Selfish Altruism

You should want others to do well, even if only so that they can leave you alone

Photo by Grace To on Unsplash

Life is hard, and a lot of work is needed to get anywhere. My honest judgment is that you cannot have the space needed to work towards success if others cannot leave you alone, and they won’t if they cannot manage to be on their own.

I spend a great amount of time thinking about things like migration. Three things are undeniable. One is the migrants fleeing dysfunction, which is what many people in the same situation would do. On the other side are the nations they seek to enter, which cannot take in all of them even if they wanted to. And then there is how migration becomes a highly charged issue where the debate is hardly about solutions but political grandstanding.

And then the long-term solution becomes clear, one that not a single person can deny: what is needed are nations that are at least stable enough that people w…