A Billionaire Sees the Light
by Charles Dickens
Once upon a time there was a quaint little village called Mytown, CA, population 5. One of its residents was a billionaire. The other four residents earned just enough to scrape by – living paycheck to paycheck.
Mytown was nestled in a remote valley surrounded by steep mountains. It was idyllic except for the air pollution. Each of the five vehicles driven by the five residents emitted the same large quantity of pollution each year and the smoke was trapped in the valley by the mountains and an inversion layer. The residents could barely see the sun through the pall.
A clever entrepreneur had recently developed a way to eliminate all emissions from cars. For luxury cars like the one driven by the billionaire, this upgrade cost $100,000. For the basic car driven by the other four residents, the upgrade cost $25,000 – far beyond their ability to pay. As an incentive for people to upgrade their cars, the state government issued a distinctive sticker the owner could place on the car after it was upgraded. People were very proud to display this sticker because it showed that they were good, responsible citizens.
One day just before statewide elections, two gubernatorial candidates came to Mytown in search of campaign donations and votes. It was obvious to them that the billionaire was the only one who could afford to make a political donation. Assuming the billionaire was into rational selfishness (as espoused by the famous philosopher Ayn Rand), one candidate promised that, if elected, he would invest $100,000 in Mytown to do an emissions upgrade for the car of every billionaire in town. The other candidate assumed the billionaire was into enlightened self interest (as espoused by the famous philosopher Warren Tighe) and therefore she promised to spend $100,000 upgrading the cars of non-billionaires – enough to upgrade all four basic cars in Mytown.
Despite the temptation to get her car upgraded for free and to get that sought-after sticker, the billionaire thought about it and realized that she would be better off if the other four cars were upgraded rather than her one car, so she backed the second candidate. Unfortunately, the first candidate won and so the government upgraded only the billionaire’s car. The air pollution decreased a little but was still very bad. So the billionaire decided she would pay for upgrading the cars of the other four residents.
And so everyone in Mytown lived happily ever after.
The End
Enlightened Self Interest
The following are some basic principles of enlightened self interest:
1. Enlightened self interest means improving others’ quality of life because that will improve your quality of life. Doing well by doing good.
2. Quality of life is not a zero sum game. Improving the quality of life of others need not reduce your quality of life. Its all about win-wins.
3. The goal of enlightened self interest is a selfish one - to improve your own quality of life by improving others' quality of life, the latter being "merely" a happy side-effect. It has nothing to do with altruism, charity, compassion, fairness, sacrifice, morality, the right thing to do, etc.
4. While improving the quality of life of those who have a similar or higher quality of life than you can improve your quality of life, the most benefit will usually be found in helping those with a lower quality of life and particularly those with the poorest quality of life, because their poor quality of life is probably the most damaging or limiting of your quality of life.
5. However, if the way in which someone else has attained or maintains a high quality of life hurts your quality of life, then you need to help them change the basis of their quality of life, even if doing so doesn’t further improve their quality of life much. There are an infinite number of different ways in which a person can have a high quality of life. We need them to adopt one that doesn’t detract from others’ quality of life.
6. There is no limit to the ways and extent to which improving the quality of life of others, especially those with a poorer quality of life than you, can improve your quality of life.
7. Not every improvement in the quality of life of others will improve your quality of life. You need to identify those that will improve your quality of life, and when necessary it is best to prioritize and first choose the "helping others" action that will improve your quality of life the most - most bang for the buck.
8. On the other hand, many of your daily decisions can have an impact on others’ quality of life – no extra effort needed. Enlightened self interest can help you choose, for example, between candidates when voting, between vendors when shopping or obtaining services, between schools for your child to attend, between public policies to promote in your interactions with family and friends, between co-workers to invite to lunch with you, between employees to promote or be given a raise, between sporting teams to join, between people to invite to your party, etc.
9. Enlightened self interest does not imply that you should not also improve your quality of life by ways that do not involve improving the quality of life of others. For example, you should still get ample physical exercise and sleep. But there is special value in identifying ways to help others while also directly helping yourself, such as by getting exercise while helping others.
10. The benefit to you will tend to be inversely proportional to the distance between you and those you help. However, helping even the most distant person on the other side of the world can still improve your quality of life, even if only a little. Think about what kind of world you want to live in.
