Liberal Democracy

Liberal Democracy
The Free State

Monday, October 20, 2014

Ken Pruitt: Wall Street (1987) Gordon Gecko: Greed is Good

Best part of the first Wall Street movie at least and one of my favorite movies of all-time. And whatever you think of the Gordon Gecko character, or even what you think of Michael Douglas who played him, Douglas did a great job. And what made this speech so great was how accurate and real it was. Here are these people trying to make Gordon Gecko look like this greedy bastard when if anything they are just like Gecko. 

Except that Gecko is better and knows what companies are worth buying and how much he should spend on them and how to reform them. So he can make a profit off of them and of course there was some insider-trading involved here. But the facts and points of the Gecko speech are still the same that greed is good and he explains why. That without greed people wouldn’t want things for themselves. 
Without greed people wouldn’t work as hard so they could have things for themselves. So they could be as successful as possible and enjoy the fruits of their labor. And enjoy being successful, that we are all greedy, it’s just that some people are better at it than others. And people are all greedy at least to a certain extent, that it's just a matter of degree. It's not that we aren't greedy, but what level of greed is tolerable in a free society that is really the question.