A twelve minute end-to-end diges­tive tract notwith­stand­ing, Cana­da geese have evolved to one of Nature’s finest exam­ples of work­ing for the com­mon good. By shar­ing the lead in their dis­tinc­tive Vee for­ma­tion, a migrat­ing flock can trav­el up to 2,000 kilo­me­ters in six­teen hours. Humans, on the oth­er hand, keep evolv­ing new ways to flock togeth­er in greed that defies log­ic and decency.

In Min­neso­ta (coin­ci­den­tal­ly one of the places from which Cana­da geese are now con­gre­gat­ing to head south for the win­ter) pros­e­cu­tors dis­cov­ered what they termed “a brazen scheme of stag­ger­ing proportions.”

Forty-sev­en peo­ple were charged with alleged­ly car­ry­ing out “the sin­gle largest Covid relief fraud scheme to date.” By exploit­ing a pro­gramme to feed needy chil­dren, “the defen­dants stole $250 million.”
They would seem to be fans of the def­i­n­i­tion offered by the Michael Dou­glas char­ac­ter Gor­don Gecko in the 1987 movie “Wall Street”: “The point is, ladies and gen­tle­man, that greed – for lack of a bet­ter word – is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clar­i­fies, cuts through, and cap­tures the essence of the evo­lu­tion­ary spirit.”
Greed is  defined by Collins Dic­tio­nary as: “The desire to have more of some­thing, such as food or mon­ey, than is nec­es­sary or fair.”
How­ev­er you describe it, greed brought togeth­er anoth­er flock that includes among oth­ers, a for­mer Mis­sis­sip­pi state gov­er­nor, pro­fes­sion­al wrestlers and for­mer NFL quar­ter­back Brett Favre in a wel­fare scan­dal that involves tens of mil­lions of dol­lars. Favre report­ed­ly earned $140-mil­lion over his play­ing career and mil­lions more in endorse­ment and oth­er fees. Wel­fare fraud would qual­i­fy him as a first-round draft pick of new adjec­tives for greed.

                           NOTHING VERSUS EVERYTHING

 I’ve met peo­ple who were rich beyond any­thing I can count or imag­ine, includ­ing Gulf Arab sheikhs with gold taps in their guest bath­rooms. None of them mea­sured up to what I saw in Sri Lan­ka, whose econ­o­my ranks 113^th in the world, in the wake of the dev­as­tat­ing 2004 tsunami.
A bare­foot man, clad only in a sarong, wan­dered down­cast through the wreck­age of what had been a vil­lage. His mod­est house, his wife and his few pos­ses­sions had been swept away.
All he and the small daugh­ter cra­dled in his arms had left in the world were the clothes they were wear­ing, and each other.
But they were not home­less. Anoth­er vil­lager had tak­en them into his own three-quar­ters wrecked house.
When I asked him why, he said sim­ply: “They are my neighbours.”
How much bet­ter to try to emu­late and envy peo­ple like that, than bil­lion­aires, or the emp­ty ves­sels who are famous for being famous, rap and hip-hop “stars” who flaunt their wealth in the most point­less and taste­less ways and the social media “influ­encers” held up as that per­ni­cious term “role models”.
Instead, greed con­tin­ues to evolve.
In an op-ed piece head­lined “One of the Hottest Trends in the World of Invest­ing is a Sham”, Hans Taparia, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the New York Uni­ver­si­ty Stern School of Busi­ness not­ed: “Wall Street has been hard at work on a rebrand.”
In an effort to com­bine “high prof­its with lofty inten­tions”, funds pur­port to invest in com­pa­nies that meet envi­ron­men­tal, social and gov­er­nance, known as E.S.Gs. The cri­te­ria span the feel-good gamut from issues that include car­bon emis­sions, pol­lu­tion and data secu­ri­ty to employ­ment prac­tices and the diver­si­ty of cor­po­rate board mem­bers. All well and good, except: “E.S.G. invest­ing is designed almost entire­ly to max­i­mize share­hold­er returns, false­ly lead­ing many investors to believe their port­fo­lios are doing good for the world.”

                             THE REAL “BOTTOM LINE” 

Two and a half thou­sand years ago, the Greek philoso­pher Socrates said: “He who is not con­tent­ed with what he has, would not be con­tent­ed with what he would like to have.”
A mod­ern ver­sion of that is the crisp response by author Joseph Heller to a remark that the bil­lion­aire hedge-fund man­ag­er host of a par­ty Heller was attend­ing had made more mon­ey in one day than he earned from his best-sell­ing nov­el ‘Catch-22’: “Yes, but I have some­thing he will nev­er have — ENOUGH.”
That Cana­da geese have evolved a lifestyle and method of shar­ing that works for them, while flocks of humans not only ignore the wis­dom of word “enough”, but con­tin­ue to evolve new forms of greed, ranks as one of the great mys­ter­ies of Nature.

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