Avarice is a self-serving aspiration to exploit resources in the absence of adequate resistance. In humans it is the rapacious desire for resources in excess of what is equitable. The greedy individual or group has no self-limiting controls. If there are no external physical barriers to prevent acquisition the rapacious continue the accumulation of resources so that, ultimately, greed is limited only by external physical force. The presence of legal or moral controls are in themselves no impediment at all to the avaricious unless the curators of the controls actually possess the physical power to enforce them. Supposedly persuasive controls all have the capacity to inflict dire consequences lurking somewhere in the background, otherwise they are indifferently flaunted.

The stark reality, in biological terms, is that by means of the processes of war and politics, evolution has favoured the acquisitive to prosper. On innumerable occasions human groups have aggressively acquired resources of land, energy, materials and labour at the physical expense of another group. The conquering group then proceed to use their expanded resources to both enhance the propagation of their own egotistic-greed genes and restrict the gene pool of the subjugated. Basically therefore the human species has evolved with a significant gene-pool of essurient individuals, which any residual altruistically inclined members have not yet acquired the capacity to control. There have been numerous attempts to promulgate the ideals of egalitarianism, communism, socialism, selected religions, some economic implementations, etc. The seemingly inevitable consequence of the maturation of any such established endeavour however, is the growth within of a greed malignancy of some form or another. As soon as an opportune niche occurs for avarice it will be exploited. Thus the methods of oncology in dealing with physical cancers are appropriate. Excision, destruction in situ, starvation, isolation, etc., are at least possible pragmatic strategies of the altruistic for dealing with cases of voracious acquisition.