Greed: When Is Enough Enough? (#732)

There is an old question that seems increasingly relevant to the world in which we live:

How much is enough?

Enough money. Enough property. Enough influence. Enough power.

For most of human history, the answer was constrained by circumstance. There was only so much land one could own, so much food one could eat, so many possessions one could accumulate.

We have removed many of those constraints.

Today, an individual can possess not millions, but billions of dollars. And not merely one billion. Ten billion. Fifty billion. A hundred billion.

At some point, money ceases to have much relationship to personal consumption. Nobody can eat a billion dollars. Nobody needs a thousand houses or ten thousand cars. Beyond a certain point, additional wealth becomes something else:

Additional wealth becomes power.

And perhaps that is where a discussion about inequality becomes a discussion about greed.

Wealth Is Not Greed

It is important to make a distinction.

There is nothing inherently wrong with becoming wealthy.

People create businesses, invent things, take risks, employ people, invest wisely and sometimes build enormous fortunes. Wealth can also accomplish extraordinary good.

Philanthropy has funded universities, hospitals, museums, scientific discoveries, conservation programs and humanitarian work.

Nor is greed confined to billionaires. A person of modest means can be greedy. A wealthy person can be extraordinarily generous.

Greed is not an amount of money.

It is an attitude toward enough.

Greed begins when accumulation becomes an end in itself - when acquiring more matters more than considering what that acquisition does to other people.

The distinction matters because inequality today is extraordinary.

The World Inequality Report 2026 estimates that the richest 10 percent of humanity owns about three-quarters of global wealth, while the poorest half owns only about 2 percent.

Fewer than 60,000 people - the wealthiest 0.001 percent - hold three times as much wealth as the entire poorest half of humanity combined.

Those numbers are difficult even to comprehend.

But perhaps the more important question is not simply:

Why do some people have so much?

It is:

What happens to society when wealth becomes concentrated enough to confer extraordinary power?

When Money Becomes Political Power

Money and politics have always been uncomfortable companions.

Democracy is based upon a wonderfully simple principle: each citizen possesses a voice.

Capitalism operates according to a very different principle: people may accumulate vastly different amounts of economic power.

Both systems can coexist. They have done so for centuries.

But tension arises when economic power can purchase political access, lobbying, advertising, media influence, campaign support or simply the ability to command the attention of decision-makers.

The World Inequality Report 2026 identifies the concentration of political donations among wealthy citizens as one mechanism through which economic inequality can translate into unequal political influence.

This is not an argument about one political party.

Nor is it an argument about one country.

It is a structural question.

At what point does extraordinary economic power begin to undermine political equality?

A billionaire still has one vote.

But a billionaire has resources available to influence the political environment surrounding millions of other votes.

That should concern people across the political spectrum.

The Corporation and the Meaning of More

The same question appears in business.

A traditional business makes something or provides a service and hopes to make a reasonable profit doing so.

Profit is not greed. Without profit, businesses disappear.

But modern financial systems can introduce a subtly different objective.

It is no longer sufficient for a company to be profitable.

Revenue must grow. Margins must improve. Returns must increase. The next quarter must outperform the previous quarter.

And then the process begins again.

There is no finish line.

There is no point at which somebody says:

This business is healthy.

Our employees are well paid.

Our customers are satisfied.

Our owners receive a reasonable return.

That is enough.

Instead, the question becomes:

How can we extract a little more?

That single change in philosophy can transform an organization.

And it brings me, inevitably, to veterinary medicine.

When the Patient Becomes an Asset

I entered veterinary medicine in a very different era.

Veterinary practices were generally owned by veterinarians.

The veterinarian who examined your dog or cat might also own the hospital. The people making clinical decisions understood something very important:

Veterinary medicine is a business, certainly, but it is also a profession.

Those two identities exist in permanent tension.

A veterinary hospital must make money. It has salaries to pay, equipment to purchase, buildings to maintain and increasingly sophisticated medical technology to provide.

But the ultimate purpose of the hospital is not the production of revenue.

It is the care of animals and the people who love them.

During recent decades, outside investment - including private equity - has entered veterinary medicine on a remarkable scale.

Again, investment itself is not inherently bad. Large organizations can provide capital, sophisticated equipment, professional management, employee benefits, purchasing power and career opportunities that small independent practices sometimes struggle to provide.

But private equity introduces a fundamentally important question:

To whom is the organization ultimately responsible?

The patient? The veterinarian? The client? The community? Or the investor?

Those interests can coexist.

Until they don't.

Veterinary Medicine Meets the Roll-Up

The concern is not merely philosophical.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has already intervened in consolidation involving veterinary specialty and emergency hospitals. In 2022, for example, the FTC imposed restrictions and required divestitures in connection with acquisitions involving JAB Consumer Partners, explicitly raising concerns about consolidation and competition in veterinary services.

That should make our profession pay attention.

The problem is not that every corporate veterinary hospital provides poor medicine. Clearly they do not.

Nor does it mean that every independent veterinarian is virtuous. Clearly they are not.

The issue is the incentive structure.

If an organization purchases veterinary hospitals as investments, eventually somebody expects a return on those investments.

Where does that return come from?

It can come from genuine efficiencies.

But it can also come from increasing prices, increasing utilization, reducing labor costs, consolidating services, increasing productivity expectations or finding additional revenue within each client interaction.

And suddenly a subtle change occurs.

The animal remains a patient.

But the patient has also become a revenue opportunity.

The veterinary hospital remains a hospital.

But the hospital has also become an asset.

The veterinarian remains a doctor.

But the veterinarian has also become a producer.

Language matters because language reveals how we think.

The Most Dangerous Greed Is Institutional

Perhaps we have been thinking about greed incorrectly.

We imagine Scrooge counting coins.

But modern greed does not necessarily look like that.

It can be remarkably respectable.

It wears a suit. It sits on boards. It produces PowerPoint presentations. It talks about synergies, efficiencies, market penetration, growth opportunities, consolidation and shareholder value.

And frequently there is no villain.

That may be the most disturbing part.

A corporate executive may simply be doing what the board expects. The board may simply be fulfilling its obligations to investors. The investment manager may simply be pursuing the returns promised to a pension fund or other investors.

Everyone is behaving rationally within the system.

Yet the cumulative result can still be destructive.

That is why institutional greed is more difficult to confront than personal greed.

Nobody has to say:

I want more.

The system says it for them.

Universities Are Not Immune

Universities speak the language of education, discovery and public service.

Increasingly, however, they also speak the language of corporations:

Branding, revenue streams, partnerships, market position, fundraising targets and return on investment.

Philanthropy can accomplish extraordinary things. Universities could scarcely fulfill many of their missions without it.

But whenever very large sums of money enter an institution, an important question should follow:

What comes with the money?

Naming rights? Influence? Access? Prestige? A place at the table?

The question is not whether wealthy people should donate to universities. Of course they should be free to do so.

The question is whether institutions retain the courage to say that some things are not for sale.

Perhaps the Opposite of Greed Is Stewardship

There is another way of thinking about wealth. And business. And universities. And veterinary medicine.

It is an old-fashioned word:

Stewardship.

A steward possesses something but recognizes an obligation beyond possession.

If I own a veterinary hospital, I have obligations to my clients, my employees, my patients and my profession.

If I lead a university, I have obligations not merely to donors and administrators but to faculty, students, alumni and the public.

If I run a corporation, I might reasonably recognize that employees and communities are more than costs on a spreadsheet.

And if I possess extraordinary wealth, perhaps that wealth brings extraordinary responsibility.

Stewardship asks a different question from greed.

Greed asks:

How much more can I get?

Stewardship asks:

What am I responsible for?

Enough

Perhaps one of the great challenges of the twenty-first century will be rediscovering the concept of enough.

Enough does not mean abandoning ambition. It does not mean opposing capitalism. It does not mean condemning success. And it certainly does not mean that veterinary hospitals should not make money.

It means recognizing that there are things more important than maximizing the next dollar.

Trust.

Professional independence.

Community.

Education.

Democracy.

The relationship between a veterinarian and a client sitting beside a sick animal.

These things are difficult to place on a balance sheet.

But that does not make them worthless.

Quite the opposite.

They may be the things of greatest value.

I have spent much of my life in veterinary medicine, a profession founded upon an extraordinarily simple relationship:

An animal needs help, and someone has entrusted us to provide it.

I would hate to see that relationship reduced to a financial transaction.

And perhaps veterinary medicine is simply one small example of a much larger question confronting the world:

When everything has a price, what happens to the things that should never have been for sale?

And when having more becomes the objective - whether the currency is money, corporate growth, political influence or institutional prestige - we might occasionally stop and ask the simplest question of all:

When is enough enough?

Suggested Reading

World Inequality Report 2026. https://wir2026.wid.world/

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