txt Do-Goodernomics: A Merciless Market Analysis of Our Hero-Complex

Do-Goodernomics is a 48-page manifesto designed to be read in one sitting. Brief, sharp, and intentionally uncomfortable—this is a provocation, not a textbook.

What if doing good isn't as selfless as we think?

Using the tools of economics, Shawn Humphrey explores the market we rarely question—the market for good. What happens when good intentions meet scarcity, incentives, and identity? The result is not a how-to guide for ending poverty, but a provocation that asks why doing good so often serves the do-gooder.

From charity campaigns and mission trips to nonprofit intermediaries and donor storytelling, Do-Goodernomics exposes the hidden transactions beneath our generosity. It asks uncomfortable questions: Who really benefits from poverty's persistence? What do donors actually purchase when money changes hands? And how do our desires—for meaning, reassurance, and moral significance—shape where help flows and how it's delivered?

Drawing on years of experience teaching, running a microfinance institution, and living alongside poverty through experiential learning, Humphrey reframes the poor not as passive recipients of aid, but as active suppliers of good—bearing risk, making sacrifices, and navigating pressures largely invisible to those who claim to help.

This book offers no rankings, endorsements, or best practices. Instead, it invites readers—students, practitioners, donors, and skeptics alike—to slow down, examine their motives, and reconsider the stories they tell themselves about helping others.

Do-Goodernomics is for anyone willing to sit with discomfort and ask a harder question than "How do we do more good?"

What are we really trying to buy—and at what cost to those who supply it?

Also available as a free PDF at sidekickmanifesto.org and as a Kindle ebook.