I have a long-term issue with compassion.

Every time some manipulative asshole wants to emotionally blackmail me into doing something that’s useless, harmful, evil or which I don’t care for, they appeal to my compassion.

“Don’t you have a heart? Allow the Islamic refugees in.”

“Don’t you like animals?”

“Would you rather have a doughnut or save a child?”

“You have things and I don’t. It’s not fair!”

“Rich people should pay their fair share in society.”

It’s not that I oppose helping people. In fact, I strongly support it. However, there seem to be several forms of helping people, and I have a hugely different emotional feedback to both. The first kind is when you help someone who’s having a problem. You help solve the problem, and things are better. You feel good about it. The second kind is when you’re emotionally manipulated, or, should I say heartfucked, into giving your resources to someone who is the problem, who just squanders it away, and you get to feel like you’ve been pissed on.

The problem is, the word “compassion” is used for both, indiscriminately.

I recently helped a financially not well off kid by donating my old computer; a Q8200 quad core thing with 4 GB RAM and a 15” LCD monitor, so don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a piece of junk, it’s more powerful than the one my wife uses for browsing the web. She asked me, why are you doing this, you already know how that’s going to end? I answered that I’m testing a hypothesis. So, I installed the whole system with every kind of educational thing I could think of – Ubuntu Lucid, Netbeans IDE with support for Java, C++ and PHP, Python IDLE, and all the command-line programming languages, and I made sure my son told him what he had there, and I told his father that it’s an educational system he can use to learn how to code.

The first thing the kid did was to try some Linux games, got bored with them, and then installed Windows 10 so that he can play all games. He got a graphics card from someone and now has a gaming PC. He never even touched anything educational. Yes, he has barely passing grades in school, and yes, since he’s poor the people will tend to attribute his poor results in school to his situation at home.

But no, that’s not how it works, because there’s another kid who’s friends with my son, whose parents are also financially not well off, and who also struggles with money. He’s one of the smartest kids in the whole school, has top grades in everything, and he, my son and one other kid spend their time after school arguing about politics and economy. Yes, they’re 12, and they argue about political and economic systems.

So, essentially, whom should I feel compassion for? Whom should I try to help? The kid who will convert all resources into fuel for perpetuating his situation, or the kid who apparently doesn’t need much help because he’s doing great despite his apparent circumstances?

So, how do you help people? It’s very simple. Just do your job well, do the things you feel good about, and let the free market sort things out. Don’t try to help the poor people. Buy whatever you like having and using, and someone will have to manufacture more of that. They will have to open factories and create jobs, and poor people will then have jobs, and if they are motivated enough, they will use that as a stepping-stone towards a better job, and higher qualifications. Buy the shoes that were manufactured in a sweat shop in Thailand, where the workers are supposedly “exploited”, because you see, that’s communist propaganda. They are not exploited, they are given a great opportunity to get out of abject misery they lived in before, trying to catch rats on rice fields as a source of protein, or taking part in the sex industry. Making shoes for you for 2 dollars a day is a way out for them. It’s what makes the local economy going, and then other functionality will arise from that, the same way it did in Japan, Korea and China. They all started on a similar level of poverty, and look at them now. So, help people by buying stuff from the factories that “exploit” them. That’s the best thing you could possibly do. Don’t donate to humanitarian aid; instead, buy stuff that’s produced by “exploiting” the poor in some African shithole. If people there are exploited by someone, that means they are worth more alive than dead, and they are worth more healthy than sick. This means someone will be motivated to make the area secure from violence, and to implement health care. It also means there will be need for some literate locals in administration, so schools will be opened. Basically, when you create an economic need for someone by exploiting them, you included that person into the global economy, and when someone is useful, when he creates profit for someone, someone influential will care if this profit is compromised by some machete-wielding gang. Paramilitary security contractors with guns will go there and take care of the problem.

Capitalism. That’s essentially how you solve the issue of poverty. You can’t solve it altogether, because there will always be those who are part of the problem and who can’t be part of any kind of solution, and they will have to live in abject misery and die as a warning to others, but allowing that is absolutely necessary, and if you try to prevent it out of “compassion”, you will destroy the entire social structure and produce universal misery, as was always the case when any kind of communism was attempted.

If you want to make a train move, you pull. Bill Gates did more good to the world when he created Microsoft, than with all his “humanitarian” efforts, which will all prove to be counterproductive, because trying to help the poor is essentially paying people to be poor. You need to pay them to be useful. You don’t get a good economy by improving healthcare, you get healthcare by improving the economy. You need to create an economic incentive for healthcare, and for that, people who live there must be worth more alive than dead, they must be worth more healthy than sick. And honestly, if they’re not worth more alive than dead, if they don’t contribute anything of value to the world, so that someone would be motivated to protect them, just let them die.

Another lever used by the manipulative in order to pressure the emotional is the assumption that all people are equal, and that you should identify with everybody’s situation because it could be you. Well, no, it couldn’t, you see. I just described those kids who go to the same school, have similar financial difficulties, but hugely different outcomes, because all people are not equal. Some are just just better. That’s what free market and capitalism are for, to show who’s better without being judgmental. It allows the least useful ones to die, and it directs the flow of resources to those who are the most useful. And don’t tell me that capitalism will eventually make everyone but the few on top poor. That’s bullshit. Capitalism “wants” everybody to be able to afford a car and an iPhone and a 1000 EUR gaming PC, and a house and a lawn mower and a fridge and a microwave, and a vacation in some fancy expensive place. You know why that is? Because when people can afford things, they spend money, and that makes the entire machine of capitalism going. If only the top few have money, nobody can buy the products manufactured in their factories. The factories will then go bankrupt, the stock market will collapse and you will get the great depression of the 1930s. So, it’s in the best interest of the manufacturers to pay people well, because those people will then be able to afford the products on the marketplace, and increase the consumer base. Increased consumer base means more consumption, ergo more profit for the shareholders. Everybody wins, except that kid who decided it’s not fun to learn how to code and plays games instead. He will have to lose, and guess what, fuck him and fuck everybody who’s sorry for him.

Me, I’ll rather have a doughnut than “save a child”, because by buying a doughnut I’m keeping the woman who sells them employed. She will then have money to support her children, so, basically, by being “selfish” I’m actually helping someone’s children. By buying an expensive computer I’m keeping the factory workers employed, I’m keeping the workers in retail sales employed, and all their children will have healthcare and education and food. And I will earn the money for buying those things by doing the best I can at the top of my qualification level, because then people will find me useful and give me money to keep me doing whatever I’m doing, instead of not caring whether I’m dead or alive.

So yes, be compassionate to the world by being incredibly good at your job and earning huge amounts of money, and then spend it on good stuff, stuff that will make you feel great. That’s how you make world a better place. And when someone asks you if you’d rather have another cup of coffee or help a child, go have the best cup of coffee you can get, because that’s how you really help a child. Donating to UNICEF just propagates misery in the world. It feeds the UN bureaucracy, it feeds the warlords who sell the humanitarian aid on the black market, and incentivizes poverty because that’s what attracts money into the system.

Compassion, that’s how the manipulative sucker the resources out of the gullible. Satan’s favorite emotion, because it can use good people as an instrument for increasing the amount of evil in the world. It drives the feedback loop of misery and suffering.