Good Deed Paralysis

I read Uri’s post about reframing tips, and my first thought was: Well, yeah, but it’s the business owner’s job to pay workers a living wage.

Which is true! But it also made me think about a kind of good-deed paralysis I fall into fairly often.

I’ll think about giving money to something, or finding something to volunteer my time towards, or doing some other small useful thing, and immediately start working my way upstream. Why does this person need my money in the first place? Wouldn’t systemic change be better? Shouldn’t we be fixing the incentive structure? Is this even the best use of my money?

And by the time I’ve finished building a much better society in my head, I have managed to avoid doing the very small good thing that was available to me.

There’s no reason these have to be competing ideas. Why can't I think businesses should pay people a living wage and give the worker in front of me a bigger tip. I can care about systemic change and still do small, inefficient, immediate acts of generosity.

Sometimes the answer to “shouldn’t we fix the system?” is yes.

But also, tip the person.