Sometimes Helping People Is The Worst Thing You Can Do

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.

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