On doing favours
How do you do someone a favour and not drive yourself crazy? This seems pretty obvious now that someone’s told me how to do it, but in short: Do them a favour which is no big deal to you, even though it may be a big deal to them, and shy away from doing favours which are such a big deal to you that you will expect reciprocation and feel let down or angry if the other person does not do so.
This was explained to me yesterday evening when I stopped in Pimlico to see our friend Brian Micklethwait. We had a conversation which was so interesting and valuable to me that I wish we had recorded it. I wish even more that we had had it a couple of decade ago. Alas, alas.
Brian mentioned to me a piece that he wrote back in 1992 which touches on favours, entitled Against Charity: Charity, Favours, Trade and the Welfare State. (I cannot help but admire how perfectly calculated the title is to offend - or at least it seems so to me.) In it, he gives the Micklethwait definition of ‘compromise’:
In exchange for you doing something I want, I do something else I want.
Further:
Giving and receiving favours is closely connected with telling people clearly what you are good at and are easily able and happy to do for them, and what you value and are eager to receive from them in exchange. The trouble with “altruists” is that they never tell you what they want, because they consider it immoral even to think about this. And they never listen when you tell them what you want, because they consider themselves so morally elevated compared to you that they know better. Altruists give you only what they decide you “need”. Selfish people make far better associates. In the ancient and time honoured phrase, you know where you are with them.
Brian also tackles the question of Oxfam, an organisation which does much damage in the world and which I am loath to fund in any way:
Obviously, the most admirable thing about Oxfam so far as I am concerned is that it sells me cheap clothing. Despite my fears about where the money will go and the misery it will cause, I am happy recently to have parted with £16 for a suit, when I compare that with what I would have had to pay for the same thing at Burton’s. An obvious improvement would be for Oxfam to pay something for the items that are given to them, instead of expecting people just to donate unwanted items. I have another suit that is now too small for me, but I’ll be damned if I’ll give it to Oxfam for nothing, for them to sell it… and for the resulting money to be spent deranging Third World agricultural markets. On the other hand, if they offered me a fiver for my suit, or merely five pounds’ worth of other purchases, I’d accept. I’d also shop at Oxfam a lot more, because there’d be lots more produce to choose from if this was how they did things.
But the really good news about Oxfam is that there is starting to be a thoroughly healthy air of neo-colonialism about the enterprise. I browse around my local Oxfam shop, and - although I could be imagining this - I think I smell actual money being made - being earned - by former victims. I detect the definite aroma of cheap Third World labour being shamelessly exploited to create trinkets for the Volvo driving segment of the British middle classes. There are ethnic garments, and ethnic carvings, and ethnic musical instruments, and ethnic rugs, ethnic boxes and containers, ethnic dolls and ethnic Christmas cards, all for outrageously ethnic prices. Soon it will be ethnic sparking plugs and ethnic CD players. Although I do not favour ethnic produce myself, I entirely approve of this trend.
Ten years ago it used to be nothing but puzzles with bits missing, dead standard lamps, clapped out gramophones and so forth, and a generally drab, dusty and dilapidated air to match. But now the place is much smarter, like a real shop. Eventually the ethnic exploitation department will start to realise that all the Bolshevik propaganda Oxfam also emits is silly next to this exuberant capitalist exploitation, and - or so I like to fantasise - they’ll sling the bolshevism out. In a hundred years time the Oxfam shops may have improved to the point where they will be a genuine one-hundred-per- cent exploit-the-hell-out-of-everyone-especially-ethnics business, and they’ll be bounced around the City for thousands of millions of pounds, just like a real business. If so Oxfam won’t be the first scumbag charity that finally got its act together and started doing nothing but good, because history is full of them. You start by doing some people some favours, and then you get the thing properly organised and you really start doing people favours.
What a lucky person I am to know this guy.
Filed under: Business, Friends, Life, Manners, Relationships, Survival