I was reading an article about the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand and came about a very interesting topic about moochers and looters. I am going to focus on Moochers for now.
Here is an excerpt from the wikipedia article:
"Moochers are those who demand others' earnings because they claim to be needy and unable to earn themselves. Even as they beg for their help, however, they curse the people who make that help possible, because they hate the talented for having the talent they don't possess. Although the moochers seem benign at first glance, they are portrayed as more destructive than the looters—they destroy the productive through guilt and often motivate the "lawful" looting performed by governments."
This is somewhat related to different kinds of moochers in real life. I am sure everyone has encountered at least one such kind.
Moochers are people who ask for little favors constantly. Moochers think it is ok to impose and will make you feel guilty if you can't do a petty favor for them. They really can seem benign at first but once they start taking advantage of you it becomes a bit of an inconvenience and irksome.
We had one such guy M at my previous job. He was new to the state and asked another dude J for a ride saying he couldn't buy a car right away and asked him whenther he can give him a ride for a few days. J agreed and poor guy used to wake up early to pick M up thinking this favor will be short lived.
However, M's habit became chronic and he thought it was ok to impose on the dude for a ride now and then. J was fed up with M and couldn't think a way to say no because M used to live on the way to work. J then got his friend AA to help him out with the situation. AA indirectly in a conversation called M a "Moocher". I was present in that conversation too and had never heard of the word. I asked AA what a moocher was and he said somebody who imposes on everybody else asking for favors without thinking. M was sitting beside me and since then he never asked J for a ride. He bought a car in the next few days. J was very relieved:)
Some people just expect to do things for them and never return the favor. Even though the favor can be small, if it is continued it can be irritating, because you feel that the person is taking advantage of you because you can't say no. Moochers become used to imposing and it's very irksome and selfish on their part to do so. Personally, I have too much of an ego to ask anything from a person be it free rides, money, food or anything unless it's absolutely necessary. Even if I do, I make sure that I return the favor.
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However, "a friend in need is a friend indeed". With respect to your experience with M and J, and with acknowledgement that there is a difference between taking advantage of someone and receiving or giving help, there will always be situations where one would need help and one would give help, without any expectation for reciprocation. In fact - I think this is the truest kind of friendship and intra-personal relationship, when one does not expect reciprocation. It is a bit communistic (give according to one's ability, take according to one's need), but I feel this kind of relationship to be more sincere and meaningful and less self-centered. Ayn Rand is a bit of crazy, dark, and cynical extremist, I feel. Would she still call people moochers if they were people that were asking for help after civil wars and natural disasters (like hurricanes, earthquakes, and monsoons), who had lost not only their jobs, homes, and material possessions, but also their families, friends, and entire cities and villages? Would she still call someone a moocher if they got into a severe accident and lost some of their physical or mental abilities which they had needed for their jobs? Or if they had born with those disabilities? It is easy for her to make those statements if she has never been in need, but I think most people know that what we have (our material possessions and our mental and physical abilities) we can't take for granted - they can be taken away at any time, for anyone.
In response to this point from Rand: "Even as they beg for help, however, they curse the people who make that help possible" - yes, it is stupid for a monk or someone who has chosen a lifestyle with absence of material possessions to look down on those that donate to them and who do live relatively materialistic lives. But it is equally stupid to do the converse, for a person with a job to look down on someone who chooses to live minimally and beg for the bare necessities. It is really stupid to judge anyone at all, without really understanding them and why they do what they do. "Never judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes." I guess I'm judging Ayn Rand though - I really hate her philosophy :-P
I have not read the book so can't really judge on what Rand had to say about Moochers and Looters. The excerpt just reminded me of an incident which kind of related to the passage.
Yes, I agree that there is nothng wrong with helpng needy people...Of course, helping other people is never bad. But you have to realize the difference between helping people who need it and people who are well off (who can do certain things on their own) and are definitely taking advantage of you. You are too nice to judge people..but indeed there are people who exist who do that. Go ask other people's opinion. Maybe you have not met such people.
Helping needy people is more helpful than helpng people who don't really need it.
This post has nothing in relation to Rand's philosophy. It just says that it reminds me of the mooching incidents...
Obviously, helping people after hurricanes etc is not a good example of "mooching'.
Yes, Rand is very cynical...but the society forces you to be cynical. Not everyone in this world is a saint.
Helping people in need is not wrong. But you have to draw a line and realize who really needs it and who doesn't.
Oh and you also missed a very important point. It is clearly mentioned in the passage that moochers are people who expect to be helped when they are not needy and when they are denied that help they curse or make the other person feel guilty. Hence, when you say will Rand call those people moochers who are affeced by a hurricane? is irrelevant since those people can't be defined as moochers. She has a totally different definition of them...Clearly peoplpe who are not needy are moochers.
True - I do agree with you that it is awful to feel taken advantage of. And I don't mean to criticize or comment on your experience. I can't really, since I was not there and don't know M or J. I find you to be a very optimistic, happy, self-assured, and self-sufficient person, and admire you for it. But I thought the wikipedia quote about Ayn Rand's book was very thought-provoking, though I disagree with it strongly, so I wanted to comment on it. I hope you don't mind me making all these comments - I'm having a lot of fun discussing the quote with you, and you bring up a lot of points I never thought of before :). I have some more questions too: I am a bit confused - why would someone ask for help if they don't need it, and how can one diffrentiate between someone else who really needs something and someone who is faking it? And would it make a difference to the first person to make that distinction? And what does Rand mean by "talent" in the quote?
Of course, I do not mind. I am liking this debate too:)
I do not understand why you disagree with Ayn Rand's quote. Perhaps, you are assuming that she is calling everybody moochers? Which is not the case.
In this quote she specifically mentions that moochers are people who "demand others' earnings because they CLAIM to be needy and claim to not being able to earn themselves. She does not say that moochers are people who are needy and she does not say that it is wrong to help people who are needy. I don't think she says that at all. On the contrary, moochers are people who CLAIM to be needy when they are not. I will try to give you another example of this.
I had a roommate in Kansas. Whenever, we went out she used to forget her wallet at home and ask me to pay for her telling me that she will pay me later. Or if we go to a club where proper change is required, she would tell me that she didn't have the correct change and ask me to pay for her. If I bought some stuff that we both used, she would not pay me back. I did not mind helping her out of friendship once or twice but when it became a habit and it happened chronically, it became one sided and very unfair.
Once, she asked me for change and I said I didn't have it. She got angry that I am not helping her out and that I am lying. This relates to Rand's quote because Rand says "moochers curse the people who make that help impossible." In this case moocher=my roommate asked for my help and when I refused she cursed me for not helping her as if I am supposed to help her. I realized, I was being taken advantage of. Hence, she was clearly a moocher becuase obviously she was taking advantage of my friendship and looking for free stuff. There are many people in this society who are like this. They like "free stuff" or somene else to do things for them because they are THRIFTY and not because they are NEEDY. Once, they become good friends with you they take the "free stuff" for granted and if you refuse they feel bad.
According to me, moochers are people who just want free stuff and save on little things which becomes a habit.
I am not sure what she means by talented. I can try to guess what she means by this because I do not know what context she is referring to.
However, I can try to guess the situation by what she might mean in that excerpt:
Suppose, a moocher encounters a rich person and asks for a favor because he/she thinks the moocher can afford it. This rich person who is friends with the moocher might help out once. The moocher then starts taking this help for granted and expect that the rich person will bail him out. However, once the moocher starts taking advantage of this then that is difintely not right. In this case - "talent" will refer to the friend being rich and the moocher being jealous that he is not rich and he fools the first person into doing things for him....This is a very non philosophical way of putting this...Does this make sense? CAn you now differentiate between people who need help and people who don't?
Yes - this makes sense - your examples helped clarify. But I still think there is a lot of gray area between a situation where someone is taking advantage and a situation where someone is in desperate need of help. And wouldn't it be a smaller regret to have helped someone who took advantage than to not have helped someone who truly needed it?
Yes, you are right. There is a gray area and it's tough to distinguish between people who need help and people who are simply taking advantage of you. This is a problem only when the favor becomes chronic and you feel that person is repeatedly taking advantage of you. Small favors don't matter much. But as I mentioned in my examples, those people (M and my roommate) clearly did not need help and could have found alternate ways to avoid repeatedly asking for favors from someone.
I could not have given a blank check to the roommate thinking she is in dire help. There is a limit to helping someone...These are incidents when you realize that the help is too much.
In M's case, he was perfectly able to buy a car and he should have, but he was saving money and not even sharing money for gas. That's when J decided that it was getting too much and that M was "mooching".
Sure, there are many situations where we can't make the distinction and help the person whether they need it or not and it is only a minor favor. And I still help those people out because it is not much of a pain on my side. HOwever, ther are times when the favor becomes too mcuh and that's when you should draw the line.For example, I could defintely not hand my roommate a blank check no matter how desperate she said she was. Because judging by her previous actions she was a moocher and handing anybody a blank check is not safe.
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