Boris, ‘greed’ and the moral case for capitalism

I, for one, was not surprised by the Prime Minister’s remark to his parliamentary colleagues about greed fuelling the race to develop a vaccination for Coronavirus. I well remember some years ago, when he and I were both on the Any Questions panel, he said to me in an audible aside: 

‘Bishop, greed is good isn’t it because it makes us rich?’ 

I replied quickly to say something like you would expect me to say no, and the reason is that it makes a few people rich but it impoverishes many. Greed also causes some to fall into debt and even crime, because of the desire to ‘get rich quick’.

The Judaeo-Christian tradition is uniformly negative about greed. In the book of Jeremiah we are told that everyone is greedy for unjust gain and deals falsely with their neighbour (Jer 6:13). The Ten Commandments, similarly and famously, tell us not to covet (that is, be greedy for) what is our neighbour’s (Exodus20:17).