Von Bergen 1
The Dark Side of Helping: Giving People Something for Nothing
Makes Them Good for Nothing
C. W. Von Bergen and ???
Southeastern Oklahoma State University
Von Bergen 2
Abstract
Sustained, nonreciprocal benevolence in the form of help, favors, or other pro-social behaviors
which attempt to promote the welfare of others independent of the aid recipient’s performance or
effort or in other ways not deserved or earned may have downsides and adaptive costs that come
with very real losses that are frequently overlooked. This is often due to kindness which over
time frequently results in recipients’ greater risk-taking and reduced effort that may worsen the
very concerns that were meant to be alleviated by the assistance in the first place. Thus, it is
important not to allow peoples’ honorable intentions in providing aid and assistance blind
individuals to the fact that real harm may be done—not the good envisioned. Examples of the
corrosive consequences of well-meaning support which often results in entitlement and
dependency are presented in a variety of fields are discussed and having “skin in the game” as
practiced by Habitat for Humanity is offered as a possible solution.
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The Dark Side of Helping: Giving People Something for Nothing
Makes Them Good for Nothing
A boy spent hours watching a caterpillar struggling to emerge from its cocoon.
It managed to make a small hole, but its body was too large to get thorough. After
a long struggle, it appeared to be exhausted and remained absolutely still. The boy
decided to help the caterpillar and with a pair of scissors he cut open the cocoon,
thus releasing it. The caterpillar fell to the ground but its body was very small and
wrinkled and its wings were all crumpled. The boy continued to watch hoping that
at any moment it would open its wings and fly away. But nothing happened; in
fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its very brief life dragging around its shrunken
body and shriveled wings, incapable of flight.
—Adapted from Bliss and Burgess (2012)
Wondering what happened the boy’s mother took the boy to a local university and
learned that the caterpillar was supposed to struggle as a way of acquiring its wings and to
achieve its destiny to become a butterfly. In fact, they were told, the caterpillar’s struggle to push
its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon drives the fluid out of its body and into its wings.
Without the struggle, the caterpillar would never, ever fly because squeezing out of that small
hole was Nature’s way of preparing its wings for flight. Despite the boy’s kindness and his
eagerness to help, his good wishes and virtuous behavior actually irreparably damaged the
caterpillar and the boy innocently killed that which he was trying to help.
Like the caterpillar’s strength-building process in emerging from its cocoon, sometimes
work, effort, and struggle are precisely what is sometimes needed for the next series of trials to
be faced and should not be short-circuited or undermined by kindly intervention. Those who
refuse to exert effort or receive the wrong sort of help are often left unprepared to fight the next
battle or overcome succeeding challenges—and thus have not “earned their wings.”
Facing moderate difficulties may have long-term benefits. This has been referred to as
stress inoculation (Meichenbaum, 1993) and steeling (Rutter, 2006). Dienstbier’s (1989) theory
of toughness holds that limited exposure to stressors—with opportunities for recovery in between
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can “toughen” individuals. Toughness results in psychological and physiological changes that
make people more likely to perceive stressful situations in general as manageable (rather than
overwhelming) and to cope effectively with them. Sheltering individuals from all stressors and
negative events by providing help may fail to develop such toughness. Experiencing adversity
may also promote advantages in the form of greater propensity for resilience when dealing with
subsequent stressful situations (Seery, 2011). Furthermore, Dienstbier (1989) suggested that
mundane stressful events can foster toughness and resilience and DiCorcia and Tronick (2011)
noted that infants develop a propensity for resilience based on successfully managing everyday
difficulties, which is enabled by caregivers who are neither unattentive nor overattentive.
Moreover, often in the context of helping there are unplanned negative consequences and
thus long-term and short-term effects must be considered. This is important because successful
helping activities are often evaluated by intentions and motivation for behavior rather than the
results and consequences of actions.
Beneficence toward those less fortunate, assisting people in need, demonstrating kindness
to others, generosity, and trying to relieve individuals’ grief and misery through help, aid, and
donations is often considered one of society’s main moral duties (Salter, 2008). Indeed, when
one sees the poor, downtrodden, or starving—whether it be in person or otherwise—they are
struck with “pangs of conscience” that compel them to help. While there are some few who are
so hardened and self-interested that they have no concern for the plight of others, typically
people of all types and degrees of political and religious disposition experience this feeling.
Indeed it may be one of the truly defining characteristics of humanity to have a sense of
obligation to help those in need.
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However, the financial and political crisis of the last few years has highlighted the lack of
societal responsibility and caring for others and in response to such severe criticism there have
been calls for increased demonstrations of compassion, kindness, and grace (George, 2014;
Grant, 2008; Rynes, Bartunek, Dutton, & Margolis, 2012; Thomas & Rowland, 2014). Such
appeals are aimed at ultimately increasing “helping behaviors”, “caring behaviors”, “altruism”,
and “prosocial behaviors” (Brief & Motowidlo, 1986) that commonly includes kindness
understood as generosity, nurturance, care, altruistic love, and “niceness” demonstrated by doing
favors and good deeds for others, helping them, and taking care of them (Peterson, 2006; Park &
Peterson, 2006; Park, Peterson & Seligman, 2004).
Research has primarily focused on donors rather than recipients of aid. Research has long
demonstrated the value of a generous spirit. After providing gifts, favors, services, or assistance
to others, donors become more liked, more appreciated, and even physically healthier (Gilbert,
McEwan, Matos, & Rivis, 2010; Martin et al., 2015; Martin, Goldstein, & Cialdini, 2014).
Similarly, researchers have also examined the costs of helping and caring (e.g., compassion
fatigue and burnout) on those who assist the needy and the traumatized (Figley, 1995; Portnoy,
2011), and Flynn (2003) found that at high levels helping colleagues consumes time, energy, and
other finite resources that make it more difficult to complete the helper’s own work. Other
research examines interventions geared toward improving one’s self-compassion as a means of
being more caring and compassionate towards others (Neff, 2011; Neff & Germer, 2013).
Concern for the donor is also illustrated in Singer’s (1972) famous answer to the question of
“How much must I give to aid groups that help people who suffer from starvation, poverty, and
preventable disease?” is that a person “. . . must give until I reach the level . . . at which, by
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giving more, I would cause as much suffering to myself or my dependents as I would relieve by
my gift” (p. 241). In other words, people must give until it hurts.
This focus on donors and helpers has been accompanied by an axiomatic belief that the
aid provided to others is beneficial and constructive (Zarri, 2013). Such assistance seems
straightforwardly positive and yet it is not. To paraphrase the title of a book by Corbett and
Fikkert (2014), “helping hurts”: rather than improving the situation of the beneficiaries, helping
people sometimes contributes to their difficulties. It generates seriously negative effects
including long-term harm, loss of self-reliance, increased levels of dependence, a sense of
entitlement, increase in the number of beneficiaries and decrease in the wealth of the
beneficiaries, no impact on growth, etc. Like in the opening vignette, sometimes providing aid,
even with the best of intentions, can be problematic. What is needed, we believe, is a more
nuanced analysis of the costs of helping.
All too often the best long-term action to help others is not immediately or intuitively
obvious; not what temporarily makes people feel good; or not what is being promoted by others
with their own potentially self-serving agendas. Indeed, beneficial care may sometimes appear
cruel or harmful, the equivalent of saying “no” to the student who demands a higher, undeserved
grade or to the addict who wants another hit. Was St. Paul unusually callous in admonishing
early Christians about idleness when he said, “… The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat”
(2 Thessalonians 3:10, New International Version)? St. Paul was concerned, according to a
recent interpretation by Pope Francis (Harris, 2015), with the “false spiritualism of some who
live off the backs of their brothers and sisters without doing anything.” The issue is not refusing
to give aid to those who cannot help themselves or people who do not have the physical ability to
work; the problem is exclusively living off the graciousness and generosity of others.
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Attempts to help others often come with very real (but often hidden) costs that can
worsen the very realities that were meant to be alleviated. Nobel prize-winning economist Milton
Friedman (1975) warned of such harms when he said that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”
(p. 1). His comment intended to convey that one cannot get “something for nothing” and that
nothing is free because someone, somewhere always pays and that there are always costs
involved. The first reference to this idea originated in 19th century U.S. saloons whereby free
lunches were offered to customers who purchased at least one drink. The foods, being high in
salt, would entice customers to consume more drink, usually beer. As such, the “free lunch”
carried a hidden cost to the recipients of the meal, namely the price paid for each extra unit of
drink, which effectively ended up paying for the lunch. Marketers know that the offer of a free
sample can lead to a larger purchase that more than compensates for the cost of their “initial” gift
(Martin et al., 2014).
Receiving a “free lunch” from the government as Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a lifelong
New Deal liberal, former New York Senator, and accomplished social scientist indicated also has
a hidden cost: “the issue of welfare is not what it costs those who provide it but what it costs
those who receive it” (as cited in Pivin & Cloward, 1979, p. 340). The point was that welfare
often exacts a very high price because it robs aid recipients of their self-worth and self-reliance,
key American, even human, values, and makes them dependent and entitled (Halvorsen, 1998).
Receiving benefits and advantages unrelated to their behavior, performance, or
accomplishment often leads to individuals becoming labeled with two pejorative terms 1)
dependent—an unhealthy reliance on someone or something else for aid or support sometimes
seen as “a defect of individual character” (Goodin, 1988, p. 89) that takes away the freedom of
personal initiative (Adriaansens, 1994) and synonymous with being a parasite (Lind, 1995); and
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entitled—a pernicious and unfounded belief that one possesses a legitimate right to receive
special privileges, mode of treatment, and/or designation (Kerr, 1985). According to researchers
(e.g., Campbell, Bonacci, Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, 2004; Harvey & Harris, 2010; Harvey &
Martinko, 2009; Snyders, 2002) individuals with high perceived entitlement levels believe that
they are owed many things in life where they do not have to earn what they get and regardless of
performance levels. In the work context research has found that employees with entitlement
beliefs displayed a tendency toward unethical behavior and conflict with their supervisors,
unrealistic pay expectations, low levels of job satisfaction, high levels of turnover intention,
perceived inequity, job dissatisfaction, and even corruption (Harvey & Harris, 2010; Harvey &
Martinko, 2009; Kets de Vries, 2006; Levine, 2005). At extremely high levels entitlement often
is associated with narcissism (Ackerman & Donnellen, 2013; Twenge & Campbell, 2009)—a
decidedly negative characteristic.
Thus, a “free lunch” can be damaging—and even reflecting about a free lunch can be
problematic. Fitzsimons and Finkel (2011) noted, for instance, that thinking about the support a
significant other offers in pursuing goals can undermine the motivation to work toward those
goals—and can increase procrastination before getting down to work. The researchers randomly
assigned American women who cared a great deal about their health and fitness to think about
how their spouse was helpful, either with their health and fitness goals or for their career goals
(control group). Women who thought about how their spouse was helpful with their health and
fitness goals became less motivated to work hard to pursue those goals. Relative to the control
group, these women planned to spend one-third less time in the coming week pursuing their
health and fitness goals. This research illustrated what Fitzsimons and Finkel (2011) referred to
as “self-regulatory outsourcing” (p. 369) in which considering how other people can be helpful
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for a given goal undermines motivation to expend effort on that goal. It seems that when
individuals think about how someone else can help with an ongoing goal, they unconsciously
“outsource” effort to their partner, relying on them for future goal progress, and, consequently,
exert less effort themselves.
The implication here is that gifting and aiding people, for who they are, unrelated to what
they do or achieve, often results in adverse effects for those individuals. Dependency is created
when incentives to work are removed, yet benefits are still received. If persons are rewarded or
reinforced for their characteristics, qualities, membership status, or state of being as opposed to
behavior, performance, accomplishment, or achievement then they may become in the long-term
indolent, dependent, entitled, and narcissistic.
In determining whether aid of any given type is socially beneficial, individuals (and
governments) must consider whether it is likely to significantly increase the number and worsen
the condition of beneficiaries of aid. All too often heartfelt efforts to help are in reality salving
people’s own consciences without fully examining the consequences for those they seek to help.
As discussed here, sometimes the granting of assistance promotes the very conditions that evoke
such aid. In a culture such as the U.S. that places high value on kindness, empathy, charity, and
altruism and for those who treat these concepts as sacred such views may cognitively blind
individuals to its harms (Haidt, 2013).
At the risk of verging on the polemical, the goal of this article is to open up perspectives
as much as analyzing facts and to bridge the chasm between the rhetoric and the reality of giving.
We recognize that those who question benevolence are not going to win many popularity
contests and in some ways we feel somewhat uncomfortable by suggesting that helping and
assisting others in the short-run may actually hurt them in the long-term. In part this is because in
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U.S. culture giving and providing aid are often viewed as monolithically positive, nearly sacred
qualities beyond reproach with negligible tradeoffs, whether or not the assistance is genuinely
beneficial (Oakley, Knafo, & McGrath, 2012). “It’s the thought that counts,” as the saying goes,
when discounting negative consequences of giving, assisting, and helping.
For example, well-meaning governmental policies to enact the American Dream of
homeownership in the 1990s and early 2000s allowed less-than-qualified individuals to receive
housing loans and encouraged more-qualified buyers to overextend themselves. Typical riskreward considerations were disregarded because of implicit government support (Acharya,
Richardson, van Nieuwerburgh, & White, 2011). As a result, homeownership for such
historically “underserved” borrowers increased significantly; yet when economic conditions
deteriorated, many lost their homes or found themselves with properties worth far less than they
originally had paid, and taxpayers were left with trillion-dollar costs and a prolonged economic
crisis.
Essentially, with the very best of purposes, a permissive lending environment was created
in which the wrong people were given too much money to buy houses they could not afford
causing catastrophic damages. The good objectives inherent in such “feel good,” emotionallybased practices frequently follow short-term, superficial heuristics for helping others that are
often implemented without a more critical, in-depth analysis of costs. An initial snap, commonsense judgment about what seems right in helping others can gel quickly into formidable
certitude without consideration of important relevant facts. An awareness of the limits of helping
on the other hand could have facilitated better regulation in order to mitigate its costs and
enhance its benefits. There may have been significant advantages for all U.S. citizens if some
had been told “no.”
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We are not trying to discount the importance of donating or providing aid to others but to
address those who have extolled its value without realistic consideration about when such actions
contain the potential for significant harm. The major implication of this review is not a call for a
reduction of aid, help, and care but rather an appeal for rethinking strategies for assisting others.
Sometimes help is truly facilitating and sometimes, particularly in the long-run, it contributes to
inadvertent harm mostly due to the detrimental effects of entitlement and aid dependency.
Without approaching this virtue of kindness interpreted as helping others with a healthy
dose of mindfulness (e.g., Davis & Hayes, 2011), individuals often become blind to the ways
such a virtue can sometimes hurt people. Both political and moral reasons compel individuals to
channel some of their affluence to the underprivileged and those in need. But fundamental rules
of fairness are overturned when gifts are granted without reciprocity. This has led us to suggest
the maxim that “If you give people something for nothing, you make them good for nothing”
(Daniels, 2001, p. 77).
Some individuals, however, find it disturbing to question the value of compassion,
altruism, charitable giving, and empathy and seem to suggest that these qualities be revered
without question (Center for Compassion, n.d.; Oakley, 2013). If there are negative effects of
helping, some say, then surely it is an aberration. Konrath and Grynberg (in press), for instance,
indicate that their paper is one of the most comprehensive reviews to date on the potential
liabilities associated with empathy. They seem, reluctant, however, to write this when they
indicate that: “Empathy is nearly always a desirable attribute in relationship to our loved ones
and other social interaction partners, but it comes with a few ‘thorns’ that need to be reconciled
with its otherwise highly adaptive nature” (Konrath & Grynberg, in press, p. 25).
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But a growing body of research indicates that virtues across a wide number of domains
can wreak havoc in the long-run and that at high levels, strengths and virtues can have
antithetical consequences on well-being and/or performance (Breeden, 2013). In many areas one
finds that X increases Y to a point, and then it decreases Y (Grant & Schwartz, 2011; Suedfeld,
1969) suggesting that there are no virtues for which costs do not emerge at high levels; i.e., too
much of a good thing can be a bad thing—even in the case of assistance. To say that helping is
an unmitigated good is simply painting with too broad a brush and that attempts to assist others
sometimes come with impairments and can have tradeoffs that worsen the very concerns that
were meant to be eased.
Selected Areas Where Helping May Be Hurting
The unseen misfortunes of helping and giving are explored here by examining several
areas where benevolence may be problematic. In such areas—animal behavior, nursing home
residents, foreign aid, parental behavior, and welfare—helping can hurt. The factors reviewed are
not intended to be an exhaustive listing; rather, it is hoped they will provide a foundation for
examining what happens when animals and people get something for nothing. As can be seen in
these examples, gifts and handouts that are granted without reciprocity (rewards given noncontingently) often have negative long-term costs despite short-term gains.
Animal behavior
People are not animals to be sure; nevertheless, people and animals are often governed by
similar laws of behavior discovered over the last 100 or so years (Potter, Sharpe & Hendee,
1973). Consider the policy of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) not to feed wild animals.
They do this because doing so encourages animals to beg and grow dependent on human
handouts and to not learn to take care of themselves. Feeding wildlife in Yellowstone in June and
July, for example, is giving them a death sentence in January and February as they continue to
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look for offerings from visitors who have long since departed. Animals become beggars and
unhealthy, making them vulnerable to diseases, predators, dangerous behavior, and automobiles.
NPS staff find it heartbreaking when they are forced to euthanize animals whose inappropriate
behaviors were caused by giveaways of well-meaning people who provided the animals
something (food) for nothing, and in the process made them a nuisance and an irritant.
In another animal-related instance a laboratory study Engberg, Hansen, Welker, and
Thomas (1972) found that pigeons fed regardless of what they did in phase 1 of a study
performed poorly in a second phase where they were only able to receive food for key-pecking
behavior relative to a naïve control group that had been fed for treadle-pressing in phase 1. The
authors interpreted their results in terms of “learned laziness” because in the first stage of
training the experimental subjects received food on a variable interval schedule of reward
independent of their treadle-pressing behavior. In other words, the experimental birds received
food after various times independent of their performance (i.e., for doing nothing) and this
resulted in making them good for nothing (i.e., low performers in phase 2 of the study).
Nursing home residents
Good intentions can sometimes lead to bad results. Langer and Rodin (1976), for
example, in an experiment told one group of elderly patients in a nursing home that they were
allowed to arrange their rooms as they wished, choose spare-time activities, and decide when to
watch television, listen to the radio, etc. They were also offered plants to care for. A comparison
group of residents was told that the staff would help them by arranging for all their needs. They
were also given plants but were told that the staff would assist them by caring for their plants.
Because patients were randomly assigned to groups neither group should have had healthier
individuals, however, the researchers found that those residents who were told they were in
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charge of their activities and plants became more alert and active than those in the comparison
condition told that all their needs would be taken care of by the staff. Importantly, Rodin and
Langer (1977) found that eighteen months later 15% of the patients who were told to take control
of their activities had died, compared with 30% in the other group who were told that everything
would be maintained by the staff—a statistically significant finding.
Foreign aid
Foreign aid has a long track record. The biggest upside appears to be the injection of
large sums of money into developing countries otherwise gripped by poverty, war, and conflict.
That money should, in theory, improve lives and raise people out of poverty, leading to
sustainable growth and development. The unfortunate truth, however, is that foreign aid has
often presented more challenges than opportunities to aid-receiving countries (Ear, 2013;
Kennedy, 2004). There have been small improvements across the globe, from reducing poverty
to slowing population growth to curing and preventing diseases, but the impact from aid has not
been proportionate to the amount of money donated. Foreign aid’s biggest downside is that
frequently there is no clear, effective system put in place to hold aid recipients and their
governments accountable for resources illegally taken from public sector coffers—a longstanding, and still very present, trend from Asia to Africa to Latin America/Caribbean to Europe.
Unfortunately, the absence of that system reinforces social inequities and perpetuates cycles of
political abuse that has led to a sophisticated new form of authoritarianism—one that empowers
the elite few, while keeping a majority of people in abject poverty. Some 30 years ago Bovard
(1986) argued convincingly that the success of foreign aid is often measured by intentions, not
results. Using the U.S. as one example, Bovard (1986) indicated that “[F]oreign aid has routinely
failed to benefit the foreign poor…[and] the U.S. Agency for International Development
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[USAID] has dotted the countryside with ‘white elephants’…the biggest…of them all—a
growing phalanx of corrupt, meddling, and overpaid bureaucrats” (p. 1).
It seems that foreign aid might create perverse incentives and undermine the development
of sound institutions in the recipient countries in part because large amounts of aid delivered to
low-income countries with poor institutions and governance can create a cycle of aid dependence
where the recipient government begins to rely considerably on foreign sources to perform key
operational and fiscal tasks. Alternatively, it could refer to a situation where the recipient
government is discouraged from expending any efforts towards inducing development because it
anticipates that foreign assistance is on the way. Indeed, foreign aid supplies large amounts of
unearned capital to governments in a windfall-type manner (Nager, 2013).
Such behavior is essentially motivated by the fact that recipient governments continue to
receive development assistance even if they have made no concerted efforts to effectively utilize
received funds. In fact, such guarantees can potentially induce ‘moral hazard’ behavior on the
part of recipient governments, where they may pursue unproductive policies that are more likely
to encourage agencies to continue funding. For example, the anticipation of charity in the case of
a large-scale disaster might prompt governments to diminish protection (Buchanan, 1975; Coate,
1995) since “… current decisions of economic agents depend in part upon their expectations of
future policy actions” (Kydland & Prescott, 1977, p. 474).
Even the World Bank has conceded that in countries with weak institutions, “the Bank’s
interventions may have delayed the development of effective, self-reliant cadres and institutions”
(Kapur, Lewis, & Webb, 1997, volume 1, p. 421). The essential problem with this intervention is
that there are no consequences associated with poor efforts from the recipient government. As a
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result of this phenomenon, beneficiary governments have weak incentives to efficiently utilize
received funds, and generate sustainable development.
In the recipient country aid dependence can impact institutions by weakening institutional
capacity, siphoning off scarce talent from the bureaucracy, diminishing accountability,
encouraging rent seeking and corruption, fomenting conflict over control of aid funds, and
alleviating pressures to reform inefficient policies and institutions. For instance, a resident of
Equatorial Guinea described his country’s neglect of facility maintenance: “Everything is given
to them; they don’t take care of anything and don’t have to” (Klitgaard, 1990, p. 98). When
vulnerable groups are exposed to the international relief system, the end result may be the
wholesale destruction of a culture. Despite over $2 trillion provided to Africa over the last 50
years, former World Bank consultant Dambisa Moyo, a native of Zambia, indicated such aid has
resulted in measurably worsened outcomes in a broad variety of areas, supporting despotism and
increasing corruption and a sense of dependency in Africans (Moyo, 2009).
Similarly, Bettencourt et al. (2006) indicated that high-profile disaster relief aid to
Southwestern Pacific nations appears to create an irrational incentive to do nothing to reduce
risk. Foreign aid reduces the recipient countries’ incentives to invest in protection against
potential natural disasters since aid receiving policy makers are likely to rely on bail-outs from
the international community in the case of a large natural disaster. Relief aid rewards inaction
and in the process ensures that future natural disasters will be more brutal because those nations
receiving aid have done nothing to take preventive actions to prepare for future natural disasters.
Another perspective also finds that aid may negatively impact countries. It seems that
reductions in foreign aid while initially difficult, may over the long run be beneficial. For
example, the end of U.S. aid—which had been generous in the 1950s—is often credited for the
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Korean and Taiwanese economic turnarounds of the 1960s (Rodrik, 1996). Foreign aid, it seems,
has largely encouraged Third World governments and their populations to rely on hand-outs
instead of on themselves for development thus again demonstrating the corrosive effects of help.
Parental helping behavior
In yet another area, many parents make the mistake of providing damaging financial
assistance to their children. Their motives are usually good. They want to help their children by
paying for their college, and helping them get started in life or assist their children when a
financial need rises. Unfortunately, the result is often opposite to the one desired. Instead of
helping the children become self-sufficient, they become dependent. Instead of sparking
initiative and discipline, the children become idle and indulgent. Instead of being achievement
oriented, they become entitlement-oriented. Instead of becoming grateful, they become
demanding. Gosman (1992), for example, noted that “Children who always get what they want
will want as long as they live” (p. 32). Research has shown that “in general, the more dollars
adult children receive [from their parents] the fewer they accumulate, while those who are given
fewer dollars accumulate more” (Stanley & Danko, 1996, pp. 142-143). This is consistent with
Hamilton’s (2013) research which found that the more money parents spend on their child’s
college education, the worse grades the child earns.
In another parenting study Schiffrin et al. (2014) found that the more parents are involved
in schoolwork and selection of college majors—that is, the more “helicopter parenting” they
do—the less satisfied college students feel with their lives. The researchers found that parental
over-involvement may lead to negative outcomes in children, including higher levels of
depression and anxiety, lower levels of perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and
decreased satisfaction with life. Such helicopter parenting behaviors often involve parents taking
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too much responsibility for their children’s behavior and not permitting them to undergo life’s
consequences and to prevent their offspring from experiencing unhappiness, struggle, hard work,
and no guaranteed results—all of which can be excellent teachers for children and not actually
life-threatening even though at times it may feel that way. The research by Schiffrin et al. (2014)
suggests that intense involvement is considered by some parents to be supportive and helpful,
whereas it is often perceived as controlling and undermining by their children.
Welfare: Individual and corporate
Welfare for individuals
Sometimes there are detrimental long-term effects on American families because of many
well-intentioned welfare programs (Funiciello, 1993; Voegeli, 2010). This appears to be a longlasting issue and is endemic in government programs to assist the poor. Hazlitt (1971), for
example, describes two lessons that can be drawn from the effects of welfare in ancient Rome:
“The first . . . is that once the dole or similar relief programs are introduced, they seem almost
inevitably . . . to get out of hand. The second lesson is that once this happens, the poor become
more numerous and worse off than they were before, not only because they have lost selfreliance, but because the sources of wealth and production on which they depended for either
doles or jobs are diminished or destroyed” (p. 219). In short, in collectively assisting the needy
through government handouts, the number of the poor increased because work incentives were
adversely affected.
As a more recent example, consider that Congress initiated cuts in welfare by passing
The 1996 Welfare Reform Law (also known as The Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 [PRWORA]) amid predictions that it would result in
substantial increases in destitution, hunger, and other social ills. For example, Senator Daniel
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Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) proclaimed the new law to be “the most brutal act of social policy
since reconstruction” (Huffington, 1996). He predicted, “Those involved will take this disgrace
to their graves” (Welfare as They Know It, 2001, p. A14). However, in a six year evaluation of
this welfare reform law Rector and Fagan (2003) noted that overall poverty, child poverty,
poverty of single mothers, and child hunger declined substantially. Employment of single
mothers increased dramatically, and welfare rolls plummeted. The share of children living in
single-mother families fell, and the share of children living in married-couple families grew,
especially among black families. Pardue (2003) observed that black child poverty declined from
41.5% to 30% in this six year period—the biggest decline in recorded history. Cutting welfare
payments, led to decreased levels of poverty suggesting that the government had induced
otherwise able-bodied people to become dependent on welfare.
Interestingly, PRWORA also cut eligibility to Medicaid for noncitizen immigrants.
Borjas (2003) found that, again contrary to expectations, health insurance coverage among
noncitizen immigrants increased after their eligibility for Medicaid was reduced—an effect that
could not be explained by the robust economy of the 1990s. Borjas argued that affected
immigrants increased their work effort and found jobs with health benefits.
On the other hand, increasing welfare payments may increase poverty levels. A study by
Guedel (2014) of two dozen Native American gaming tribes located in the states of Washington,
Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska found that growing tribal gaming revenues can make poverty worse.
Between 2000 and 2010 casinos owned by those tribes doubled their total annual take in real
terms to $2.7 billion. From an economic perspective, it would seem reasonable to expect the
infusion of new capital provided by tribal gaming to be a catalyst for poverty reduction, and
likewise expect to see the individual and collective poverty percentages for tribes decrease. On a
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collective basis, the actual results for these northwestern tribes demonstrated the opposite: an
inverse correlation between per capita payments (in which tribes distribute casino profits directly
to tribal members) and poverty reduction. Of the 17 tribes in the study that dispersed cash from
casinos directly to members, ten (58.8 percent) saw their poverty rates rise. Of the seven tribes
that did not provide per capita payments to members, only two saw a poverty increase. In tribes
with high unemployment and poverty, per capita payments are often viewed as a means of
collective support by and for tribal members, with each member eligible for an equal share of
tribal wealth.
It seems that per capita payments for poverty reduction in Native American
communities—which some have likened to a welfare-type system—provided a disincentive for
work and dissipated tribal economic resources that could be better used to finance strategic
initiatives such as scholarships for higher education (McGee, 2013). Indeed, Native American
Ron Whitener, law professor, tribal judge, and a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe
indicated: ”These [per capita] payments can be destructive because the more generous they
become, the more people fall into the trap of not working” (Payne, 2015).
We are in agreement with U.S. founding father, Benjamin Franklin who over 250 years
ago said: “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best
way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them
out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public
provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became
poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and
became richer” (Franklin, 1766).
Corporate welfare
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With respect to corporate welfare, some hold that certain financial institutions are so
large and so interconnected that their failure would be disastrous to the economy, and they
therefore must be supported by government when they face difficulty. The colloquial term “too
big to fail” has been used to describe this situation (Lin, 2010). By declaring a company too big
to fail means that the government may step in and help these institutions if they get into trouble.
If the public and the management of a corporation believe that the company will receive a
financial bailout to keep it going, then management may take more risks in pursuit of profits. As
former Federal Reserve Bank chairperson, Ben Bernanke (2010), indicated, “If creditors believe
that an institution will not be allowed to fail, they will not demand as much compensation for
risks as they otherwise would, thus weakening market discipline; nor will they invest as many
resources in monitoring the firm’s risk-taking. As a result, too-big-to-fail firms will tend to take
more risk than desirable, in the expectation that they will receive assistance if their bets go bad.”
While government bailouts or intervention might help a company survive (e.g., Chrysler),
some opponents believe it is counterproductive to help companies that deliberately take positions
that are high-risk high-return, because they are able to leverage these risks based on the policy
preference they receive (Drew, 2009; Gup, 2003). Some critics, such as former Federal Reserve
chair, Alan Greenspan, believe that such large organizations should be deliberately broken up:
“If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big” (McKee & Lanman, 2009). More than fifty prominent
economists, financial experts, bankers, finance industry groups, and banks themselves have
called for breaking up large banks into smaller institutions (The Big Picture, 2013). It appears
that when people and organizations are protected from the consequences of their behavior then
bad things often happen.
Other areas
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Because of space limitations we do not address additional areas that provide unearned
largesse resulting in detrimental effects in the long term. For example, codependence and
enabling (McGrath, & Oakley, 2012), unemployment benefits (Hagedorn, Karahan, Manovskii,
& Mitman, 2013) gambling and lottery winners (Hankins, Hoekstra, & Skiba, 2011), grade
inflation (Felton & Koper, 2005), participation trophies (Merryman, 2013), and individuals
inheriting substantial sums of money (Schorsch, 2012) could have been addressed as examples of
individuals getting something for nothing and the problems associated with such factors. Such
events represent a moral hazard.
The Problem: Moral Hazard
The notion of a moral hazard is that a party that is protected in some way from risk will
act differently than if that party did not have that protection (Beattie, n.d.). The idea is that an
actor has incentive to behave in an economically or socially suboptimal manner because the
person does not bear all of the actual and/or potential costs of their action. It is opportunistic
behavior, that is, behavior which takes advantage of an opportunity for personal benefit even if it
is at the expense of others. Moral hazard is sometimes referred to as charity hazard (Browne &
Hoyt, 2000; Kaplow, 1991) or disaster syndrome (Kunreuther, 2000) and is usually applied to
the insurance industry. It is the phenomenon that people underinsure or do not insure at all due to
anticipated governmental assistance and/or private charity (Browne & Hoyt, 2000; Kaplow,
1991; Schwarze & Wagner, 2004). It means that people with insurance may take greater risks
than they would do without it because they know they are protected, so the insurer may get more
claims than it bargained for (Einav, Finkelstein, Ryan, Schrimpf, & Cullen, 2013). Insurance
companies worry that by offering payouts to protect against losses, they may actually encourage
risk-taking, which results in them paying more in claims. Insurers fear that a “don’t worry, it’s
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insured” attitude leads to policyholders with collision insurance driving recklessly or fire-insured
homeowners smoking in bed.
A typical example of moral hazard arises when government provides unemployment
insurance, or “the dole” (Kuperman, 2008, p. 221). The goal is to provide temporary financial
protection to the jobless, to mitigate the negative impact on them and the larger economy, and to
facilitate their finding a good job. But in practice, by alleviating suffering, such insurance creates
moral hazard that encourages both irresponsibility (not looking hard for a job) and outright fraud
(deliberately not finding a job, for those who prefer a work-free insurance payout to working for
a higher salary; Baker, 1996). Thus, a policy intended to increase income of the disadvantaged
may unintentionally have the opposite effect. The dole is not responsible for all unemployment,
yet scholars and governmental administrators still strive for reforms to mitigate its perverse
contribution to the very problem that it was intended to solve.
This domestic example has been replicated on an international scale in recent years by the
advent of bailouts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Such bailouts provide an
infusion of hard currency to states in emerging markets that otherwise would default on their
foreign debt because of severe balance-of-payments deficits. The goal is to preserve domestic
and international economic welfare and stability by reassuring lenders and investors that they can
continue to do business in emerging markets without fear of huge losses. But reducing the
penalty to states for risky economic policies and to lenders for risky loans has the unintended
consequence of encouraging these inefficient behaviors that undermine economic stability
(Blustein, 2004; Lane & Phillips, 2001). This appears to be the case with Greece who in mid2015 asked the IMF and European creditors for a third financial bailout since 2010.
Von Bergen 24
A system whereby relief or aid is given to the worst off may create moral hazard, because
people or institutions receiving help for being worst off have less incentive to improve; that is, a
moral hazard is induced by the expectation of assistance. Moral hazard problems arise whenever
individuals’ behavior is affected because they are protected from the consequences of their
actions. Moral hazards are encountered every day: tenured professors have secure jobs and poor
teaching or research have little or no career consequences, people with auto theft insurance are
less vigilant about where they park, salaried salespeople take long breaks, and so on.
A Model for Helping: Demanding Some “Skin in the Game”
To mitigate the moral hazard of helping others we focus on the importance of cost
sharing. To reduce moral hazard cost sharing is often used (Kuperman, 2008). The simplest and
most common remedy is to require the insured to share in these costs (Pauly, 1968). Using
insurance as an example, one option is a deductible, commonly used in car insurance, requiring
the insured to pay a fixed amount of the cost before insurance covers the remainder. Absent a
deductible, drivers would have less incentive to drive defensively or to pay for off-street parking
to avoid vandalism. Another option is coinsurance, where the insurer pays only a percentage of
the cost, commonly 80 percent in medical insurance. The insured’s prospect of having to pay the
remaining 20 percent deters irresponsible overutilization of medical care (while the relatively
low copayment also promotes routine care to avert high-cost emergency procedures). Similarly,
unemployment insurance utilizes a “reduced replacement rate,” where the insurance benefit is
only a fraction of the former wage, to deter workers from fraudulently or irresponsibly getting
fired (Wang & Williamson, 1999). A final option is to cap the amount of an insurance payout.
U.S. bank deposit insurance is capped at $100,000 per depositor, so that larger depositors share
in the cost of a bank failure and thus have incentive to avoid risky banks. This system insures
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most deposits, thereby averting runs on troubled banks, while still providing banks an incentive
to avoid risky loans and investments. Capping is also used in unemployment insurance, by
limiting its duration to increase the incentive for the jobless to look for work.
Each of these three cost-sharing strategies to reduce moral hazard—deductibles,
coinsurance, and caps on benefits are designed so that individuals have some “skin in the game.”
Several examples of having “skin in the game” have been offered over the millennia.
Hammurabi’s code, formulated nearly 4,000 years ago by the Babylonians, specifies: “If a
builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he
has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to
death” (Harper, 1904, p. 111). Other examples include the Roman heuristic that engineers spend
time sleeping under the bridges they have built, to the maritime rule that the captain should be
last to leave the ship when there is a risk of sinking.
From these examples it is clear that the term, “skin in the game,” means having a
significant commitment or stake in a venture or activity. ‘Game’ is a metaphor for actions of all
types, and ‘skin’ is a metaphor for being committed to something through emotional, financial,
or bodily commitment. The phrase implies being invested in achieving an outcome. The thinking
is that putting one’s own precious resources at risk where one can potentially lose something
(whether it’s some form of ownership, money, property, life, or just respect) means that people
have a greater stake in the success of the venture and are incentivized to exercise care and limit
irresponsible risk-taking.
Those not having skin in the game have nothing to lose and therefore may more easily
walk away in large part because there are fewer negative consequences to them. When decision
makers have skin in the game—when they share in the costs and benefits of their decisions that
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might affect others—they are more likely to make prudent decisions. Skin in the game is what is
sometimes called an equity investment. Equity investors are owners and owners value their
property. Equity investments do not have to be large to provide incentives that generate desirable
responses. Several areas where skin in the game is important are now provided.
Investing
Beginning in 2005, the Securities and Exchange Commission required fund manager
investment status to be filed under a statement of additional information. Beyond the symbolic
benefits of showing investors that a manager has some of his or her own money in the fund (i.e.,
some skin in the game), there are real and measurable advantages to having the portfolio
manager in the investor pool. According to Morningstar’s continuing stewardship research on
funds and fund companies, on average, the more money a portfolio manager invests in a fund,
the better the fund does (Benjamin, 2011). Of the funds at the highest manager investment level
of more than $1 million, the average star rating is 3.5 and the average manager tenure is more
than 12 years. Conversely, in funds where the manager has no money invested, the average star
rating is 2.9 and the average tenure is 4.6 years.
In a recent study Kinnel (2015) looked at mutual fund manager investment levels in their
own funds as of 2009. He then looked at the performance of these actively-managed funds over
the next five years and then measured each fund’s success rate, which he defined as funds that
outperformed their investment category. The results showed that fund managers with a
significant amount of his or her personal money (> $1 million) in the fund to do better than one
with no investment at all. It is an extra incentive beyond keeping one’s joy and getting paid
more. Another interesting point reported by Kinnel (2015) was that this relationship did not hold
with taxable bond funds. Fixed income managers with no money invested in their fund were no
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more or less likely to outperform their investment category than those managers with over one
million dollars invested. Yet despite that fact, the widest disparity in success rates between
uninvested managers and heavily-invested managers was found in the balanced fund category,
where bonds are part of the allocation.
Higher education
The concept of skin in the game has also been applied to colleges and universities. For
example, some universities require that faculty pay the first $50 or $100 of the cost to attend an
academic conference. With this small fee, there are likely to be fewer requests to attend these
“valuable” conferences. Having the faculty put some equity into the process almost surely
reduces the number of boondoggle trips. In another education-related area Miller (2015) argues
that President Obama’s plan for free community college will reduce the value of a college
education while having an equity investment in higher education, even a small one, will provide
an incentive for students to make sound decisions. Which courses should they take? How much
effort should they put into their coursework? Should they attend class and pay attention? Their
answers almost surely depend on whether they have equity in their education and how much.
More importantly, current federal incentives reward colleges and universities for volume
(number of students enrolled and associated loan and grant monies) yet federal policy has few, if
any, consequences for institutions that leave students with mountains of student debt and
defaulted loans. To assist these institutions in reducing excessive and unnecessary student
borrowing and debt Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee released a Congressional white
paper on March 23, 2015 that proposes giving colleges and universities some risk sharing or skin
in the game in which they would be held partially accountable for financial risks to students and
taxpayers (U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, 2015). Under these
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proposals, the risk of enrolling a student would be shared among all those who finance a
student’s education: the student, the federal government, and now, the institution. This would
ensure that colleges and universities have a clear financial stake in their students’ success, debt,
and ability to repay their taxpayer-subsidized student loans.
Current and historical commentary on skin-in-the-game concepts and proposals often
revolves around this idea. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett and coauthor, David
Wilezol, wrote that each college should pay “a fee for every one of its students who defaults on a
student loan, or have a 10 to 20 percent equity stake in each loan that originates at its school”
(2013, p. 54). Similarly, The Economist in 2014 indicated that “If [universities] were made liable
for a slice of unpaid student debts—say 10% or 20% of the total—they would have more skin in
the game.” Support for this type of skin in the game comes from a variety of higher education
observers across the political spectrum from the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute
and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
This would ensure that colleges and universities have a clear financial stake in their
students’ success, debt, and ability to repay their taxpayer-subsidized student loans. It would
encourage colleges and universities to establish appropriate admissions practices for at-risk or
uncommitted students, motivate students to complete their degrees more quickly, and graduate
students with less debt. Recent legislation sponsored by Senators Reed (D-RI), Durbin (D-IL),
and Warren (D-MA) would expand this concept to some U.S. colleges that have high borrowing
rates and high student loan default rates (Protect Student Borrowers, 2013).
Mortgages
Every year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, through its Federal
Housing Administration (FHA), insures billions of dollars in home mortgage loans made by
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private lenders, very often with low down payments. FHA mortgage insurance helps homebuyers
with limited funds to obtain a home mortgage. Homebuyers with FHA-insured loans need to
make a 3 percent contribution toward the purchase of the property and may finance some of the
closing costs associated with the loan. As a result, an FHA-insured loan could equal nearly 100
percent of the property’s value or sales price—commonly called loan-to-value (or LTV) ratio.
Generally, mortgages with higher LTV ratios (smaller down payments) are riskier than
mortgages with lower LTV ratios and a substantial body of economic research indicates that
loan-to-value (or LTV) ratio is one of the most important factors when estimating the risk level
associated with individual mortgages. For example, the U.S. Government Accounting Office
(2005) reviewed 45 economic research papers that examined multiple factors that could be
important; of these, 37 examined if LTV ratio was important. Almost all of these papers (35)
found the LTV ratio of a mortgage important when estimating the risk level associated with
individual mortgages. One study found that the default rates for mortgages with an LTV ratio
above 95 percent are three to four times higher than default rates for mortgages with an LTV
ratio of 90 to 95 percent.
More recently, Kelly (2008) analyzed a nationally representative random sample of about
5,000 FHA insured single family mortgages endorsed in Fiscal Years 2000, 2001, and 2002,
observed through September 30, 2006, and samples of about 1,000 FHA loans each from the
Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Salt Lake City metropolitan statistical areas in the same time period.
He found that borrowers who provide down payments from their own resources have
significantly lower default propensities than do borrowers whose down payments come from
relatives, government agencies, or non-profits. Borrowers with down payments from sellerfunded non-profits, who make no down payment at all, have the highest default rates.
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Additionally, borrowers who do not make down payments from their own resources tend to have
higher loss given default in the small subset of loans that had completed the property disposition
process. Thus, relieving the buyer of the need to contribute cash to the purchase, via a gift from
an uninvolved party, raises the claim rate by 40% to 50%. Relieving the buyer of the need to
contribute cash to the purchase, by a ‘‘gift’’ from the seller that results in a higher loan amount,
raises the claim rate by an additional 38% to 50%. The extra difference in claim rates for gifts
from seller-funded nonprofits is broadly consistent with an equity-based explanation, as a 25%
increase in claims for a 3% decrease in equity. This research does make clear that, for whatever
reason, borrowers with no “skin in the game” are higher credit risks than comparable buyers who
bring cash to the transaction. This research is consistent with that reported by James (2010) and
Demiroglu and James (2012). In short, skin in the game matters.
Habitat for Humanity
The poster child for the importance of skin in the game, we believe, is Habitat for
Humanity. It was founded in 1976 and has more than 400 U.S. affiliates and operates in more
than 90 countries and is dedicated to eliminating substandard housing and providing low-income
families with the joy and dignity of homeownership. “Sweat equity” is the single most important
strategy Habitat uses to empower future homeowner families and one of the features that sets it
apart from other affordable housing providers. Habitat uses the term “sweat equity” to refer to
the hours of labor their homeowners dedicate to building their homes and the homes of their
neighbors, as well as the time they spend investing in their own self-improvement. Most
importantly, by going beyond a mere financial investment in their property and physically
working alongside other volunteers and neighbors, Habitat homeowners gain a greater sense of
self-worth and become more personally invested in their community.
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Sweat equity reduces the amount of paid labor needed for a house, which in turn helps
reduce cost. Having the involvement of the families themselves adds a sense of ownership to the
building process, and educates the families on an entirely different level (Garafolo, 1997). Those
who receive assistance from Habitat are also given the opportunity to improve their financial
skills. Budget counseling, homeowner maintenance, and even predatory-lending awareness
issues are addressed in offered courses. These programs are run in conjunction with home
construction in order to guide new homeowners to a financially stable future. A study led by the
Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University, which was commissioned by the
Dallas branch of Habitat, found that foreclosures in Habitat’s Dallas market were less than 2% in
2010. Although the report only looked at the Dallas office of Habitat, the findings mirror those
found in other Habitat offices across the country, the organization says (Wotapka, 2011).
As can be seen in many of these examples some sort of exchange is illustrated (e.g.,
down payment for a house; sweat for a home). On an interpersonal level, in some cases an
immediate exchange for aid and assistance may not always be feasible. In these cases it may be
important to highlight that the helper expects some recompense in the future. This pay back with
its accompanying sense of obligation and indebtedness is more formally known as reciprocity
and it is a powerful influence mechanism to which human cultures subscribe (Gouldner, 1960).
Indeed, the world-renowned paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey unequivocally declares ”We
are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honored
network of obligation” (Leakey & Lewin, 1978, p. 16). Thus, to maximize the likelihood that the
favor doer will be paid back in the future he/she should invoke the reciprocity rule and not
diminish the help given (“it was no big deal”) but respond to the favor receiver by subtly calling
on the rule by indicating to the favor receiver when they (hopefully) express thanks:
Von Bergen 32

“I was happy to help because I know how valuable it would be to get help if I
were to ever need it.”

“You’re welcome. It’s what colleagues do for one another.”

“Of course. I know that if the situation were ever reversed, you’d do the same for
me” (Martin et al., 2014, p. 131).
These subtle reminders should occur as part of a natural and equitable reciprocal arrangement.
Summary
The criticism following the financial and political crisis of the Great Recession has led to
increased calls for compassion and kindness to be demonstrated often in terms of aiding and
helping those less fortunate. However, it is sometimes said that the road to hell is paved with
good intentions suggesting that such altruism and other prosocial behavior may have socially
detrimental effects and that intentions to engage in good acts often fail (Kalman, 2010). Very
few people have bad intentions. But many of the problems in the world are caused by good
intentions. Good intentions alone are not enough to make actions moral. This paper discusses the
sensitive topic of the analyzing the unintended negative effect of helping others.
More recently, well-meaning governmental policies to enact the American Dream of
homeownership in the 1990s and early 2000s allowed less-than-qualified individuals to receive
housing loans and encouraged more-qualified buyers to overextend themselves. Typical riskreward considerations were disregarded because of implicit government support (Acharya,
Richardson, van Nieuwerburgh, & White, 2011). As a result, homeownership for such
historically “underserved” borrowers increased significantly; yet when economic conditions
deteriorated, many lost their homes or found themselves with properties worth far less than they
Von Bergen 33
originally had paid, and taxpayers were left with trillion-dollar costs and a prolonged economic
crisis.
Essentially, with the noblest of purposes, a permissive lending environment was created
in which the wrong people were given too much money to buy houses they could not afford
causing catastrophic damages. The good intentions inherent in such “feel good,” emotionallybased practices frequently follow short-term, superficial heuristics for helping others that are
often implemented without a critical, in-depth analysis of costs. An initial snap, common-sense
judgment about what seems right in helping others can gel quickly into formidable certitude
without consideration of important relevant facts. An awareness of the insidious effects of giving
and helping could have facilitated better regulation in order to mitigate its costs and enhance its
benefits. There may have been significant advantages for all U.S. citizens if some had been told
“no.”
Good intentions do not automatically lead to moral actions. Individuals must consider the
possible negative consequences before they give and help others. If individuals’ interventions
cause more harm than good, the interventions are morally problematic regardless of the loftiness
of their intentions. Just because kindness and compassion sound right people must consider the
harm that their proposed help may cause and to stop implementing activities that can be shown to
create more harm than good. Dependency, entitlement, and learned laziness are created when
incentives to work are removed, yet benefits are still received. Whether the assistances come
from the government, one’s parents, a rich uncle, or the lottery, the effect is the same; people
will make no effort to become self-sufficient. Those who are dependent have few choices; they
must accept whatever is “given” to them. Indeed, giving people something for nothing often
makes them good for nothing.
Von Bergen 34
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