A rational egoist might also wish to aid persons whom she believes are themselves capable of becoming producers of objective values, if they are only afforded certain opportunities hitherto denied. Such assistance is motivated by love of her own values, as well as her ability to see potential in human beings, a view entailed by a benevolent sense of life. Such a sense of life, as was shown in pp. 3.8:1-4, is characteristic of rational egoism and contrary to the altruist's world-view, which regards human nature with cynicism and assumes that values are obtained only through luck or exploitation.

Assistance motivated by either of the above reasons must be selective and based on discriminating ethical judgment. Such discriminating judgment, we may reasonably assume, would be exercised by the most successful private assistance agencies in a free society, since such agencies (like all producers) would operate in a competitive market. Such an agency obtains its revenue from voluntary donors, who in exchange receive a valuable service, since the agency's operation satisfies their personal ends as listed above. In effect, therefore, the donors are the agency's customers. In order to compete effectively for funding from those customers, the agency must be able to account rationally for its expenditures, thereby providing substantial subjective value to them.

^Previous