Greedom – that sneaky love-child of greed and freedom – is the unofficial creed of our age. It promises the enterprising individual an intoxicating mix of liberty and luxury, as if the two were inseparable. In the gospel of Greedom, greed is rebranded as a virtue: an ambitious hunger that’s not sin, but self-determination. We exalt the go-getter who “takes what’s theirs”, clapping them on the back for their initiative – even as they quietly pocket more than their fair share. After all, why settle for mere freedom when you can have Freedom™ with benefits? Greedom winks and assures us: you can have it all and call it principle. It’s a mischievous notion, really, and it’s running rampant in the modern world.
It often starts innocently enough – with ambition. Picture a bright-eyed striver, the kind who devoured rags-to-riches stories as a kid and truly believes in the purity of self-made success. They want freedom in the noble sense: freedom from want, freedom to chart their own course, freedom to be their own boss. They hustle at their startup or side-gig, dreaming of changing the world (or at least their tax bracket). This is self-determination at its best – the scrappy entrepreneur or worker who puts in the hours to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. In theory, it’s a beautiful thing. Who could fault someone for wanting to improve their lot and live free of limitations? Greedom stokes this fire, whispering “go on, you deserve more” – and at first it feels empowering, even righteous.
But watch closely: that pure flame of ambition can morph into a wildfire of avarice before you know it. Under the neon glow of consumer capitalism, our aspiring hero is bombarded with a million ways to spend and justify it. The market tees up freedom as a product on every shelf. “Express yourself (by buying our ultra-HD smart TV)!” “Choose any flavour of lifestyle you want (we have 87 brands of cereal)!” “take a break in Chechia, Galapagos, Fujiyama or Vietnam every few months! In the land of consumer plenty, choice masquerades as liberty. We’re told that buying more is the path to freedom – or at least to happiness – and we half believe it. Our ambitious individual, flush with a bit of success, starts equating spending power with personal power. After all, nothing says “I’m free” like the freedom to splurge on the latest gadget upgrade each year, right? It’s self-determination via shopping cart: a few clicks on next-day delivery to soothe the soul. Greedom chuckles here, slyly encouraging a little indulgence. Why not? They earned it! Thus begins the slippery slope: ambition feeding consumption, which in turn feeds a desire for even more.
Soon, the line between needs and wants blurs, and our go-getter finds themselves running faster on the capitalist hamster wheel. Enter the hustle culture – the shrine at which Greedom’s disciples worship. Here, burnout is a badge of honour and “busyness” becomes a lifestyle. Productivity gurus and startup CEOs preach the new Ten Commandments: Thou shalt rise and grind. Thou shalt sleep when you’re dead. Elon Musk himself ( famously and perhaps apocryphally ?) advised that “nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”, suggesting that true success demands 80, 90, even 100-hour workweeks. In the cult of the startup, overwork is sanctified. Our once-idealistic individual now wears dark circles under their eyes as proudly as a priest wears vestments. Self-determination warps into self-exploitation – but it’s all for the dream, they insist. I’m doing this to be free. Free in the future, that is, if they ever get there without collapsing. Greedom smirks in the corner, offering a caffeinated toast to their efforts.
This hustle-hard ethos isn’t confined to would-be billionaires in Silicon Valley garages; it’s spread to every corner of the gig economy. The modern labour market often sells “flexibility” and “being your own boss” as freedom’s new frontier. Drive when you want, work in your PJs, be the captain of your Uber – what could be more liberating? But Greedom’s freedom is a funny thing. For many gig workers, that celebrated freedom often means freedom from stability, benefits, or a liveable wage. It’s a deal with the devil: no bosses, but also no safety nets. In truth, this system simply shifts risk and cost from companies onto individuals under the illusion of personal liberty. The result? A delivery driver or freelancer “free” to work 2 a.m. shifts, “free” to hustle every waking hour, and “free” to wonder if they’ll make rent this month. Greedom shrugs – the house always wins, and in this case the house is the platform or corporation that gets rich while individuals chase pennies in the name of autonomy. The commodification of personal liberty has turned freedom into something you buy: pay for your own health insurance, your own retirement plan, your own everything – congratulations, you’re free from the old 9-to-5, and free to fend for yourself.
If a few do manage to climb the gilded ladder of success, Greedom shifts the goalposts again. Wealth accumulates, and with it comes rationalisation. Ambition fulfilled can become a dragon’s hoard – yet our protagonist will insist it’s still about freedom. Now it’s “financial freedom,” a favourite term that cloaks hoarding as prudence. They’ll say: I’ve earned the freedom to never worry again. But one person’s financial freedom can mean 10,000 other people’s financial trap. Consider that the richest 1% of the world’s population now own roughly 43% of all global assets. In Greedom’s calculus, inequality isn’t a bug – it’s a feature, the natural outcome of some people’s superior drive. Our now-wealthy achiever might genuinely believe they deserve their giant slice of the pie because they worked so hard for it. Did they really need that much? In the fog of Greedom, the question rarely gets asked. The line between enough and too much disappears behind self-justification. After all, self-indulgence feels different when you call it “success”.
Look at the tech billionaires, the new royalty of our era, for the most extravagantly satirical illustration of Greedom. These folks have ridden ambition straight into the stratosphere – literally. Armed with obscene wealth and extreme self-belief, they dream up space fantasies while the rest of us deal with down-to-earth problems. Why settle for a mansion by the sea when you can have a private space station? One day it’s garage coding, the next it’s Mars or bust. They tout these extraterrestrial ambitions as humanity’s next chapter, but one can’t help noticing it looks a lot like escapism for the ultra-rich. (The Earth is getting a bit messy with pesky things like climate change and wealth taxes, so why not plan a getaway beyond the atmosphere?) Jeff Bezos – who at one point was the world’s richest man – took a brief joyride to the edge of space and upon landing thanked the people who really made it possible: “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all of this,” he said. It was a rare moment of blunt honesty in the theatre of capitalism. Here was Greedom in plain words – the freedom of a billionaire literally financed by the labours and loyalty of others. His workers toiled in warehouses timed by the second, his customers clicked “Buy Now” on cheap deals, and the reward for all that collective effort? A ten-minute rocket ride for one man. (He did offer his sincere thanks, if that counts.) Critics quipped that at least someone got a vacation out of all those unmet bathroom breaks and Prime membership fees.
Meanwhile, down here on Earth, wealth inequality widens into a chasm. The space barons and crypto kings promise that their audacious ventures will benefit all of humanity someday – colonizing Mars is apparently going to inspire the masses, and trickle-down technology will solve our problems – but forgive the sceptics for rolling their eyes. In practice, Greedom protects its own freedom first and foremost. The billionaire class gains literal freedom of movement (why be bound by gravity or national borders when you have your own rockets and superyachts?), as well as freedom from consequence. They can pollute and evade taxes under the banner of innovation and enterprise. They champion “free markets” and “freedom from regulation”, which often translates to freedom to do as they please while others clean up the mess. All the while, they remain curiously free from the everyday worries that plague ordinary people – like choosing between medicine or rent – because hey, they’ve got that covered. Greedom is a one-way street: limitless upside for those at the top, and “personal responsibility” for everyone else. As a dark punchline, the world even saw billionaire wealth surge by $2 trillion in a single year during a global crisis, while many struggled to stay afloat. It’s as if Greedom thrives on the credo that “greed will set you free”, at least if you’re rich enough.
Yet the rhetoric around all this remains as slick as ever. Political discourse in many countries has taken up a mantra of “freedom” that conveniently aligns with Greedom’s interests. We hear leaders wax poetic about freedom – freedom to choose, freedom from government interference, freedom this, freedom that. But too often this translates to deregulation and laissez-faire economics that give corporations and the wealthy free rein, while working folks find their own freedoms shrinking. (It’s hard to feel free when you’re juggling three gig jobs with no healthcare, or when you can’t afford to exercise your “freedom of choice” because all the choices are out of budget.) In the grand carnival of modern politics, freedom is the balloon animal twisted into whatever shape sells. Want to block a law that protects workers or the environment? Just call it an attack on “freedom” – the freedom of the market, the freedom of the job creators. It’s a cynical sleight-of-hand: self-indulgence at societal scale cloaked in the language of liberty. Greedom stands on the podium, hand over heart, proclaiming “Let freedom ring!” – but quietly thinking about how much money that ringing cash register is making.
In this sly, poetic farce we call contemporary life, Greedom walks a tightrope between inspiring and insidious. On one side is self-determination – the very real and beautiful freedom to pursue your dreams, to innovate, to prosper from your own efforts. On the other side is self-indulgence – the point at which success loses its compass and becomes an end in itself, demanding ever more at any cost. The line is thin and constantly shifting. An ambitious person might cross it without even noticing, cheered on by a society that equates net worth with moral worth. As we’ve seen, today’s world provides plenty of slippery footing: a backdrop of consumer excess, yawning wealth gaps, idolized billionaires, hustle propaganda, and liberty sold by the gig. It’s all too easy to start chasing a noble vision of freedom and end up mired in greed.
So here we are, living in the age of Greedom. It’s funny, it’s tragic, and it’s absurd all at once. We celebrate freedom with patriotic fervour, while quietly accepting that a CEO can earn in a day what a worker makes in a year (or in some cases, what a worker makes in centuries – at top companies the average CEO now makes about 285 times the salary of their typical employee, meaning the median worker would have had to start working in CE 1740 to catch up to one CEO’s annual pay). We chase the promise that anyone can make it if they try hard enough, even as wealth solidifies at the top and social mobility stalls. We’re told to keep consuming, keep hustling, keep believing – because that’s freedom. And hey, for a lucky few, it really is. They’ll ride the rocket of success straight into the stars, fuelled by a combustible mix of ambition and avarice.
For the rest of us, perhaps the task is simply to laugh (so we don’t cry) and to recognise Greedom for what it is. It’s a satirical mirror held up to our society’s face, reflecting how easily lofty ideals can be twisted by good old-fashioned greed. It urges us to ask: Where’s the line? How much is enough? And what happens to our humanity when freedom becomes just another word for “everyone for themselves”? These are serious questions – but this is a humorous elegy, after all. So we’ll end on a cheeky note: Greedom may let you reach for the stars, but don’t be surprised if, in the end, you’re left holding moon dust – and an invoice for the trip.
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