Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC with me, Elizabeth Hotson. On today's program,

we're looking at greed and why for centuries it was considered downright sinful. If you think of,

say, the seven deadly sins, all of them involve a kind of concern for one's own passions or interests. And there's also a kind of

worried that it's the kind of formation of a dangerous addiction of some sort. And how a rigged game

of monopoly, where some players are given an advantage from the beginning, can explain some people's

attitudes to accumulating wealth and keeping it.

You've got to wonder what happens over the course of a life, over the course of lifetimes,

when you win not just at one game, but at many games because of your own socioeconomic privilege,

your own socioeconomic advantage.

Plus why some of the ultra-rich say it's time for them to pay more tax.

I think there is a need for a wealth tax, yes. I think that would enable a bit more from leveling up.

We pay tax to go off and pay for the public services that we need.

This is Business Daily on the BBC.

Greed. A vice, a sin, or something which makes the capitalist world go round.

Socrates is quoted as saying,

He who is not contented with what he has would not be contented with what he would like to have.

But is it all that simple?

Greed has been blamed for all manner of human ills, but for so much regarded as a motivating

factor in success, and this notion is often expressed in the quotation from the fictional but

very real, Gordon Gecko in the film Wall Street, who said simply, greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

I wanted to understand, from a Western perspective at least, the obsession with greed,

and to ask whether Gordon Gecko was right, can greed be good?

...