ABSTRACT
If someone offers you either $5 or $5,000, the chances are, once you have satisfied yourself that there truly are no strings attached, that you will take the $5, 000. Why? Well, more is preferred to less. But it is important to remember “the chances are”: there are plenty of good reasons why you might not take the $5,000 (or even the $5, for that matter). Perhaps you do not like the idea of windfall gain; perhaps you think that, in spite of the absence of strings, you would still be under some distressing obligation creating a sense of inferiority; perhaps you think that if there is free money going, it should go to the needy. When Henry Higgins, in a fit of enthusiasm for Alfred Doolittle’s gift of the gab, offers him £10 for Eliza, instead of the £5 he asked for, Doolittle replies: “Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a man feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness. You give me what I ask you, Governor: not a penny more, and not a penny less.”1
