Is envy a good thing?

You know, sometimes you see people with "more" than you’ve got, whatever that may be, and you just wonder… "Why not me?"  That’s pretty natural, I guess.  The problem (or is it?) comes from when we actively envy these people… to the point where we covet whatever it is we think they have over us.  Good if we’re talking about a Ferrari, I guess… bad if we’re talking about a husband or wife (or, rather, a SPECIFIC husband or wife).  =)

Some people (and religions) would call this wrong.  But is it?  (Not the husband/wife part of course!  That’s kinda self-evident. I mean the "coveting" part…)

Capitalism would have you believe that it’s essential to human economic progress.  Envy is the fuel that fires the ambitious man and woman’s blood, and without this opportunity for economic wealth, a lot of innovation and initiative would be lost.  This is why some people oppose giving away AIDS and HIV drugs to poor people in Africa, because they say that doing this would undermine the rights of the inventors and the drug companies, and will be a DIS-incentive for them to continue working to create new, more effective drugs.  If even the inventors, so the logic goes, are never going to gain any wealth for their inventions, then why even invent?  Where would human progress be if humans didn’t have something to aspire to?

I wonder, though, if this is necessarily true. 

I mean, gone are the days when people like Thomas Edison or even Ben Franklin would invent things for invention’s sake, but I figure that many of the people who get wealthy off of HIV medication are not actually the ones "inventing" this medication.  The real inventors/scientists/researchers who work their butts off to find these miracle drugs don’t drive Ferraris.   I don’t think a single one of them even drives a tricked-up Hummer.

No… what I see is that some people have learned to exploit the system so that the true beneficiaries of the "drive for innovation" are rich people who’ve never invented a thing in their lives… unless you count the method by which they exploit the system. 🙂  Then they’re true pioneers.

So the scientists (metaphors for the rest of us) continue inventing (while we continue working) and we all continue to covet the mansions, Ferraris, yachts and whatever else the truly rich have, never mind the fact that the truly rich got rich coz they got people like us to work for them in the first place.

You know what would truly destroy these folks?  What would truly WRECK them? 🙂  It would be if everyone on earth decided that they would be content with what they had… that they would be happy with good food on the table, a loving family, free public education and a government that didn’t arrest them everytime they spit on the sidewalk or gave their own opinions.  Look at Denmark… as free and open a society as you’ll find in the world, where education, health care, and so forth are all taken care of, and are all good.  What if we all decided we’d like to live a good, solid MIDDLE-CLASS life, and that we were done "coveting" the goods we didn’t really need anyway?  (Who needs a Ferrari in rush hour traffic?)

Of course, if we did all this, the truly rich would go crazy. 🙂  I’m not saying they wouldn’t be rich… but they certainly wouldn’t have as much power over the rest of us.  They wouldn’t be able to exploit the very best and brightest minds, the ones that truly fuel their enterprises.  Of course, there would still be factory workers working for them, but if the really smart people in the world decided not to be slaves to industry, and to instead be content with living comfortable lives, then would people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, smart as they are, have been able to build up Microsoft and Apple?

Think, for a moment, of a radical world where the rich governments paid more for scientific research than for military capability.  Imagine how many HIV drugs (and others) could have been developed with the more than 300 billion US dollars spent in Iraq (an expense that, sadly, looks to have been ill-conceived and ultimately futile).  Imagine if all those smart people, the moder-day Edisons, got paid exactly the same amount, with the same benefits, by the government for work that could save MORE lives than they did today.  Would they not work just as hard, or even harder?  Or is the spirit of helping others and saving lives not as big a motivational factor as a Ferrari?

None of this will happen, of course.  The government will never undermine private businesses.  The really smart people will never be content with middle-class lives when they see the possibility of living in a mansion.  And the really rich won’t ever need to panic, because greed will always be the prime motivational force in society, capitalist or otherwise.  Envy may not prove to be good, in the end, from a moral standpoint, but it has already proven to be necessary, from where society stands today.

Having said all of this, I won’t be hypocritical and say that I DON’T want to be as rich as Bill Gates.  I am, after all, a businessman now.  Of course I want to make money.   Of course I want a better life for myself and my family.  I just want to keep reminding myself that envy is a bad thing in my life, because if I continue to let myself envy others for what they have that I don’t, if I continue to push myself to gain the capitalistic ideal of success, I fear I will lose sight of the person I want myself to be.  I fear that, if I ever have a family of my own, I will lose track of making them happy because I want them to live in an even better and bigger house, or to enjoy ever more spectacular vacations. 

Think about it.  When was the last time a three year old’s happiness relied on how big your yacht was?  For most, if not all of them, true happiness is getting a hug from people who truly love and care for them.   I wonder, sincerely, just how many of those people Donald Trump has in his privileged life.

Oh, but I forget, I’m supposed to envy him. 🙂  After all being a "Donald Trump" is what the whole capitalistic dream is all about.  I just wonder why I see more smiles in a day care center than I’ve ever seen from him, or any other rich person I’ve ever met in my life.