In my May 28 post, a few people took exception to my saying that human beings always attempt to do what they believe is in their own best interest. To those who are emotionally chained to that devout brother’s-keeper group, I suggest you try asking someone to buy your product just because you need the money.

Trust me, you’ll sleep much better at night if your success isn’t dependent upon the altruistic nature of others. Creating value for the other party is the surest way to get him to give you what you want.

Where the marketplace is concerned, the reality is that consumers have no interest in a company’s needs, costs, or problems. What they are interested in is what the company’s products or services can do to make their lives more pleasurable or less painful, which is why it’s so important to understand the truth about self-interest. It is a human instinct that operates independently of our consciousness, so protestations to the contrary are irrelevant.

The late B. F. Skinner, collectivist psychologist and social theorist, spent his life searching for a scientific way to repress the human instinct to better one’s existence. But Skinner, by focusing on the modification of human behavior, was inadvertently acknowledging that self-interest is a natural and normal human characteristic.

The reality is that only force can prevent human beings from acting in their own self- interest, which is precisely why government clings so firmly to its monopoly on the use of force. I would like to believe that no one reading this post seriously believes that government employs force for benevolent reasons.