If one helps another with the expectation for compensation, it is not help, but again—work.
Suppose that you have a job at some company. I am starting a new company myself, and I offer you exactly the same job, for exactly the same salary, in my company. You otherwise have no reason to change jobs, but purely because you like me and want me to succeed, you agree.
According to your definition, did you “help” me?
On one hand, you are getting compensation for working for me: the salary. On the other hand, compared to the alternative, you are not getting any extra compensation.
(Scenario B: The same situation, but I insist on paying you $1 more than your previous employer did. Relative to your salary, the extra dollar is just a rounding error; it is definitely not your motivation. But since I insist, you agree. Did this change the answer? Because now you are getting extra compensation.)
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I think you are making here the same mistake as Comte did with his definition of altruism. You focus too much on “punishing” the good-doer—the help is judged by how unprofitable it is for the doer, more than how helpful it is for the recipient.
I suppose it is tempting to draw a clean line separating “help” from “mere transaction”, but I think that in real life there is a lot of gray area. For example, even when you help someone without expecting anything in return, sometimes people reciprocate anyway; sometimes in completely unexpected ways. If you are aware that this happens, statistically speaking, does it automatically invalidate any help you have ever provided?
Expecting explicit compensation and receiving compensation are two different things. Refer to the last section: “Help MUST BE performed without any expectation for compensation. If you receive compensation (whether material or in the form of gratitude), then that is great. But you should not demand it. ”
There is an easy way to evaluate your situation and it concerns the motivation for switching jobs.
Remove the compensation. Do I still want to change jobs? If yes, then I am in deed doing it with the sole intention of helping you. Compensation added? Great! It is denied? Oh, well, not complaining, I was not doing it for the compensation. If I switched jobs simply because of the better salary, it might have been BENEFICIAL to you, sure—but I was not doing it to help you. I was simply maximising satisfaction for myself. Nothing wrong with that.
To help better clarify it, I will refer to two personal anecdotes. On two separate occasions two people asked me to help them move places (it was roughly the same distances, roughly the same amount of objects that I had to transfer). The first one was my old roommate when he was changing places. He asked me to help him, but the workload was too much for me and I had no desire to expand that much energy at the time, thus I DID NOT WANT TO HELP HIM. But he offered to pay me, so I agreed. I was not going to help him without the compensation. Thus what I did was merely a transaction. Some time later, my neighbor, whom I had met only recently, as we were from the same country of origin, was moving. I did not mind helping him, as it was summer, so not much going on, and the same country of origin had formed a sense of comradery. He wanted help, I could help him, and there was no reason why I should not have. Once we were done, he invited me for a beer. I denied it, because I said ‘oh no, do not worry about it’. But eventually he insisted, and we sat in his new place drinking beer and playing videogames. Sure, I received compensation, but I never expected it. Even if he had offered the beer prior to me doing the task, I would have refused it still and shown willingness to do the job for free. Either way, this would have been help.
Suppose that you have a job at some company. I am starting a new company myself, and I offer you exactly the same job, for exactly the same salary, in my company. You otherwise have no reason to change jobs, but purely because you like me and want me to succeed, you agree.
According to your definition, did you “help” me?
On one hand, you are getting compensation for working for me: the salary. On the other hand, compared to the alternative, you are not getting any extra compensation.
(Scenario B: The same situation, but I insist on paying you $1 more than your previous employer did. Relative to your salary, the extra dollar is just a rounding error; it is definitely not your motivation. But since I insist, you agree. Did this change the answer? Because now you are getting extra compensation.)
.
I think you are making here the same mistake as Comte did with his definition of altruism. You focus too much on “punishing” the good-doer—the help is judged by how unprofitable it is for the doer, more than how helpful it is for the recipient.
I suppose it is tempting to draw a clean line separating “help” from “mere transaction”, but I think that in real life there is a lot of gray area. For example, even when you help someone without expecting anything in return, sometimes people reciprocate anyway; sometimes in completely unexpected ways. If you are aware that this happens, statistically speaking, does it automatically invalidate any help you have ever provided?
Expecting explicit compensation and receiving compensation are two different things. Refer to the last section: “Help MUST BE performed without any expectation for compensation. If you receive compensation (whether material or in the form of gratitude), then that is great. But you should not demand it. ”
There is an easy way to evaluate your situation and it concerns the motivation for switching jobs.
Remove the compensation. Do I still want to change jobs? If yes, then I am in deed doing it with the sole intention of helping you. Compensation added? Great! It is denied? Oh, well, not complaining, I was not doing it for the compensation. If I switched jobs simply because of the better salary, it might have been BENEFICIAL to you, sure—but I was not doing it to help you. I was simply maximising satisfaction for myself. Nothing wrong with that.
To help better clarify it, I will refer to two personal anecdotes. On two separate occasions two people asked me to help them move places (it was roughly the same distances, roughly the same amount of objects that I had to transfer). The first one was my old roommate when he was changing places. He asked me to help him, but the workload was too much for me and I had no desire to expand that much energy at the time, thus I DID NOT WANT TO HELP HIM. But he offered to pay me, so I agreed. I was not going to help him without the compensation. Thus what I did was merely a transaction. Some time later, my neighbor, whom I had met only recently, as we were from the same country of origin, was moving. I did not mind helping him, as it was summer, so not much going on, and the same country of origin had formed a sense of comradery. He wanted help, I could help him, and there was no reason why I should not have. Once we were done, he invited me for a beer. I denied it, because I said ‘oh no, do not worry about it’. But eventually he insisted, and we sat in his new place drinking beer and playing videogames. Sure, I received compensation, but I never expected it. Even if he had offered the beer prior to me doing the task, I would have refused it still and shown willingness to do the job for free. Either way, this would have been help.