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Sometimes Helping People Is the Worst Thing You Can Do
American Institute for Economic Research ^ | August 1, 2019 | Jeffrey A. Tucker

Posted on 08/03/2019 4:21:44 PM PDT by hiho hiho

At the charming Hudson train station in New York, volunteers sell small cups of coffee for $1. The idea is to raise money for the children’s charity in town. They only accept cash. Not everyone carries cash.

“Do you ever just let people have coffee on the promise that they will pay you later?” I ask.

“Yes, and most do, but some people do not,” says the cashier. “We figure out who is who. When someone is taking advantage of our generosity, we say, ‘You may not have a cup of coffee. Next time bring cash.’ They figure it out and bring cash in the future.”

I left the conversation there, but what you have here speaks to a universal truth: helping people is not always an unmitigated good thing. Often help is great but just as often it’s not. Sometimes you have to withdraw that help in order to inspire people to do the right thing. Incentives matter. Set them up incorrectly, and your attempts to help people can actually hurt them — and you! — in the long run.

Economist James Buchanan coined the phrase “Samaritan’s dilemma.” It comes from the Biblical parable in which the generous merchant helped the man beaten and lying on the road. He pays the medical bills and gets him back on his feet. Good man.

But let’s imagine a part two. The word gets out. Next time the Samaritan travels the same road, there are three, four, and five people in need of money, medical attention, and a safe place to spend the night. He helps them. They multiply tenfold on the next trip. Pretty soon, the problem becomes obvious. In order to re-adjust incentives, the Samaritan has to say no. He has to withdraw the aid. To help, he needs to stop helping.

This is a very difficult decision. Aid cannot be without limit, and it cannot be expected else it becomes abuse of the giver and contrary to the interests of the recipient.

Parents discover this with children. At some point, you have to cut off the financial help to inspire them to independence. It’s among the hardest moments in a parent’s life: it cuts against the grain. You have to end the support so that the child can figure out creative ways to live independently. They don’t like it. They thank you later for doing the right thing.

Aid cannot be without limit if you really want it to be helpful. Knowing when and how to do that is an art, not a science. It requires careful case-by-case experimentation. There is some moment in the stream of financial assistance at which it stops helping and starts subsidizing idleness and abuse. For maturity, for human decency, for self-respect, that point absolutely must eventually arrive at which help must come to a full stop.

The lesson applies to a huge range of human activities.

You have two siblings. One is good with money, pays her debts, and needs a quick loan. No problem. The other wastes money and is behind in bills. To loan him money perpetuates the problem. You love them both very much – enough not to enable bad choices.

So too with public policy. If you subsidize disaster insurance for flood-prone areas, you end up disincentivizing people from bearing the full cost of risks. If you guarantee insurance regardless of risks in any area of life, you remove the reward for reducing risks. If you guarantee depositors will always get their money back from banks via government financing, you make businesses less like enterprises subject to profit and loss. Foreign aid: it’s the same.

Anything you make too big to fail turns out to be inefficient and lacking in independent viability.

Or think of the homeless problem. Many cities have discovered that trying to help them is great but too much help attracts more. The problem you sought to solve gets worse. Next thing you know, you have a whole tribe coming from everywhere to live off the city’s benevolence. Even the most bleeding-heart socialist ends up rethinking this unconditional approach.

So on it goes. Helping sounds great. Can’t get enough! But actually you can get enough, more than enough, too much even.

It’s even true in spiritual life. St. John of the Cross writes of the long dark night of the soul. His thinking is that when we are new in faith, God treats us as infants providing for all our needs. It’s lovely. As we mature in faith, that closeness and care are gradually withdrawn. We must stand on our own. Finally that day arrives when the support is withdrawn, precisely so that we can grow in the strength of faith we have developed on our own. It’s the long dark night. Mother Teresa experienced it. Perhaps you have too. It’s by providential design.

Look, this isn’t such a radical idea, much less a cruel one. If you are forever cleaning up after your roommates, they will never take responsibility for their own messes. If people who take wild risks climbing Mount Everest are always rescued at public expense, the adventurous will not properly calculate the costs of the risks they are undertaking. This is why hikers should pay for their own rescues.

Sounds cruel? Not really. Sometimes you have to withdraw help to incentivize proper decision-making.

There is no hard-and-fast rule on how much help is too much help, no precise point at which you have gone too far and caused more of the very problem you are trying to fix.

Still, it is utterly foolish not to admit that the Samaritan's dilemma is real. It is part of life as we know it, and it appears everywhere. It’s the great problem faced by anyone who seeks to do good.

Which takes us to the Democratic Party’s penchant for promising everything free. Free health care. Free college. Free income. Forever jobs. No problems ever, thanks to unlimited tax dollars and the Fed’s printing press. No limits. Ubiquitous, unlimited, forever generosity! If you are against that, you are mean. Cruel. You are a bad person.

Not so. You are a rational person. You recognize that problem of withdrawing help is one of the most difficult decisions we face in dealing with others. Government is terrible at it. It’s not that government is playing God here, because, as St. John of the Cross said, even God says no to us. This forever talk of unending help stems from a different source.

We should not throw away our good sense when the topic is government policy. The approach of unconditional help regardless of the results doesn’t work in our private lives. How much worse is it when taxpayers are paying the bill?


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: afdc; charity; dependency; samaritansdilemma; sanctuarycities; welfare; workfare
I learned this the hard way. I helped a relative paying his rent -- it was never enough. I was working my tail off while he sat and watched TV. Cutting off financial support was difficult, even more difficult when other relatives got upset that I was no longer "helping."
1 posted on 08/03/2019 4:21:44 PM PDT by hiho hiho
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To: hiho hiho

Been there, done that.

Never again.


2 posted on 08/03/2019 4:25:00 PM PDT by wally_bert (Hola. Me llamo Inspector Carlton Lassiter. Me gusta queso.)
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To: hiho hiho

I am always reminded of this saying:

“Why do you hate me, I never tried to help you.............”


3 posted on 08/03/2019 4:25:49 PM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: hiho hiho
The Parable of the Gibs-Me-Dats.
 
4 posted on 08/03/2019 4:26:09 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie (In Italia i fascisti si dividono in due categorie : i fascisti e gli antifascisti. -- Ennio Flaiano)
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To: hiho hiho; dp0622

One of my teachers growing up, a proud Italian, son of an immigrant, told me how after WWII his family was constantly sending stuff back to Italy, to family members who had almost nothing left after the war.

This went on for some time, a few years. He said his mom was getting tired of it, and his father was complaining “how much help do they need?”

Finally, they got a request to please send a wedding dress, of such-and-such a size. At that point his mother said “that’s it, no more.” End of the foreign aid program.


5 posted on 08/03/2019 4:32:00 PM PDT by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrat's John Dean])
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To: hiho hiho

“Do you ever just let people have coffee on the promise that they will pay you later?” I ask.


Never learn any more out of a lesson than there is to learn. Risk small amounts to see what people are made of.

I have lent small amounts with lots of clarification on repayment. Many never come back and it is worth it.

On occasion you find someone who understands the role of help and it is worth it.


6 posted on 08/03/2019 4:33:50 PM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: hiho hiho

7 posted on 08/03/2019 4:34:53 PM PDT by aquila48
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To: hiho hiho
Not so. You are a rational person. You recognize that problem of withdrawing help is one of the most difficult decisions we face in dealing with others. Government is terrible at it.

These promisers are trying to crash the system and replace it with a collectivist dictatorship run by themselves - appeals to rationality are missing the point.

8 posted on 08/03/2019 4:45:57 PM PDT by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: hiho hiho

There is no charity so evil and corrupt as is the forced charity demanded by the government.


9 posted on 08/03/2019 4:46:45 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
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To: PeterPrinciple

Another saying goes like this: “No good deed goes unpunished.”


10 posted on 08/03/2019 4:48:09 PM PDT by SamAdams76
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To: hiho hiho

I got a kick out of Glenn Campbell’s “Try a Little Kindness.”

If you see your brother standing by the road
With a heavy load from the seeds he sowed
And if you see your sister falling by the way
Just stop and say you’re goin’ the wrong way

Yeah, just pull over, get out of the car,
and tell some woman you don’t know she’s
going the wrong way. See how long it takes
to get a punch to your face.


11 posted on 08/03/2019 4:55:46 PM PDT by sparklite2 (Don't mind me. I'm just a contrarian.)
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To: hiho hiho

Great article.

Help is one thing.

Enabling is another and too often, help turns into enabling.

That’s why I won’t give to the bums on street corners holding their signs.

They can go to the Rescue Mission but most don’t want to because there are rules and accountability.

Too bad. If you won’t go where they can help you get on your feet, then no, I am NOT *helping* because it isn’t really help.


12 posted on 08/03/2019 4:58:43 PM PDT by metmom ( ...fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith..)
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To: hiho hiho

A principle which may apply here:

“Subsidize that of which you desire more;
Tax that of which you desire less.”


13 posted on 08/03/2019 5:21:29 PM PDT by Norski
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To: hiho hiho

Just another lesson liberals wont or just cant learn...

Years ago my sister “Helped” our kids and then called me mad, telling me that they were not showing her enough appreciation... Whatever that meant.

My ULTRA Liberal SIL just called my wife the other day and said she had lent my wife’s oldest son (31 now) what added up to over $6K in the past year (or more?) now and this last time they had worked out a repayment plan and he PROMISED to start paying her back on the first of the month but he didn’t... now she calls my wife, because this is suddenly causing problems with her marriage.

We knew NOTHING about it, he has not reached out to talk to his mom in a very long time now.


14 posted on 08/03/2019 6:03:34 PM PDT by AzNASCARfan
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To: hiho hiho

Most enablers are the kindest, most loving people ever. They have poor (or no) boundaries and mistake love for endorsement.

They therefore can’t say no to any demand by a “loved one”. And they think it is immoral to refuse the addict, the over-spender, the abuser any demand. If they scream, if they’re mad, it makes the enabler think THEY are bad for hurting the bully or entitled jerk.

Empathy is not charity. Love is not what defines moral or good. And many of the worst personal choices are because we do what someone who we love demands despite what is right.

As a political ideology, social justice is maternal love turned into smothering tyranny.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
By C.S. Lewis


15 posted on 08/03/2019 7:41:49 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

Social justice jihadis are straight out of C. S. Lewis.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
By C.S. Lewis


16 posted on 08/03/2019 7:42:12 PM PDT by tbw2
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To: tbw2
THANK YOU for the new tagline, IF you allow me to use same:

As a political ideology, social justice is maternal love turned into smothering tyranny.

Profound and utterly accurate!

17 posted on 08/03/2019 9:30:37 PM PDT by Don W (When blacks riot, neighbourhoods and cities burn. When whites riot, nations and continents burn.)
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To: SamAdams76

Sometimes the less you do for someone the more they’ll do for themselves.


18 posted on 08/03/2019 10:56:52 PM PDT by jmacusa ("If wisdom is not the Lord, what is wisdom?''.)
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

This sums up much of Africa’s ills; “foreign aid” from white countries stepped in to provide all of the goodies promised by black leaders who posed as socialists to generate public support for the anti-colonial movements. They delivered nothing after seizing control of the former colonies, and now foreign aid has led to exploding populations of people incapable of providing for themselves or running a country.


19 posted on 08/04/2019 6:14:34 AM PDT by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: Don W

Thank you


20 posted on 08/04/2019 7:34:14 AM PDT by tbw2
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