Reference reading
Greed
Pursuing excessive data, market advantage, output or credit at the expense of fair claims or defensible limits.
The data cabinet has room for one more drawer. The room itself no longer has room for anyone.
Excessive desire for gain that persistently overrides fair claims or defensible limits.
Growth, ownership and useful scale can serve legitimate ends.
How it takes hold
Each new collection of data, credit or access promises advantage. Separate acquisitions are justified while the cumulative claim escapes examination. Enough becomes a moving boundary.
Greed lets excessive desire for gain override fair claims or defensible limits. Information and influence can be its objects; scale alone proves no excess.
Privacy, contribution and opportunity become obstacles to accumulation. Costs remain with those least able to bargain.
Finding the distinction
Illustrative situation: a useful system could acquire more private material.
Too acquisitive: every possible advantage must be secured.
Fitting: purpose and limits govern acquisition.
Overcorrection: all growth is condemned.
Selfishness can protect a tiny convenience; greed centers acquisition. Wastefulness consumes unfittingly while greed can hoard.
Growth, compensation and useful scale can be legitimate. Size needs an account, not automatic condemnation.
Counterfeit of Diligence: Accumulating every available dataset is presented as thoroughness without regard to fair limits. Genuine Diligence serves a worthwhile purpose within defensible claims.
A response that restores something
Explain what is sought, why its amount serves the purpose and which claims limit it. Availability is not permission.
Consent, attribution and fair terms can limit gain; lost advantage does not refute those terms.
Generosity makes room for others without abandoning legitimate benefit.
Other perspectives
even to our avarice and ambition
Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography
Franklin recalls competing meanings of temperance that reach beyond consumption, widening the question of defensible limits.
getting so cruel in our avarice
John Ruskin · The Two Paths
Ruskin connects acquisition to treatment of others, rather than judging a project only by its size.
Read and compare
Which fair claim is additional gain overriding?
Fairness · Generosity · Integrity
These are constructive virtue readings, not a list of automatic opposites. This reference article does not score character or assign a vice to its reader.