A more open acknowledgment of what is positive in the urge to acquire possessions

"From the narrowly defined desire for money to a more inclusive sense of the overweening desire merely to possess for oneself - these positions are the boundaries of the definition of avarice as a vice into the fifteenth century, when one begins to see a more open acknowledgment of what is positive in the urge to acquire possessions.  In Poggio Bracciolini's dialogue On Avarice, for example, Antonio Loschi voices a utilitarian, even modern, view of greed when he argues that avarice is the compelling reason for business investment, the growth of cities, philanthropy, and wage-earning..."

- Richard Newhauser, "The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature", 2000

Bracciolini's writing predates Mandeville's "The Fable of the Bees",which first scandalized society but then popularized a similar belief, by almost 200 years.  It should be noted that Bracciolini's objective was to refute  that line of thinking, but he makes a clear argument for the social benefits of greed nonetheless.