Why You Should Ask What’s In It For You

“People think that niceness equates to goodness, when the true motivator is selfishness”- Undisclosed, 2015

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Persistent knocking jolted me from two hours of dreamless sleep. I must have been more tired than I realized from the night before, because things in my room (like my gun!) weren’t in their proper place. This knocking continued, and out of irritation I decided to answer.

I peered through the peephole; saw a man in business attire. My first response was to wonder what I did last night for an investigator to pay a visit to my house. My curiosity got the best of me and I opened the door. Turns out the man was soliciting donations for charity. He didn’t get a chance to finish his sales pitch because the confluence of variables such as me being tired, irritated, and elated at not being investigated caused me to slam the door in his face, lock it, and go back to bed.

When I awoke many hours later, I wondered why this brilliant tactic for handling solicitors had not  occurred to me before.

I have noticed that in American society today, there is always some drive to get people to donate to whatever cause. There probably are ok charities out there, but in my opinion they are tax havens of political patronage. How much of your donation do you think goes to the six-figure salary of the president and how much goes to the actual cause you wish to support?

It’s nauseating every time some smarmy bitch boy, who barely makes rent working for a nonprofit, tells me about the value of collectivism.  Therefore I will not feed those beasts and neither should you.

A culture of “tolerance”

You see, I can tolerate the Salvation Army ringing their bell outside the Walgreen’s. I can tolerate junk mail asking me to donate. But being blackmailed by aggressive philanthropists who expect me to justify why I don’t want to contribute is something I will not tolerate. This occurs at the bookstore, the grocery store, and even on the street these days.

These shameless vampires are experts at putting a man in a double bind: you have the choice of being an asshole or a pushover. Destroy the planet and starve Tiny Tim, or open your wallet like a dupe. What is a man supposed to do? Well since money equals time and power, be the asshole.

This sense of altruism that charities use is a weakness others prey upon as well. From the stripper in graduate school to that used car salesman, there is always some vulture, alerted by a whiff of carrion, selling you a story to get money out of you. Other things besides money could be the target of manipulations, such as social control or political loyalty.

Any time someone attempts to build a connection to you to get you to do something, you should question it. Not only should you question it, but you should also keep “no” as a live option. The mere act of not saying no can be and is taken as acquiescence. This acquiescence has led to many social and political trends that many men dislike today.

What should a man do when someone asks him for a handout, capital for business, a ride home from a stranger? Ask that person what is in it for you. If they cannot give you a payoff for your deed then they have no respect for you. Almost all the time they will reply with how selfish you are, even when it was them that asked for the freebie in the first place.

Would you like to donate to the Red Cross?

What is the payoff?

Can you give me and my friends a ride home from the bar?

What is in it for me?

Can you stay late to help Emily finish her project?

How does this help me?

My kid is selling Girl Scout cookies, would you like to buy some?

How well do I know you?

The Enlightenment, which had the courage to pronounce self-interest a virtue, wound up fostering a pathological altruism, expressed by excessive social trust in modern Western societies. Most wealthy people do not fall for such schemes, they don’t suffer from this madness. Neither should you.

If you are paying taxes then you are already supporting quite a few people less fortunate than you, so feel do not feel guilty about it. If you are not lighting your cigars with hundred dollar bills, you cannot afford to just give your money away. If you do, you already know the score and did not need to read this article.

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