All-Consuming Greed: Part 1
Note: This is the first part of a series exploring extreme greed.
Donald Trump and an All-Consuming Greed
My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States. I want to grab all that money. I’m going to be greedy for the United States.
— Donald Trump Speaking at a rally held on January 28, 2016
While this focuses on President Donald Trump, it is primarily an attempt to bridge the cognitive distance between those few who are consumed by an insatiable greed and nearly everyone else. Most people are moderately greedy, they seek better circumstances or increased security, but remain guided by social norms, ethical considerations, and empathy. Trump, and those like him want it all, and don’t care who they hurt.
A study in a 2015 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Terri G. Seuntjens, et al. introduced the 7-item Dispositional Greed Scale (DGS) to measure greed as a personality trait. Their findings suggest that greed exists on a continuum with most falling somewhere in the middle. While those with high dispositional greed exhibited a persistent desire for more, often beyond necessity and at the expense of others, the majority demonstrated more moderate tendencies.
Other scales to measure greed include the Greed Trait Measure, The GR€€D, Vices Scale and a second Dispositional Greed Scale of 6-items developed in parallel with and independently from the prior mentioned DGS. A psychometric study published in a 2022 issue of the European Journal of Personality by Marcel Zeelenberg et al. specifically examined various dispositional greed scales (including both versions of the DGS), concluded that all these instruments are reliable and highly correlated, indicating they effectively measure the same underlying construct. This study further revealed a correlation between dispositional greed scores and career choices: individuals scoring higher on the DGS were more frequently employed in extractive industries, real estate, and banking, whereas those with lower scores tended to gravitate towards fields like education, social work, and healthcare.
There exists a threshold beyond which greed transcends personality trait and solidifies as fundamentally all someone is as a person. This concept finds a parallel in Robert Nozick's "utility monster," introduced in his 1974 book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick describes this hypothetical being as someone who derives an exceptionally greater degree of utility (happiness, pleasure, or well-being) from each consumed resource compared to an ordinary person. By that logic, the utility monster justifies consuming far more than others rationalizing even vastly disproportionate wealth, privilege, or power as necessary.
Individuals scoring high on dispositional greed exhibit a stronger desire for more, often at the expense of others, which can manifest in various unethical behaviors. Research confirms a significant association between dispositional greed and a propensity for immoral and unethical conduct. Greedy individuals tend to find transgressions more acceptable and justifiable, and are more likely to engage in behaviors such as accepting bribes. This relationship is partially mediated by lower self-control, as greedy individuals are more tempted by the desirable outcomes of unethical actions. Furthermore, dispositional greed shows positive correlations with traits like Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. Greed can be a motivator for economic growth, it is also a significant factor in unethical decision-making and antisocial tendencies.
Greed Without Limits
Trump's life has been defined by his pursuit of everything he craves, from money to less tangible assets. He is not just after more resources, he is hungry for validation, attention, admiration, for a feeling of being superior to everyone and for the chance to dominate and control. His behavior, documented for over 50 years shows a man with little regard for others. One way to study Trump’s business career is by looking at his resume of legal battles over non-payment or underpayment of those he hires.
On June 14, 1998 The New York Times published the story of Wojciech Kozak, one of 200 undocumented Polish laborers who had worked for Trump on the demolition of the Bonwit Teller Building to clear the path for Trump Tower in 1980. Kozak is quoted as saying, ''We worked in horrid, terrible conditions,'' because “we were frightened illegal immigrants and did not know enough about our rights.”
According to multiple media reports the 200 workers were hired by Kaszycki and Sons Contractors Inc. a company with agreements requiring them to pay specified wages to union and nonunion workers and to make additional payments for each worker into the Demolition Workers Local 95 of the Laborers' International Union of North America pension and medical insurance funds. The Trump-Equitable joint venture partnership Donald Trump formed with the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States involved in the financing and building of Trump Tower hired the Kaszycki company to manage demolition.
The union's $11-an-hour minimum wage scale was not paid, and payments to the local's welfare funds were made for only 12 to 15 employees. The undocumented Polish workers were reportedly paid as little as $4 an hour for dangerous labor, often without proper safety equipment. Even with the low wages many workers were owed back wages that they would never collect because the Kaszycki company became insolvent. According to an August 25, 2016 article in TIME which reviewed thousands of pages of documents from the case, including depositions and testimony, after Kaszycki stopped showing up and workers complained of not getting paid, Trump took charge of the demolition project telling the workers that he would pay them directly if they finished the work quickly.
Trump did not pay them quickly, or honor the commitments to pay the union. A class-action suit was filed in 1983, alleging that Trump owed $4 million to union welfare funds for the work the Polish laborers performed. Trump ultimately settled the case in 1998, paying $1.375 million. Having dragged on for 15 years marked by legal complexities and the deaths of key figures, including Harry J. Diduck, the original lead plaintiff; Burton H. Hall, a lawyer for the plaintiffs; the owner of the demolition company (who was a co-defendant in the suit); John Senyshyn, the president of Local 95 of the Laborers' International Union of North America (who was also a co-defendant); and Judge Charles E. Stewart, who had once presided over the case.
Trump likely could have settled the case earlier for a similar amount. Even paying more than $1.375 million would have saved him15 years of legal fees. But reasonableness threatens his sense of dominance. Within his worldview, undocumented immigrants are there to be exploited, contractors are disposable, and laborers who demand what they’re owed are a nuisance—to be stalled, punished, or silenced.
A 2016 Journal of Research in Personality study by Patrick Mussel and Johannes Hewig found that individuals high in dispositional greed tend to exhibit impulsive behavior and a narrow focus on immediate rewards, often disregarding long-term consequences. This short-sightedness fuels risky decision-making aimed at maximizing personal gain, even when it comes at others’ expense—as shown in behavioral experiments. These individuals also demonstrated a reduced neural sensitivity to losses: their feedback-related negativity (FRN)—a brainwave response that typically shows stronger deflection for losses than wins—was notably attenuated. This blunted FRN response suggests an impaired ability to learn from negative outcomes, which may further reinforce a pattern of reckless behavior.
The Pattern of Nonpayment
The Polish worker case is not an isolated incident. Reports from various news organizations, including USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, highlight a broader pattern of payment disputes involving Trump and his companies with hundreds of lawsuits and liens filed by individuals and businesses alleging non-payment by Trump. These claims come from a wide range of workers and businesses, including carpenters, dishwashers, painters, and even law firms. To give a few examples,
In the 1980s, Edward Friel Jr.'s Philadelphia-based cabinet business was awarded a $400,000 contract to supply cabinetry for Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. After completing the job, the company submitted a final invoice of $83,600—but Trump’s organization never paid. Paul Friel, Edward’s son and the firm’s accountant, said this unpaid bill was a key factor in the eventual collapse of the family business, which had been operating since his grandfather's time.
In 2004, Classic Chandeliers, a West Palm Beach shop, sold three custom-designed chandeliers to Trump for his Mar-a-Lago resort. The total price was $34,000 with a 50% down payment, but Trump later refused to pay the remaining balance, claiming improper installation. Although the company denied the allegation, it agreed to accept a reduced payment through mediation to avoid further legal expenses.
In 2007, Larry Walters's Las Vegas-based drapery factory was contracted to provide drapery, bedspreads, and pillow covers for the Trump International Hotel & Tower. The original contract was valued at over $700,000, but additional work increased the total to approximately $1.2 million. Trump Ruffin, the developer managed by Trump, paid only $553,000 and refused to pay for the additional work. When Walters withheld some fabric as collateral, Trump Ruffin sued him, and law enforcement seized the fabric. Walters ultimately settled for significantly less than the amount he claimed to be owed.
The construction and operation of the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City is another significant source of payment disputes. Dozens of contractors claimed they were owed money for their work on the project. Some of these contractors suffered significant financial losses, including bankruptcy. A June 28, 2016 report by the Associated Press puts it plainly,
The contractor who provided the onion domes atop the Taj had to eat $2 million in losses. The contractor who supplied the Carrara marble from Italy ended up filing for personal bankruptcy. The contractor who put in the bathroom partitions had to lay off his brother.
In response to these allegations, Trump has generally maintained that he pays contractors when they do good work. He asserts that he withholds payment only when the work is unsatisfactory or incomplete. If you take nothing else away from this, remember when the undocumented Polish workers Trump hired started demanding they be paid, Trump threatened, through his lawyer, to call the Immigration and Naturalization Service and have the workers deported. This rationalization fits patterns identified by Seuntjens et al. (2015), who found that individuals high in dispositional greed are more likely to justify unethical behavior when it benefits their personal gain. For such individuals, nonpayment is morally permissible if it serves their needs.
The pattern visible in Trump's dealings looks less like a traditional form of greed and more like a compulsion toward domination and asserting superiority. These cases resemble something more structural: not just opportunism, not greed to grab “all the money,” they reflect a worldview structured around dominance. This interpretation finds support in a 2015 study by Goedele Krekels and Mario Pandelaere in the journal Personality and Individual Differences which indicated greedy individuals don’t just pursue resources—they pursue power over others. This hunger for dominance helps explain why Trump’s actions go beyond hoarding wealth and into systematically denying others what they’ve earned.
Trump exhibits classic signs of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) , a psychological framework characterized by a preference for hierarchy, submission, and enforced inequality. A worker doesn’t get what they’re worth, or what they agreed to, they get what they are able to take. Social psychologists Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto primarily developed the concept of SDO as part of their broader Social Dominance Theory (SDT), detailed in their 1999 book Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. Individuals with high SDO tend to perceive social interactions as a competitive hierarchy where dominance and victory are paramount.
Warren Buffett’s remark in the 2021 CNBC special Buffett & Munger: A Wealth of Wisdom is apt here: “We learned a long time ago that you can't make a good deal with a bad person.” It becomes even more pointed as he continues, “If you think you can draw up a contract that is going to work against a bad person, they're gonna win. For one, they probably enjoy litigation.”
The Cost of Doing Business
Trump may not enjoy litigation, but he certainly doesn’t take meaningful steps to avoid it. On April 15, 2024, a criminal trial began in New York Supreme Court that would ultimately find Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal 2016 hush-money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. During the trial the testimony of Michael Cohen, a former lawyer for Trump, provided insights into Trump's legal tactics, particularly concerning the handling of the Stormy Daniels hush-money payment.
Daniels attempted to sell her story about an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in July 2006. She was negotiating with American Media Inc in 2016, when they declined to purchase her story, she began reaching out to other outlets, according to The New York Times.
Cohen was tasked with preventing the story's release. Cohen negotiated a deal to pay Daniels $130,000 in exchange for the rights to her story and a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), however he had no intention of fulfilling the agreement. He testified on May 13, 2024 that Trump's instructions were to focus on ”delaying the deal and trying to push it past the election,” attributing to Trump the quote ,“What I want you to do is just push it out as long as you can. Just get past the election, because if I win, it has no relevance, I will be President. If I lose, I don't even care.”
In an email to Cohen shown in the trial Keith Davidson, a lawyer representing Daniels expressed his client’s frustration with payment delays. Cohen explained that while Davidson “wanted an immediate wire transfer,” Cohen said it would take “ten days in order to fund the transaction.” Cohen added that he “would have waited to the tenth day [to] do it again,” in order to meet Trump’s goal.
Cohen eventually paid $130,000 to silence Daniels, which became a core part of the legal proceedings against Trump. Cohen took out a Home Equity Line of Credit against his personal home and wired it to Davidson's IOLA lawyer’s account. Regarding reimbursement, Cohen testified that Trump would say “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it,” but then he delayed following through.
Trump stalled reimbursing Cohen for nearly a year, offering vague reassurances while repeatedly delaying any concrete action. When a plan was finally put in place, it went beyond repaying the original $130,000. In total, Cohen received $420,000, covering the Daniels payment, $50,000 for tech services he’d paid on Trump’s behalf, estimated taxes, and a bonus. Trump personally approved this repayment structure during a meeting at Trump Tower in January 2017. The money was issued in $35,000 monthly installments, and recorded in the Trump Organization’s books as legal fees under a fictitious retainer agreement.
This method of reimbursing Cohen was at the heart of the legal case. By labeling the payments as routine legal expenses, the Trump Organization falsified business records, masking the true nature of the transaction. As Daniels was paid off to protect the Trump campaign, the reimbursement from the Trump Organization constituted a campaign finance violation because corporations cannot contribute to campaigns.
At the time of his testimony, Michael Cohen was a convicted criminal, having pleaded guilty to charges including making false statements to Congress. While many of Cohen’s crimes, particularly the campaign finance violations and false statements to Congress, were allegedly committed on Trump's behalf, Cohen's a convicted liar. But Trump too was convicted by a jury.
“As proven at trial, TRUMP engaged in a scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election and went to extraordinary and illegal lengths to hide this conduct from the American voters and public, illegally causing dozens of false entries to be made in New York business records of his Manhattan-based company to conceal attempts to violate state election law.” reads a May 30, 2024 press release from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office announcing their victory.
Trump denies ever having had an affair with Stormy Daniels, but Trump also denies having made any payments to her. Daniels’ account is partially corroborated by adult film actress Alana Evans, now president of the Adult Performance Artists Guild. In interviews and a Rolling Stone article she penned, Evans recounted being invited to Trump's hotel suite in Lake Tahoe in July 2006, the same time Daniels alleges the sexual encounter occurred. Evans says she declined the invitation but later received a phone call from Daniels, with Trump allegedly on the line urging her to join them. Although Evans did not witness anything directly, her account aligns with details in Daniels' story, lending external credibility to the timeline and circumstances.
Trump’s approach often involves treating his opponents in a way that forces them to bring legal action. Trump ends up spending vast sums defending against claims that could have been settled more quickly and cheaply. Instead of avoiding costly litigation, he embraces it as a tactic to exhaust, and intimidate. He is willing to waste millions not because the money matters, but because the process itself reinforces his self image.
Dealing with Trump and those like him is a struggle. They don’t reach an agreement and stick with it; they make the deal so they can later push for a better one. When you insist that an agreement be honored, they accuse you of being unreasonable. While some might rationalize such behavior as “shrewd business,” the evidence suggests that for individuals like Trump, the performance of power is often as, if not more, significant than the financial gain itself.
At one time the story involving Stormy Daniels seemingly could have been spiked forever for $130,000, and Trump had a lawyer willing to take out a home equity line of credit to front such an expense. Trump’s strategy of delaying and avoiding both costs and accountability ultimately sent his once loyal attorney to prison, creating a lifelong enemy whose testimony would lead to Trump himself being convicted of 34 felonies, and made the story of Stormy Daniels a tentpole event of his life.
Trump and others like him may moralize their actions, claiming someone “did a poor job” to justify nonpayment, or convincing themselves that immigration violations or some perceived unfairness excuse their behavior. No matter what Trump says, he doesn’t withhold payments because the work is bad. He withholds it because he enjoys the fights, and in his worldview, someone has to lose.
Most people don’t experience what Trump does: a hunger so consuming it erases the boundaries of decency, legality, and even strategy. For them greed is all they are leaving a shadow of a person puppeteered by pure avarice. They will not enter negotiations with a list of goals and call it a victory if they get what they want. ‘Giving Trump and those like him everything they want will cause them to want more. Accepting their first offer ruins their day, leaving them wondering the real sum you would have accepted.