Altruistic Counterproductivity

Brutal Candor Blog ^

[Solow591]

While attending an ATHGO World Bank symposium last week at the World Bank Group headquarters, I was exposed to hundreds of young men and women falling over one another in their attempts to help the aggregate of the third world population. The set of defined objectives we were all striving to implement were the United Nations eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The eight goals - crafted in 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit - "when achieved, will end extreme poverty worldwide by 2015." The conference itself focused on goals one, two, and six: ending extreme poverty and hunger, providing universal primary education, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

The speakers, group discussions, and interactive activities were all more or less informative. An extensive question and answer period followed every speaker, allowing for students to voice their disgust, pleasure, or confusion. As you might guess, everyone was (rightly) very concerned with the plight of the world's poor and had various ideas on how to help them. Yet, throughout all of their discussion one thought returned to my skeptical little brain: these people are not thinking of life in terms of trade offs. The best example of this presented itself whenever the annihilation of child labor came up in discussion.

[Solow591]

Here is an excellent post I found while blog surfing.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.

If tempted by something that feels "altruistic," examine your motives and root out that self-deception. Then, if you still want to do it, wallow in it!

Robert Anson Heinlein

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"Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value – and so long as that beneficiary is anybody than oneself, anything goes."

AYN RAND