CHARITY IS SELFISH

By: Written by Gavin McInnes | Illustrations by Jeffrey Alan Love | October 19, 2011 |

I was drinking beer with some friends in a seedy part of Austin, Texas, recently, and we were on the outside patio because it wasn’t boiling out. We all had that perfect, four-beer buzz, and the riffs were flying back and forth with such poignant accuracy, I could hear other tables laughing. At the peak of this frenzy, a foolish bum walked into the eye of the storm and spoke to us from the other side of the fence. “Excuse me, guys,” he said with sad puppy eyes right out of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, “I was wondering if you could help me out.” I knew exactly where this was going. “There’s an old, abandoned house down the road,” he continued, while my friends rolled their eyes, “and I sleep there by sneaking through a basement window in the back. It’s real dark in there. Pitch black. So I need to use a flashlight to find my bed.” He held up his flashlight at this point and delivered his final line, “Only, my flashlight ran out of batteries so I need a couple bucks to buy some more.”

“Well, that’s an unfortunate coincidence,” I told him, “because my Care Machine just ran out of batteries, too.” My friends burst into paroxysms of laughter, but the eavesdroppers around us were split into two groups. Half of them were awestruck at the genius of the quip, but the other half were angry at how callous I had been. One stranger made a point of telling me he thought my comment was “depressing and bourgeois.” As I wondered what the hell that meant, I realized these two groups sum up the two basic modes of thought in this country: nature versus nurture. The left tends to focus on the nurture side of life. They’d see our homeless friend as a nice guy down on his luck who could use some batteries to get his life kick-started again. The right tends to focus on nature and sees the guy for what he is, a bum. One group sees charity as an important tool for change, and the other sees people who give change as a bunch of tools.

I’m inclined to agree with the group that does the least meddling, but I’m not saying this bum is a worthless piece of shit who is doomed no matter what. I just think it’s up to him to solve his own problems. The disadvantaged aren’t simply a quick loan away from prosperity; they’re a long, hard road of experience away. That’s why 80 percent of lottery winners are bankrupt within five years. Intervening doesn’t help development. It hurts it. Economist Milton Friedman summed up the problem with pampering when he said, “The effect is to instill in the one group a feeling of almost God-like power; in the other, a feeling of childlike independence.” In short, charity hurts.

This goes against all our instincts. Studies show people who give to charity are happier and lead more fulfilled lives than people who don’t. Some charities even seem to work. I live in New York, and I’m told the local charity City Harvest does a good job of taking unused scraps from restaurants and giving them to the homeless. New York Cares is rumored to be really good at giving bums coats, but I’ve been to the Bowery on Christmas. There is a waiting list for volunteers, and they almost outnumber the bums who are there to eat the gigantic turkey dinner that’s been cooked to perfection for them, free. Despite this palatial treatment, most of the Bowery bums prefer standing outside in the freezing cold because you’re not allowed to smoke inside. Some of these guys have been bums all their lives. Thanks to methadone clinics and a guilt-laden citizenry, we have junkies who have been at death’s door for decades. Tourists visiting New York often plunk a few coins down the upside of the water cooler jugs that say United Homeless Organization on the side, but those of us who live here know it’s a scam where the bum sitting at the table paid the permit owner $25 for the privilege of keeping all the coins himself.

We are so conditioned to think charity is good, we don’t even ask what it’s for anymore. “He gave it all to charity” is usually all we need to hear before deciding someone’s a mensch, but they’re all seriously flawed. The 100 Mile Man Foundation runs a marathon during which rich people ride their bikes from Manhattan to the Hamptons to raise money so poor people can get scholarships to go to a city college. It’s a nice idea, but these colleges cost barely $4,000 a year and the kids who go there tell me all you have to do to get a scholarship is have an OK attendance record from high school and a C average, especially if you’re a visible minority. The gesture of charity has become totally separate from the numbers behind it. My wife recently ran a marathon for cancer and raised $1,000. These marathons are great for morale, but they represent an infinitesimally small percentage of the trillions of dollars required for cancer research. Besides, the free market has it handled. If you don’t believe me, start a biotech company that deals with genetic research even loosely associated with the disease.

It’s counterintuitive, but the truth is, suffering has merit — especially between the ages of 18 and 25 when you’re meant to be building your ambition and learning what you’re good at. My kids are American Indians because I married a squaw, and that means they are going to get a big fat check from their tribe’s trust when they turn 18. The thought of it fills me with dread. Getting a big handout at that age can be more dangerous than living on the street. It usually leads to a new pickup truck and a cocaine habit. Before long, the habit leads to the truck getting wrapped around a tree. Most American Indians live below the poverty line, but the handouts only make it worse. Depending on the tribe, governments often pay for an American Indian’s home, especially in Canada. This sounds benevolent, but he can’t sell it, so it’s not really his. This is where you see how Friedman’s “childlike independence” really cripples a populous. Leave people to their own devices, and allow them the freedom to fail. It’s the way we were built. When you baby someone forever they stay a baby forever.

There is a great essay by novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard titled, “How I Grew to Hate My Son.” In it, she describes the intense doting she gave her spoiled brat of a son because she felt guilty about his father’s death. He took her overbearing love and converted it into self-obsessed vitriol until she couldn’t take it anymore. After his hundredth threat to leave the family forever, she called the 23-year-old’s bluff and allowed him to storm out. The two didn’t speak for months, and she had no idea if he was alive or dead. Then, out of the blue he showed up, cowed by the experience, and apologized for the torture he had put the entire family through. Life in the real world was a slap in the face, and after being hustled by a grifter roommate, he learned what it’s like to be taken advantage of. Mitchard is now very close with her son, but it took cutting him loose to get there.

When a bum asks us for batteries, we put our brain into his head and assume he needs the same quick loan we’d need if we were in his shoes. But he’s not like us. Nobody’s like us. This becomes especially evident when we look at the world as a whole. Different cultures are at different stages of development. Modern man started in Africa and has been developing his various cultures for 40,000 years. Wouldn’t it be a bizarre coincidence if we were all at the exact same point today? Six billion people go on a 40,000-year race, and they all end up at the finish line at the exact same time? The West is often blamed for Africa’s plight, but it was a mess before we got there, and it’s been a mess since we left. When we throw money at the problem it gets worse. Food goes to drug lords and financial aid is funneled into strengthening an already corrupt political system. The more aid we give them, the farther backward they go.

Even the people who purport to be against imperialism want to tell Africans how to live their lives. We say we’re going to cure them of their malaria epidemic, but we don’t let them use DDT to kill the mosquitos because it’s rumored to hurt birds (a myth started by the book Silent Spring). So, we provide them with nets. NETS! Have you ever heard of a more Band-Aid solution than covering each potential victim with a protective force field? Similarly, when Africans try to burn dirty fuels like coal to generate electricity, environmental groups put pressure on politicians until the villagers are denied the privilege and forced to go back to burning dung.

Nobody likes being told what to do. When the Dutch farmers colonized Rhodesia it was nothing to write home about. A generation later they had a bustling farming industry that essentially built a country from scratch. Plenty of Africans were happily employed there, but the overall sentiment was, “These farmers have God-like power. Get ’em outta here.” Today all the white farmers are either gone or cut into pieces, and the farms they used to run are in a total state of decay. Like the Bowery bums who chose to freeze outside and smoke on their own terms, Zimbabweans prefer rotting on their own terms to thriving under someone else’s. Every time we try to help, we end up doing more harm than good. Leave them alone, and they’ll catch up when they’re good and ready.

The same goes for the Middle East. It’s seen as an exotic place with culture that’s equal but different. Like us, they would benefit from some more heaping spoonfuls of good old American democracy. Right? Meh, I’m not buying it. I do see the similarities between the West and the Middle East, but I need a time machine to do it. They’re just us, a few hundred years ago. We used to drown women to see if they were witches. They stone women for being slutty enough to be raped. On the streets of American cities it used to be illegal for a woman to dress provocatively and adorn herself with makeup and other lascivious accouterments. Sounds like modern Islam to me. Let them have their suffragette movement and figure out the merits of tolerance. They’ll embrace democracy when their brain is ready for it. Not when we ram it down their throats.

The same goes for the Mexican drug wars. Removing Pablo Escobar created a power vacuum that all Central American coke dealers are still trying to fill. We shouldn’t have messed with them in the first place, but they’re in the shit now and there’s nothing we can do but wait. It happened to us during Prohibition. The battle to take over the black market is what gave us the iconic Chicago gangster in the pinstriped suit and tommy gun. That mess ultimately worked itself out, and we won’t be making that mistake again. Mexico will eventually look back at its carnage the same way. It’s called growing pains.

It’s nice to pretend the rest of the world is populated with innocent victims in need of a few batteries to power their flashlights. We figure, if they can get to their beds safely, they can get a good night’s sleep and be rested enough to start work the next day. However, we all know that bum was going to blow his flashlight money on booze. All giving him money would do is facilitate his addiction. He’s going to have to figure it out on his own, and although giving him money would make me feel better about myself, it would ultimately make his life worse.

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