But greed, when coupled with reason, is good! What is in your rational long-term self-interest is what is good for you. To want that, to be greedy for it - to desire it above all else - is what you should always strive to do.
Please, pick apart the phrase "rational long-term self-interest" - and note that "long-term" means on the timescale of your lifetime.
I disagree with your implicit Malthusian assumption that resources can be overconsumed/hoarded in a meaningful way. The universe is chock-full of atoms and energy, and the key to unlocking more is always just a little more technology (which we have a pretty good track record at doing!)
Those bankers on wall street destroyed the world economy and in doing so, secured way more than enough for themselves to satisfy an entire lifetime of living and several more generations to boot.
How were the bankers doing that? The bigger the fraud, the harder they fell. How is Bernie Madoff doing?
Is former Merill-Lynch CEO Thain a fraud? Not exactly. But he didn't fight a principled battle against all regulations. What I'm saying is that it's much better to be like John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T (one of the few that didn't get into subprime as a matter of principle) than it is to be like anyone else. Allison is great, and he did great, and he's free of any and all guilt! Everyone (CEOs included) that fall short of that ideal pay a price (remember, there's no such thing as a free lunch, ever, in anything) proportional to their deviation from the moral ideal (set by Objectivism).
You should not assume that Thain and other bankers are happy just because they have "a lot" of money. Nor should you assume that they have the skills to keep their money "in the family" for several generations. That implies a level of familiarity with their individual philosophies that you simply do not have! (And to be honest, I don't know either, apart from what you can tell about them from reading the paper.)
Please, pick apart the phrase "rational long-term self-interest" - and note that "long-term" means on the timescale of your lifetime.
I disagree with your implicit Malthusian assumption that resources can be overconsumed/hoarded in a meaningful way. The universe is chock-full of atoms and energy, and the key to unlocking more is always just a little more technology (which we have a pretty good track record at doing!)