Our society coaches, in eco-cybernetic fashion, use your worst traits to counter each other.
To harness your pride, greed, gluttony, vanity, lust, or sloth, empower another (more compelling) sin.
Apparently, the way to counteract avarice is ambition, and vice versa: the politician will leave office only if he can make more money elsewhere, and the rich man will vacate the market and jump into politics because of his pride.
Thus, selfish traits have been recast as steadfast (predictable) and mutually beneficial.
While these counterbalancing forces appear stabilizing, they normalize rationalizing increasingly excessive appetites.