Greed.

The word carries a wealth (pun very much intended) of meaning with it. It’s considered to be one of the seven Deadly Sins. It’s the hungry, avaricious desire for more, particularly when you already have plenty. And it’s almost always used in a way that directs that impulse at material wealth. Money, most commonly.

More than that, the word greed connotes a callous sort of selfishness that, at a minimum, disregards the wants and well-being of others or, more commonly, is outright hostile to them.

It’s also a word we hear a lot these days. Aside from the Hollywood caricature of the greedy capitalist coldly declaring that “it’s just business” before committing one atrocity or another, it sometimes feels like a person can hardly do any sort of business without being accused of greediness.

Whenever prices go up or customer satisfaction goes down, accusations of corporate greed abound, regardless of any extenuating circumstance or underlying reasoning. Egg prices rise because avian flu decimates most of the flocks? Greed. It’s hard to find your preferred appliance brand in stock because of trade restrictions? Greed. Health insurance is expensive and complicated because government mandates for guaranteed coverage and must-have services? Believe it or not, greed!

And what is the source of all this sin and misery? If some sources are to be believed, it’s capitalism, naturally. After all, the system itself is built on the notion of maximizing one’s profits and returns on investment. How could anyone have expected otherwise?

Every economic behavior that could be considered self-interested has instead been labeled greedy. And just like every other instance of a label too broadly applied, if everything is greedy, nothing actually is. The word both loses and intensifies its meaning as behavior, both benign and malignant, is tarred with the same brush.

I would never suggest that greed, as I defined it above, does not exist. It certainly does. There is, however, a difference between the destructive force of greed and the entirely normal, rational behavior of self-interest.

On an individual level, we all intuitively understand this, at least regarding our own behavior. After all, we are not greedy for accepting that pay raise or enjoying that tax cut. It’s not greedy when we buy something on sale instead of paying full price. And it’s not greedy when we choose to do a chore ourselves instead of paying someone else to do it for us.

No, of course that’s not greedy. That’s being smart with our money. That’s making choices that are good for us and for our families. We examined our options, weighed the opportunity costs, balanced the tradeoffs, and did what we thought was best for ourselves given the constraints of our reality.

We all do these things all the time, and while the decisions we make are certainly self-interested, they are not necessarily selfish. And very rarely do any of us actually cross over the line into actual greed—the insatiable pursuit of more, regardless of the cost to others or ourselves.

And yet, somehow, when someone else makes those same sorts of decisions, many of us conclude that, actually, that is greed. It must be greed if a business owner turns a profit or a CEO makes seven figures while we only bring home five. It must be greed if the price of gas goes up or our neighborhoods have dead spots in cell service coverage.

The simple truth is that we are all self-interested. Each and every one of us prioritizes what we value over what other people value. It is inherent to the human condition. But being self-interested does not necessarily mean being selfish or greedy. And far from being the root cause of actual greed, capitalism manages to channel that sense of self-interest into social benefit.

Adam Smith understood this from the very beginning. He wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Unless you have a personal relationship with your butcher or your baker, they have no particular reason to care if you get your meat or your bread. But they do care about being able to buy their own meat and bread. So they do their jobs and set their prices to cover their costs with a little bit extra for their trouble—or as a hedge against tough times or to pay for new tools or so they can send their kids to school—and everybody is better off than if they hadn’t.

Milton Friedman, far more recently than when Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations, was once asked about this very thing, the implication being that capitalism in general and America specifically were uniquely greedy on the world stage. “Well, first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy; it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests.”

And while Milton could have left it there, he went on to address the concern that capitalism and greed (in the more colloquial sense) were somehow to blame for all the ills of society. “In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that.”

The difference between capitalism and every other system isn’t that capitalism attracts better people or transforms human nature. People everywhere want to get ahead, provide for their families, and improve their circumstances. That impulse is universal, regardless of economic system.

The difference is what you have to do to satisfy that impulse.

In capitalism, the way you get ahead is by solving other people’s problems. You want to earn more? Figure out what people need and provide it better or cheaper than the next person. Want to keep earning? Keep solving problems, because the moment you stop, someone else will take over.

The butcher doesn’t feed you out of kindness. He feeds you because feeding you is how he feeds himself. Your self-interest and his become the same thing through voluntary exchange. Multiply that across millions of people making billions of transactions, and you get a system where the most successful people are the ones who’ve gotten best at making other people’s lives better.

That’s not greed. That’s self-interest harnessed to social benefit.

Contrast that with systems where getting ahead means securing political favor, or controlling the means of production, or extracting wealth through force. Self-interest doesn’t disappear in those systems. It just gets channeled into entirely different activities—activities that benefit the well-connected at everyone else’s expense.

Friedman was right. Capitalism is the only system that takes human nature as it actually exists and makes that nature work for everyone.Learn more about capitalism here.