As Christmas approaches, I reflect on my word of the year: pleonexia — an ancient Greek term describing the insatiable desire to take more than your fair share, even when it harms others.
Once you understand pleonexia, you start to see it everywhere: in big tech, in bond markets, in tax avoidance, and in government policy that treats human suffering as an accounting inconvenience. This video argues that much of what we excuse or defend in modern economics is, in fact, a moral failure hiding in plain sight.
If we want an economy based on care rather than cruelty, contribution rather than entitlement, we first have to name the problem. That is where political economy begins.
