When is money a motivator?

See posting just below on a talk by Dan Pink about what motivates us. In something of a rebuttal, in a column about the Gulf oil blowout and BP, Don Herbert writes:

The biggest, most powerful companies do not have the best interests of the American people in mind when they are closing in on the kinds of profits that ancient kingdoms could only envy. BP’s profits are counted in the billions annually. They are like stacks and stacks of gold glittering beneath a brilliant sun. You don’t want to know what people will do for that kind of money.

The two postings are not necessarily contradictory. The amount of money Herbert is talking about is many orders or magnitude greater than the amount of money Pink was talking about. Size does matter.