and Michael Norton approached 100 people at subway stations and in tourist areas of an American city. Most first received an envelope from a stranger who, out of six small rewards, had left them none, three or all six; then each one split another six with a different stranger. Those who got zero gave the least of all, even less than those who split with no envelope beforehand. Generosity raised what they gave, but no more than equality did. According to the authors, equality leads to equality and greed leads to greed, but generosity only brings people back to equality. There were about 25 people per group, what was shared was small, and only one hand-off was measured. Even so, it is worth remembering: the greed someone receives tends to be passed on to the next person.

And here I come to the word that weighs on me most: self-serving. Being self-serving means seeing people as a means. It is that person who only calls you when they need something and disappears once they have it. It is the one who, whenever something is shared, wants the biggest piece, even when there is enough for everyone. It is the one who stretches a good thing until it breaks, like the owner of the goose that laid the golden eggs, who killed it to get all the gold at once and was left with nothing. We have seen it, and if we are honest, at some point we have been that way ourselves. So I will say it again: people cannot be so self-serving.

What gets lost is not only things. In 2019, in Scientific Reports, Patrick Mussel and Johannes Hewig had 59 people share a fish farm in a game, with another person or with a computer. In each round, each player took 0 to 5 units: if both took 2, the total was as large as it could be; if both took more, both ended up with less. On average they took 3. Those who scored higher on greed took more, also when facing a person, and the gap was larger after the other had cooperated. They were few, they filled in the questionnaire after playing, and the partner followed a script that took advantage in half the rounds, so that 3 is partly payback. And that, I believe, is how what truly matters gets lost: the trust that took years to earn, the peace of sleeping soundly, the people who do not come back.

So what can be done? First, know what is enough before you start, not when you are already inflating the balloon. Second, value what you have for sure: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Before going out to look for more, take stock of what you already have: your health, your loved ones, the calm of your days. Third, secure what you have in time: when something good is going well, enjoy it and do not squeeze it until it bursts. And when you share, share evenly: do not serve yourself the biggest piece just because you can. If someone treated you with greed, let that greed stop with you.

Think again of the dog on the bridge. It was well provided for: it had its bone and its road. And it dropped it for a reflection. That is what greed is like: it always wants a little more, and for that little more it lets go of what it already had for sure. Wanting to grow is fine; wanting without measure, at the cost of what you have and of those who love you, is not. Take care of what is already yours, treat people as people and not as a ladder, and learn to say “this is enough for me.” Because a Spanish proverb says it, and it is true: greed breaks the sack.