Vanderbilt And Rockefeller: A Personal View Of Greed

The topic of greed is as old as the devil himself and continuous cases of financial scandals in the corporate world only lends to the suggestion that no amount of books will be enough to cover every facet of this topic. Nevertheless, it is always an interesting discussion. Opinions on greed differ from culture to culture, from society to society and from generation to generation. Furthermore, the complication with greed is that what constitutes greed is defined on the individual level, which is mainly shaped by the individual’s holistic life experiences. One whose life experience may have been shaped by early childhood poverty can develop a peniaphobic mindset, thus, rationalize the goal to earn that extra dollar. Some might infer that the goal of the one in the case as just mentioned as being motivated by greed, but it is not always crystal clear. Personally, there are many ways I view greed. For the sake of brevity, I’ll discuss two of them in the paragraphs to follow. …show more content…
Slashing the price of oil by 90% or selling sea travel with meal packages at cheaper rates does not sound like the actions of one motivated by greed to me. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller could have made much more if they had charged more for their products and services like others do but they did otherwise. I can’t fault them for making a little profit because that’s what they were in business to do anyway. Now, considering that people benefitted because of their actions, I cannot say for sure if these men were either guided by a moral code, or that the results of their actions coincidentally turned out to be one with a moral virtue. As to whether these men were either strictly consequentialists, or strictly deontologists, or perhaps a mixture of both, will always be