Greed

I was mulling over some recent events last night when I realized something: human beings are inherently greedy. Ohh, shocker! I know, this is something that has been known for ages. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if looked at from the point of view of greediness, a lot of confusing recent events (specifically, negative events) can be explained. Look at the market here in Agrabah. For those of you not in the know, let me go over what's happened.

OK, so this guy named Garamonde had a stall in the market on Seale St. You know, the one where I first met Jasmine. Garamonde decided that he was going to give up the sale of textiles and start selling something new called Silstens. No one really knew what a Silsten was, but they were selling for the western equivalent of $80.00 per cubit (about 0.8 meters). Obviously, they must have been pretty useful, or beautiful, or something, because they were gosh darn valuable. So people started buying Silstens in droves. Problem was, no one had actually seen a single Silsten. What they were actually buying were guarantees for Silstens when the stock became available (in about six months, or so Garamonde told people). As more people bought Silstens, their price went up. Then people realized they could turn a profit on the Silstens they'd already bought, so a big market sprang up for buying, selling, and trading Silstens. The Sultan, who lives up in the palace, heard about this, so he decided to invest in a whole bunch of Silstens. Since they were being bought for the palace, people decided they could charge whatever they wanted for Silstens, as the Sultan has plenty of money.

You can probably see where this is going. Silsten, it turns out, is a type of rope made from plant fibres, and actually worth about about 5% of what people were paying for them. Suddenly, no one wanted Silstens any more. The Sultan, who had invested much more than we previously knew in Silstens, suddenly owed a lot of people a lot of money, and had run out of both credit and credibility. Suddenly, being a street rat seemed a lot nicer than having to pay for your food. I got some heavy competition, and for a while, Abu and I were kind of tight on food.

Things are evening out now, but think about it. This was all caused by greed. If Garamonde hadn't been so risky with his sale of Silstens, and if everyone hadn't wanted Silstens for themselves without even knowing what they were getting into, this whole thing could have been avoided.

Greed is defined (by yours truly) as wanting more than is strictly necessary. Why do you work hard? So you can get more money. Why have more money? It's just gold coins, essentially worthless for their practical use. People only want money so they can trade their money in for (a) essential stuff (like food), which I respect, and (b) useless stuff that is shiny and makes others envy you. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a little greed. The other day, I found this awesome board game in a dumpster behind a gyro joint. It's called "Sticktion", and involves moving colored blobs around a board and collecting different geometric shape cards. Do I really need this game? No. I got along just fine before I found it. But I do enjoy playing it with Abu on rainy days (I hear tell that we're supposed to get a lot of rain this weekend. For a city in the desert, that's nice, but for a city built on sand and fertilizer, everything becomes mushy and slippery when it gets wet). And I'm really good at Sticktion.

So is that OK? Sure. Here's my philosophy. Greed is acceptable in moderation, but only in moderation, and only when your having of something does not restrict others from having it. If someone was still using that game, I would not have taken it. Only because it was in a dumpster is it OK that I took it. Now, when it comes to survival, take all you can get, but for needless entertainment and personal advancement, let the more needy go first. I may be a street rat, but I'm pretty good at it. Others, like all those in the Silsten problem, had no clue what they were doing. I could have had all the food I wanted, but they needed food too, and as a more advantaged street rat, I should help them out.

Time to go, I'll see y'all later. Remember, Bee true to yourself!

- Aladdin