I think it's useless to believe that the explanation behind everything is "greed". It's so easy to blame greed; it's amorphous and meaningless; it gives you nothing you can do; it's the logic of a people who are sure nothing can change, that the way things are is inherent: the rich are greedy, the bad things in the world are powerful people taking advantage of us for benefit, sad for us.

It seems pretty clear that the forces at work are designed to incentivize, reward, and rationalize "greed", and so if one just does their job, so to speak, they will end up doing the greedy thing at every turn. And really we are fine with it! -- what we value more than anything is value creation (on paper). No matter if the actual world is getting worse as long as it appears to be getting better: the economy/investment accounts/stock grants are going up.