Competition and the need for greed
„Women like a man with a past, but they prefer a man with a present“
Mae West
Greed is a confusing human trait. Why do many dollar billionaires still focus all their efforts on making more money, when they already have so much? The answers can be found again if we look at this behavior from the perspective of reproduction. Of course a single individual does not need such wealth. It’s impossible to spend it in a lifetime. But there are reasons why it still might make sense to accumulate it:
Money gives status. And you can, if you have to compete with other members of the same sex for good mating partners, never have enough status. Therefore if your competitor has a 20m yacht, you want a 30m model. But how does status work? As a billionaire you are competing with other billionaires about who will get the attractive Hollywood star as a partner. But why do some women need a billionaire, why is a millionaire not good enough?
In a competitive system nobody helps you to raise your offspring (on the contrary, many will try to prey on them). You have to accumulate resources to make sure your children can thrive in the future. And it is not only about your direct children, but also about their children and so on. You have to try to secure the wellbeing of your whole branch of descendants, your dynasty. And as this branch can be extremely large if you look far enough into the future, you need almost infinite amounts of wealth to secure it.
Women are aware of this too. Their chances for successful reproduction over several generations are clearly higher if they chose a wealthy man as partner. Accordingly they have a strong preference for rich men. This of course is a strong incentive for men to accumulate wealth. The fact that resources (or money) are limited on this planet leaves less resources for the less aggressive men which again increases the fears of women who would like to chose these men as partners. It’s a reinforcing feedback loop!
We see that unlimited greed makes perfect sense in a competitive system. You have no other choice than accumulating as much money as you can in your lifetime.
What if there was no money (nor other ways to store or even own wealth) and the only way to protect your offspring would be to convince your fellow humans to take well care of them? How would you behave then?