My ramble for the day...
It seems to me that one of the main premises of economics is figuring out how to make the pie as large as possible, thereby giving everyone the largest piece possible. The fundamental problem with this idea is that people behave in an unpredictable manner. Specifically, some people are selfish, taking whatever they can and screwing everyone else, and some people are exceedingly altruistic, placing the wants and needs of others first.
These opposite ends of the scale bring disastrous results on an aggregate scale, economically speaking. Greed, when allowed to flourish unchecked, brings satisfaction to a select few, but despair and suffering to the masses. We only need to look at the early days of the industrial revolution to illustrate my point. Altruism, when taken to the same extreme, breeds laziness. After all, why should someone work for less than they can make on a welfare check?
Somehow, in our unending quest to find a satisfactory balance, we've allowed both specters to flourish.
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