The thing is, Gekko was right. Greed is good. Greed, the profit motive, whatever you wish to call it makes money work more efficiently. And efficiently utilized resources makes everyone better off. Goods become cheaper. The workforce is freed up to attack other problems/issues. Just as we should all conserve energy and use it as efficiently as possible, we should do the same with money and other resources.
The problem that people have with capitalism is at the fringes from those who act criminally. What people ignore from Adam Smith is his emphasis on morality. Denny Crane touched on this idea in another thread. In his time, in the long run, the market takes care of the immoral. Today, however, the long run can take too long, so we've substituted regulation. The problem is that regulation is being done by people making $75K working 37.5 hours per week. They're simply outmatched by people making millions doing nothing but thinking about scamming one little part of the system.
