NO GOOD DEED

THE OPPORTUNITY COST OF HELPING OTHERS

The recent cave rescue in Laos captured the world’s attention for all the right reasons. A group of villagers searching for gold became trapped inside a flooded cave system. International rescue teams navigated narrow underwater passages, poor visibility, and rising floodwaters in an effort to bring them out alive. It was the kind of story that reminds us that courage still exists. Strangers were willing to risk their lives for people they had never met.

Rescue workers inside the flooded cave in Xaisomboun Province, Laos. (Photo: Metta Tham Rescue Kalasin)

Yet one detail from the rescue stayed with me long after the headlines moved on. Before some of the rescue divers attempted the extraction, there were reports that legal protections had to be discussed in case a miner died during the rescue.

I understand why.

When lives are at stake, governments need to be accountable. Rescue decisions can have tragic consequences. A failed rescue can raise difficult legal and ethical questions. None of that is unreasonable.

But I could not shake the thought that the divers were not only risking drowning in a flooded cave. They were also protecting themselves from what might happen afterwards. In many ways, that felt like a reflection of the world we live in.

We often talk about the dangers of helping people as if they begin when the act is performed. In reality, the risks frequently begin after the help has been given. The person who saves a drowning child may later be questioned about injuries sustained during the rescue. Someone who intervenes in an assault may find themselves scrutinised for using excessive force.

This reality is one reason many countries introduced Good Samaritan laws. Policymakers recognised that if helping people becomes legally dangerous, fewer people will be willing to help.

Most of us will never face situations that dramatic. Our lives are filled with many smaller acts of assistance. Picking someone up from the airport, helping a colleague finish a project, or even lending money to a friend. We volunteer for a committee nobody else wants to join. We offer advice, introductions, support, and time.

What we rarely acknowledge is that every one of these actions carries an opportunity cost.

Economists use the term to describe the value of what we give up when we choose one option over another. Helping someone is never free. The airport pickup costs a Saturday morning. The colleague’s project delays our own work. The favour we agree to perform consumes time that could have been spent with family, resting, or pursuing our own goals.

Most people accept these costs because relationships are built on mutual support. Communities function because people occasionally put the needs of others ahead of their own. The problem begins when the cost of helping becomes disconnected from the reward.

The reward does not have to be money. In fact, it rarely is. The reward is often much simpler – appreciation, respect, and trust. The feeling that if our positions were reversed, someone would do the same for us.

However, many people are increasingly feeling that helping creates entitlement rather than gratitude. The person who receives a favour begins to expect it. The colleague who receives assistance returns with another request. The friend who borrows money asks for more. What began as generosity slowly becomes responsibility because the recipients of help decided that the reward for a job well done is more work.

After enough experiences like this, people adapt. They stop volunteering, stop offering, and stop getting involved. Not because they have become selfish, but because they have become rational.

Every society teaches its members what behaviours are rewarded and what behaviours are punished. If helping consistently creates costs while offering little in return, people eventually learn the lesson. Protect yourself by conserving your time, finances, and energy.

The tragedy is that this lesson makes perfect sense at the individual level while becoming disastrous at the collective level.

A society where nobody wants to help is not merely less kind; it is less resilient. It is a society where people walk past problems because they are afraid of becoming responsible for them. It is a society where everyone waits for someone else to step forward. It is a society where trust slowly erodes because nobody wants to be the person left carrying the burden.

Perhaps that is why the Laos rescue struck me so deeply. The divers understood the risks. They understood the physical danger. They understood the legal uncertainty. They understood that things could go wrong and that they might pay a price for trying.

They went anyway.

Their actions remind us that helping has always involved sacrifice. The difference is that modern life magnifies the cost while diminishing the reward. The ingratitude, entitlement, and lawsuits quietly teach people to become more cautious or avoidant next time.

The question is not whether helping should involve risk; it always will. The question is what happens to a society when too many people decide the risk is no longer worth taking.

The moment that happens, we do not merely lose heroic cave rescuers. We lose neighbours who would have lent a hand, colleagues who would have stayed late to assist, friends who would have shown up when things fell apart, and strangers who would have stepped forward when nobody else would.

Those losses rarely make the news. They accumulate quietly over time, leaving us with a society that feels a little less generous, a little less trusting, and a little colder than it used to be.