I can definitely see where you are coming from, but I do not think wanting to create access to clean water (aquaducts) and connecting people (roads) are necessarily greedy. Sure, there was some influence from greed, but the underlying motivation is to help your people. Greed to me is wanting these better things and greater abundances for the sole purpose of your own personal gain. So, I think that there are many factors that can motivate an individual to procure greater prosperity, and greed is just one of them.
Great post. :)
Well... i guess it really depends on what they were thinking back then... if they built those to make the population happy then yes, it wasn't greedy, but if they wanted to make those so the population would be happy and less likely to revolt than yes, it wasn't greedy.
From reading some of the comments i learned something which i haven't thought about, i guess the examples i'm giving weren't fueled by greed but by ambition... the problem is, where does ambition ends and greed starts? is there a line? Where is this line? Maybe this line is different for some people...
Yes, motivation comes from many different sources, i think that by using them all one becomes better, i haven't gone through all the 7 deadly sins but i think some of them are actually great motivators, wrath for example, pride, maybe lust...