Altruism

Roger’s World – Tuesday April 27, 2010

After the stories that have hit the news the last few days – 79 year old getting mugged on the subway in Toronto, the good Samaritan who died on the sidewalk in New York, and the Toronto Star article yesterday about the low percentage of Ontarians that sign up to be organ donors – it reminded me of Chapter 3 in the great book Superfreakonomics by Levitt & Dubner.

Basically, the chapter looks at why and what causes people to do or not do things. Real life events like calling/or not calling the police for help when an assault is taking place, what causes people to donate money, what conditions might lead them to steal, etc. Basically, the attitude of “what’s in it for me?” We act as we do because of the choices and incentives at play in a particular circumstance.

Do we give money to charity because we might get a tax receipt? Do we take care of our aging parents for other family members because we might get a nice inheritance? Are we more likely to donate organs if we get paid for them? Iran does this and while it may sound crazy the fact is that when people need a liver over there they can get one. There are no ridiculous waiting lists or people dying while waiting to get one. Controversial? For sure, but it sure addresses the problem of the dealing with the lack of organ donors. Thousands of lives are saved because of this.

There are other really interesting points and that is only one chapter! I strongly recommend that you give Superfreakonmics a read and their first book Freakonomics. It won’t excuse why people chose not to do anything about the mugging on the subway, the stabbing on the street in Queens, or why people are not putting themselves on organ donor lists, but it might shed some light as to why they did what they did in terms of economics and incentives.

Regardless, the apathy is pretty sad in the cases of the subway mugging and sidewalk stabbing. Sure personal safety may come first and people might not want to physically intervene but no one even lifted a finger to press the emergency button, or call 911. How disgraceful is that? I certainly hope our society has come down to this.

The organ donor thing is a tough one for me and according to the stats a large majority of the population too. I guess I always figured I’d live forever but since my organs can save some lives I’ve got to re-consider my lack of signing up. We all should.

Til next week

Roger