Dukasaur wrote:http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/greed-middle-ages-080212.htmlStanford historian Laura Stokes is uncovering how attitudes toward "acceptable greed" have done a turnaround in the past 500 years. Self-serving behavior deemed necessary on Wall Street today might have been despised in medieval Europe. One might even have been murdered for using wealth as a justification for circumventing societal norms.
Capitalism, Stokes has found, managed to flourish in the intensely community-conscious culture of medieval times. Men of business successfully built financial empires based on trade and credit, even though unbridled greed was universally condemned.
The question that perplexes Stokes, an assistant professor of history, is how such men could be admired by their peers, when greed was frowned upon.
In short, blatantly selfish economic behavior was simply unacceptable. In describing the contradiction between present-day business attitudes and a medieval mindset, Stokes said, "A medieval businessman would surely be impressed by the successes of his modern descendants, but he would also despise them as men without honor or virtue."
They were probably admired because they made things happen that benefited some or many, or came through with funding at a time of great need, and I would bet a lot of the frowning was usury based. Admitted I have not read the article, I look forward to reading it in a bit.
Another thing: Are we all not self-serving individually? why does that only apply to people on Wall Street?
