One first day about 1990 I brought a message to the Brevard (NC) Friends Meeting re greed. Those Brevard Quakers are among the best and brightest people I’ve known. However that message fell flat (I could tell!) After the meeting I asked the clerk (a former Methodist minister) if he didn’t think that for one man to be worth $50 B was obscene; he agreed; however I got the message that greed is not something Quakers talk about.

Plenty of talk about war; but never greed; but don’t people realize that greed is the most common cause of war?

Everyone knows the old saying about early Quakers: that they came to the New World to do good, and they did very well. That has been just as true of our country in the 20th Century. We’ve gone all over the world to do good, and we’ve done very well, so now we have extensive military installations in about 30 countries.

Like most people I was surprised and shocked at the violent objections of young people in Seattle to the meeting there of the WTO; it happened again a few years laters at Cancun. Recently I’ve learned a little about why that happened:

Our “farmers” (corporations), with the help of the taxpayer have produced many, many tons of cheap grain to export to the Third World, thereby pauperizing the native farmers.

An economic 9-11 occured recently at Cancun when China, India, Brazil and S.Africa got together to refuse WTO’s proposed exemptions of subsidies for American and European grain producers. In fact India itself exported 6 million tons of grain to hungrier nations (without subsidies).

I suppose doing good always leads to doing well, but doing well— for whom?

I know everyone hates war, but am I the only Quaker concerned about greed?