Grrl Power #394 – Philosonomics
In fact it’s only due to people hoarding wealth that charity is even necessary, so you’re welcome, poor people.
I actually had a lot more written for Deus’s pitch about greed, but a few examples is really all you need to get his point. It’s actually pretty easy to spin almost any attribute as an aspect of greed. Rage, love, hope, they mostly have to do with either wanting something or having something taken away. Sloth is a bit harder as is Vanity and Humility, but Deus can get there. It just takes a little more twisting. You can play along at home!
I really wanted to make this page and the next one a double, but I have to be a little more disciplined about my time if there’s any chance of getting the book ready for A-kon, so the next page is the final part of the interview, then we’re back to Sydney and her usual antics.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I’ve got ninety thousand pounds in my pyjamas.
I’ve got forty thousand French francs in my fridge.
I’ve got lots of lovely lire.
Now the Deutschmark’s getting dearer,
And my dollar bills would buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
There is nothing quite as wonderful as money.
There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash!
Some people say it’s folly,
But I’d rather have the lolly.
With money you can make a splash!
There is nothing quite as wonderful as money!
There is nothing like a newly-minted pound!
Everyone must hanker
for the butchness of a banker
it’s accountancy that makes the world go round (round, round, round)
You can keep your Marxist ways
For it’s only just a phase!
Yes it’s money (money money) makes the world go round!
( money money money money money money money money! )
I like how science is connected to “trying to impress girls”
And NASA is linked to “Hey watch this”
I can see that.
So is the baser “Let’s try to put humans in the air Mr. Wright” “Why yes Mr. Wright. Let us do”
My real question is why “Gluten Intolerance” linked to trying to impress girls
I think that “quinoa” is actually linked to “glutton intolerance”. Though I’m curious as to why “fast cars” share a link with the same portal color…
They appear to be using the Portal system from, well, portal, because there are three blue portals and only one orange that I see.
‘ “gluten intolerance” ‘ with the quotes implies that “they are faking it, to impress girls who are equally faking it, to look hip” (hip is used on purpose).
Chastity? You ain’t getting any of my sex, it’s all mine. Now go out the room and close the door, I might be awhile. Where’s the tissues?
Ive said this in past discussions on Deus. Hes Gordon Gecko
Greed is good :) and greed will save us all
And greed will save you 15% or more on your car insurance. :)
I’d argue the route of Gluttony being the greatest sin. At first I thought it applied only to eating, but then after a bunch of research I found a few notes about Gluttony being an indulgence in food, drink, and wealth. When I found that, I started looking more closely. Gluttony, like so many things, is best defined by its antonym: the Virtue of Temperance.
That’s where things start getting weird. If Gluttony is simply indulgence and excess, then it’s present in almost everything. Greed is indulgence in “having”. Lust is indulgence in sex. Pride is, quite literally, self-indulgence. Wrath is indulgence in anger. For someone to be completely Gluttony-free, they would have to apply exactly how much energy is necessary into every single thing they do, and no more than that. There would be a time and a place for everything, and not a single atom out of line. Which, if you think about it, would make for a terrifying superpower, but we’re getting off track. The point is, while Greed’s out playing in the big leagues, Gluttony is content to lounge around in the manager’s office, hidden away from sight.
“Greed is good,” is Gordon Gecko’s concise restatements of the (deeply flawed) philosophies and economic theories of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Ayn Rand hijacked Maslow’s hierarchy of need and argued that altruism is a myth and selfishness a virtue. Friedman used that hierarchy to argue that all business endeavors had to serve the interests of the stockholders. That idiotic theory nearly tanked Apple. It was only after Appke re-hired Jobs and shifted their activities to serving the needs of ALL the stakeholders—especially the customers. Greed isn’t good; it’s just a self-centered, destructive repurposing of the needs of others. Your villain is trying to support his claim by redefining every type of acquisitive desire as another form of greed. I would be understating the matter if I were to say the man’s being disingenuous.
I seem to have inadvertently truncated my own arguments. Sorry. The statement about Apple should have said, “It was only after Apple re-hired Jobs and shifted their activities to serving the needs of ALL their stakeholders–especially their customers–that Apple recovered from two decades of “anything for the good of the stockholders” strategy and became a powerhouse brand.
And does Apple’s more-recent approach not serve the good of its stockholders BETTER than its former approach that you describe as “anything for the good of the stockholders”?
In other words, isn’t your alleged change simply an excellent example of the old philosophy being more intelligently applied?
That is, of course, if he IS a villain. If he portrays himself as a dangerous and capable sociopath with a solid network of quiet supporters, then other villains are less likely to try to make a name off of defeating him.
Then again, he doesn’t HAVE to be a supervillain to overthrow a country with the help of supers. Especially a warlord with a narrow and vicious world view who couldn’t even be a country on his own. He could easily just be a capable, wealthy, bored individual who sees creating his own country and managing the duality of “villain” and “hero” perceptions as a game to keep him occupied for a while.
Deus’s attempt to tie every emotion or drive to one center piece is interesting, but there’s a good reason it feels contrived. His model has one center, and it doesn’t work that way.
Basically, the primary fuel of the ego (sense of individuality) is friction with reality, or desire to have/be/experience something different than What Is. This “coin” can be divided into
1. A positive side: wanting something that isn’t there.
Deus has that side covered, obviously, with Greed, and variants like jealousy. Lust, gluttony, etc… fall ins this category as well.
2. A negative side: not wanting something that is there.
Here you’ll find anger, rage, disgust, fear, etc… Sloth can be thought of not wanting to engage in life.
Deus would have to do some serious twisting to explain those in terms of greed.
Another “two sides” derived from the above two are about ego inflation or deflation
– when feeling superior (ego inflated, prideful) one (often secretly or unconsciously) fears to be inferior.
– when feeling inferior (ego deflated) one (often secretly or unconsciously) wishes to be superior.
This… is really elegant. Does it come from a source I can learn more about?
Sorry, no single source I can point you to. I gathered this over the years through my readings on self-development and spirituality. Eckhart Tolle and Adyashanti are among the authors I feel most grateful to.
This analysis would put Pride at the center of the emotional hierarchy, then. Most of the ‘desire’ side entails either wanting it as a status boost, or out of the belief that you ‘deserve’ it–both are Prideful positions.
On the “Do not want” angle, this works in the same way. At this point, the only difficulty is the antonym Virtue of Humility.
Ego’s the center, in a sense. Although pride is often called ‘ego’ or ‘having a big ego’, it’s only one aspect of, or one way ego can manifest. ‘Ego’ actually means ‘self’ or ‘identity’. It is an obsession with self, and the act of identifying (or mixing one’s identity) with thoughts, concepts, images, stories, emotions and feelings. Basically my ego, also called my self-image, is built of all the stories it tell myself about myself. If these stories are like “I am greater than…”, then I’ve got a prideful ego. But egos built around stories like “I am such a looser, I don’t deserve whatever…” are not at all uncommon.
Regarding ‘desire’ being only for status boost, you’re oversimplifying and forgetting the drive of basic needs: I’m hungry, so I desire food; my family’s growing, so I desire a bigger car and house, and therefore a higher paying job to pay for those, etc… Even wanting to invite friends and throw a party might just be due to the basic need of social connection, which has little to do with pride.
Ego thinks it know better than Life what should be. Now, who’s gonna win this argument, ego or Life?
True humility is stopping this endless argument with life, so it’s actually not so much the antonym of pride as the antonym of ego. It is stopping both movements of grabbing at (wanting what is not) and pushing away (refusing what is) and accepting what life gives me in the present. Therein lies peace and happiness (which incidentally cannot be found by pursuing it, quite the contrary).
But anyways, all this doesn’t necessarily make for good comic stories, so let’s rather enjoy GrrlPower!
I thought a similar thing; any description of “Greed” that is more than just a synonym for more general “Desire” involves being greed FOR something, so a motive like Hate cannot be reduced to a non-trivial definition of Greed, since hate is not about something you can have or even comparatively have, but about some specific other not having something (regardless of what you have).
Wallpaper idea, panel 5’s chart.
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
Ferengi much?
Because the only thing BP did wrong was cut enough corners for their to be only one oil spill. Being motivated by greed does nothing to reduce stupidity, and even the kind of idealized enlightened self interest you are assuming is the norm still results in being willing to do grievous harm to the public good if the profit is great enough.
This guy is definetively a Ferengi in disguise. If not, he ought to get honorary Ferengi-ship.
And he’d make Grand Nagus in less than five minutes.
But yeah, the religion he’s citing is already Ferengi too.
ANTICS! ANTICS! ATTICA!
Read a book once a few years back that put the exact same spin on lust. Greed was lust for money and material things, etc, etc.
Someone’s a fan of Ayan Rand and her “greed is good.” Dues seems to have equate desire with greed, but greed is more like an excess of desire. Buuuutttt he’s clearly just trying to justify his own questionable choices.
With this ring is an exilant example of what he is taking about. The main character there has a orange power ring powered by greed.
You can find it here
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/with-this-ring-young-justice-si-thread-twelve.25032/
Anyone familiar with Laveyist Satanism? Their basic precept is the the 7 deadly sins are a means of control by the church. Essentially, they are our primal survival instincts, and thus are impossible to avoid. Therefore, you need the church to absolve you of your “sins.”
For example,
We have the need to eat. GLUTTONY
We have a natural sexual desire as a means to propagate the species. LUST
We have a need of things to ensure survival. GREED
We desire what others have so that we can compete. JEALOUSY
We have a natural instinct to prove our strength and defend what is ours. WRATH
And so on. It’s an interesting philosophy, if somewhat flawed.
Well, it’s fundamentally flawed, because the whole reason those are the seven deadly sins in the first place is because they’re perversions of necessary things. Claiming that they represent those necessary things is only true in an organizational sense.
It’s like the argument “being wealthy is just an extreme version of being poor. Being poor means you don’t have very much, and being rich just multiplies that a bunch of times.”
True, but Laveyists see how organized religions push it the other extreme for their own benefit.
Lust for example. Some of the most commonly held religions that sex as a horrible, dirty, vile act. God forbid you actually ENJOY such a thing. Even THINKING about sex is condemned. More specifically, the Bible states that thinking about another person’s spouse is tantamount to actually sleeping with them.
The point is, the “rules” are impossible to follow 100%. You WILL sin, and therefore you are beholden to the church for salvation. Laveyists see this as a form of control over the populous by the clergy. They rebel against it by worshipping Satan. (Even though they don’t really believe in Satan or God. They are fundamentally atheist.)
I disagree with enough of the basic definitions of the words in this post to make it hard to comment effectively on it.
“Worship” doesn’t mean anything at all in the context you’re providing, here, for example. You can’t revere or adore or honor someone you don’t think exists. It would be more correct to say they worship sarcasm.
Regardless, they’re definitely correct that a primary goal of religion is to instill the idea that your life comes with obligations, some of which are fulfilled via a priesthood of some kind. Rebellion against that idea isn’t particularly creative or new or anything, though. People have been doing that for thousands of years.
I will say, though, that the whole idea of religion being against sex in general is probably a bit more creative than most arguments against it I’ve heard. I mean, if your average believer really believed *that*, they’d start dying out in just a couple generations. The real point, as with all the saintly virtues/deadly sins, is finding moderation in responsibility. Historically, chastity had as much to do with hygiene as it did with sex, from a practical perspective.
Note: the purpose of this post isn’t to argue whether Christianity is correct or not, but to address some misinterpretations about it.
If you’re talking about Christianity among such religions (as your later reference to the Bible would seem to indicate), then you’ve been misinformed. Sex itself isn’t seen as sinful, but rather only those sexual acts between people who are not husband and wife. Otherwise, God would not have told- much less commanded- Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply.
On the contrary, Jesus proscribes looking lustfully at a woman. IOW, there has to be a willful desire, not just thought.
Exactly, which is why repentance and grace are so necessary.
No, according to Christianity, one is beholden to God and God alone for salvation.
According to Paul, it is best to live in chastity, but “…it is better to marry than to burn…”, the implication being that sex, in and of itself, is sinful, and that sex within marriage is a sinful second best to a chaste celibacy. The “…looking after a woman with lust…” being equated with adultery implies that even thinking about sex is a sin equivalent to physically committing said sin.
Much of the monastic tradition derived from the early Desert Fathers is based around the concept that the body and anything related to it is inherently sinful or even evil, thus one should refrain from anything that brings the body pleasure, which includes eating more than necessary to sustain life, wearing clothing (yes, the solitaries often went naked), sleeping, bathing and, of course sex, which was loudly denounced as vile and disgusting.
The not-bathing thing (which in some traditions became a point of identification, i.e. Pagans, Jews and Moors bathe and Christians don’t) and the tradition of mortification of the flesh come from the same strain of sinful-body-hatred, with the added bonus that self-punishment was also supposed to distract you from sexual urges.
And not only in Catholicism: many of the theologians of the Protestant Reformation held similarly negative views of sex and agreed with the above interpretation of Paul, and only encouraged marriage because of their profound distrust of monasticism.
TL:DR, “sex is a horrible dirty, vile act” has a long and honored position in Christian theology, and it’s probably a mistake to attribute a relatively modern viewpoint in a subset of a religion to the religion as a whole.
After all, Mrs. Grundy wouldn’t be a cliche if the viewpoint weren’t so common.
I’m familiar enough with it to know that it’s essentially Objectivism with ritual and ceremony… and that’s out of Lavey’s own mouth.
Sloth is geed of ones own time.
Vanity is geed of attention through ones looks.
Humilitty is geed of good fellings through not claiming deeds.
Greed is people voting for a web comic,
so its ranking goes up,
so its advertising revenue goes up,
so its author can afford to write more episodes for people to read.
For free.
(hint, hint)
…Love is not one of the saintly virtues. Each is paired to a deadly sin and none of the sins are tied to love.
Pride is tied to Humility.
Greed is tied to Charity.
Lust is tied to Chastity.
Envy is tied to Kindness.
Wrath is tied to Patience.
Gluttony is tied to Abstinance.
Lastly Sloth is tied to … okay I forget what this one is called but it means work ethic.
Diligence?
Yeah I just noticed that he mentions it. Still no love.
The whole “everyone is selfish and it is normal to be selfish and you should be totally selfish” ideologies (read: the off-brand Ayn Rand self-entitlement that tries to reject responsibilities) and the like tend to fall apart at things like love and altruism.
Rand hated altruism, but back then it meant something else… giving yourself to a goal or higher power than oneself, e.g. religion or the state. The idea of altruism meaning “be nice and charitable to those less fortunate” is a more recent concept of the word, and she had no opinion on that either way. She didn’t care how a person spent their money; after all, it was theirs to spend. (I just wanted to clear that up. A lot of people misunderstand what she actually means when she talks about altruism as a crime.)
You’re right, though. A purely Objectivist society like the one she espoused simply wouldn’t last very long for a number of reasons, which are covered quite well in a number of essays that you can find online, so I won’t bother rehashing them here.
He’s not limiting himself to a mere 14 attributes. :)
I was going to complain that the current Deus arc is going on a bit too long, but I must confess the man is kinda growing on me. Might be in the same way Skin Cancer and Athlete’s Foot grow on you though :p
Greed, Stupidity, Sex. The big three greatest motivational factors in the history of Mankind. Pretty much everything can be traced to those three factors.
Greed, and lust are both merely materialistic perversions of love. Both are focused on objects and possession rather than concepts and having. Gordon Gecko never quite figured that out, Deus hasn’t either, many people never do.
I am waiting to see how his comeuppance looks.
Don’t know if someone already mentioned this, but the second to last panel is incorrect you have jealousy when you should have envy. Jealousy is when you fear someone might take what you have, however envy is when you want what something someone might have. Its a bit grammar nazi of me, but it bugs me when jealousy is used incorrectly.
Is that the envy, or the jealousy speaking?
Well, that’s true actually. I was surprised to learn that since colloquial use doesn’t really make any distinction between the two. I should probably fix it though since he seems precise like that.
It’s updated.
I find one major flaw in his argument. He asked for the *greatest* of the forces, not the *most common* which invalidates his divorce argument.
“Let me to ask you….” Oops.
Don’t blame him. It is hard for aliens to pick up human speech patterns.
Oops. Spoilers.
Fixed. :)
Well I’m Jewish, so I can assure you – Greed has already been made a religion.
“In fact it’s only due to people hoarding wealth that charity is even necessary, so you’re welcome, poor people.”
…Yyyyeah that is not true.
I always hate arguments like Deus’ because you can rebrand any of anything as anything else. Greed is just lust for money. Jealousy is just a justification for sloth. Redefining everything to be in terms one thing is a useful tool in mathematics. In language, it’s a good way to confuse yourself and reduce your own ability to communicate.
In any case, Deus just dodged the question in pretty epic fashion. In essence, this exchange reduces to: “What drives you?” “Everything.” Which is about the lamest and most pointless answer ever.
It’s closer to the truth than we should feel comfortable about though.
Okay, I’m finding it disturbing that someone can say something like this without blinking. I mean, I realize that there are character archetype like Ebenezer Scrooge floating around, who not only hoard wealth but actively look to take it from the poor. But reality doesn’t actually work that way. There are a few ways to victimize the poor like that, but none of them have anything to do with hoarding wealth and most of them are illegal.
Homeless people aren’t homeless because their “fair share” was taken up by some rich guy. In no context is this true. Economies are not zero-sum games. I can see that in some sense it isn’t “fair” that some people are wealthy and some people are poor, but let’s not jump from that statement to saying that some people don’t have enough to survive because other people have more than enough. That is false, and perniciously so: if some alien race came, evened out everyone’s belongings, and then took away all excess, the result wouldn’t be a system that didn’t require charity. The result would be a lot of people with no effective way to use what they have, where charity would be even more important than it is now.
You seem to either not have put enough thought into what I might have meant. Or put a lot of thought into it, but started the whole with the clear premise on finding all possible faulty ideas I might have instead of thinking about where I might have a point.
One sentence you wrote there, “that some people don’t have enough to survive because other people have more than enough” holds true wherever someone works a full-time job, yet that does not earn him enough to feed, cloth and house an average family of four. While at the same time the higher sections of the same company get seven to eight digits salaries leading the company to one record plus after another.
Now I’m not saying that they must not earn more than their lowest employees. Far from that. But when the money to pay everyone in the company a decent salary would actually be there, yet its managing personnel decides the money to better be spent on themselves and bigger shareholder rewards. That’s exactly when we get to a point that the statement in question holds true.
And unfortunately that is still the case very often. Not necessarily with both sides living/working in the same country (in the majority of cases, they don’t), but even that still happens regularily. The working poor phenomenon is still far too widespread for any of us to relax and trivialise it.
Well, in a way, he’s saying while Greed is his primary motivator, all things drive him since all things are tied to greed. He also knows stuff like this riles people up.
He sure is thinking with portals alright.
I see two blue portals. HAX!! B&
Oh, hell, this guy’s me in another universe. I have the same philosophy to a ‘t’.
You know, seeing Deus’s responses in this interview, I’m reminded of an interesting concept. To conceal a great evil, it is often useful to show an ‘innocent’ evil.
For example, Deus is giving an image of being a stereotypical greedy corporate guy. All of his answers, even the ones that are fairly ‘transparent’ enforce this ‘I just want to own stuff’. It is an evil that people can recognize, understand, categorize, and file away. You can say ‘he’s just greedy, okay. Plenty of people are greedy.’ Maybe not trust him in a business deal, but other than that, he’s just an ordinary every-day greedy dude, with a side-order of being an egotistical wanker. Which we *ALL* know just goes along hand-in hand, and just reinforces the stereotypical image.
Because he matches this caricature so VERY much, I’m pretty much certain that it’s a cover for something else. What? I’m not sure yet. But it isn’t going to be something as simple and benign as simply taking over the world. That’s a goal you’d expect out of the image he is projecting, after all. I strongly suspect all the resources are going to be used for a purpose, and that country has a unique or specific resource that he needed for that purpose that can’t be found elsewhere.
Right now, I’m thinking more Damien Dark, to be honest, but that’s just a hypothesis.
I’m not sure if this guy is more or less greedy than Greed (FMAB).
Can we get a full Philosonomics wallpaper or poster?
A religion for tax reasons? Oh I LIKE this guy…
J.F.Christ, when I first saw this guy I thought would be the ‘big bad’ guy of the series… but now I’m loving him so much, I love how he goes back and forth between menacing and silly. I don’t want this guy to go away too soon. I’m kinda starting to enjoy his presence in the comics more than the main protagonists. :P
Do you have more of that flowchart? If yes, any chance you could post it like the currency-map?
Unfortunately no, just what’s in the panel. There’s not even anything behind him or the balloons. It would be an amusing project though, and an interesting programming challenge for someone to make a crouwdsourcable chart like this where people can add things and tag them with what associations they have. That would get out of control real fast though.
Greed is the reason why grinding-heavy games are so unbelievably popular.
Love would be a stronger force if our education system would be different. As kids we get sweets if we’re good, we get grades at school and university and we get money for working. Currently we have more than enough of everything for everyone if only it weren’t for greed, so unless we switch our mentality and allow for love to be the strongest force our world is literally doomed.
Deus is not pure Greed. He killed a corrupt King and gave probably millions of people a much better life, which puts him far into the Hero side. It currently looks like he is a good-guy-businessman, i.e. the kind of businessman who unfortunately wouldn’t stand a chance in this world (or our world) if it weren’t for the bunch of Supers by his side.
I dunno. Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark can hold thier own against the superpowered mainly because of the expensive toys. Same goes for Lex Luthor and Dr Doom. Xanatos makes it due to sheer unadulterated Chessmaster Skills.
Yeah, this is a pretty good argument. I’m kinda reminded of Al Pacino’s character in The Devil’s Advocate when he talks about love.
Kevin Lomax: What about love?
John Milton: Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate.
Yeah, we like to tell ourselves that we value love and life but our actions tell a very different tale.
How to test Deus’s assertion, create an experiment that can detect the differences between emotions and motivations. We have examples of two such detectors: Vehemence and Dabbler. One detects violence, the application of physical force with the intent to injure or kill. The other detects lust, strong sexual desires.
The existence of two such different emotional energy users is suggestive of a negative result (Deus is wrong), however to truly be a test we need to get a greed detector and a way to quantify and measure the three energy emotion types…. This is also sounding like a plot of a minor super villain, who kidnaps Dabbler, Vehemence, and maybe Deus (if he’s a Greed energy user) and try’s to use them in unethical experiments to discover the secrets of Emotion Power.
The first test would be to see if the Greed energy user gains any amount of power from violent or lustful actions in their vicinity. This will require many runs (and people) to be statically significant.
Futher refinements require finding actions that seem to be driven purely by violence or lust, with no secondary/tertiary greedy motivational drivers. The abilities of Vehemence and Dabbler to induce violence or lust in other could possibly be used to create scenarios devoid of greed in the those afflicted. Is Sydney greedy when she gets boobnotized on ascendent? Was the super stylest greedy when he got caught up in the Vehemence violence attack? Was he greedy when Dabbler lustifed him for a meal?
If there are any greed-based energy users, then they must love hanging around the malls on Black Friday. I think the original person to gain this power first appeared in the mid ’90s and used it to make people desire one specific toy and fight over getting it at all costs. He went by the name ‘Elmo’.
Deus doesn’t have a ring, but I think he falls into the ..ahem.. ‘spectrum’ of the existing lantern corps.
Red: Rage/Anger
Orange: Greed/Avarice
Yellow: Fear
Green: Willpower
Blue: Hope
Indigo: Compassion
Violet: Love
DC later added White: Life, that created all the other colors and Black: Death, absence of emotion.
It’s a better sequel to Wall Street than the one we got.
Deus for President!
Haha, Dave! People hoarding wealth isn’t why charity is necessary. Money is only worth what someone will give for it. Hoarding goods, sure, but hoarded money just makes the rest of our money worth more.
This is a pretty good analysis on a small scale
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/408/does-hoarding-really-hurt-bitcoin
A tiny point, but Deus is the kind of guy who’d be specific about this: What he described isn’t Jealousy. It’s Envy. The two are actually oposites. Jealousy is not wanting to share what you have. I can be Jealous that you’re eyeing my husband. Envy / Covetousness, those are wanting what others have. “I am Jealous because you Covet my wife”. You can Guard Jealously, but not Guard Enviously.