So selflessness means they do (consider what others may need or want). It doesn’t mean they hate themselves in an inhumane way. Like those with a guilt complex who are easily manipulated out of their money.
Dying to self involves things like killing selfish impulses, or digging up root causes of things like guilt complexes (as opposed to appropriate remorse).
Any act that treats someone the way they want to be treated in order to get something from them (other than the joy of helping them get what they need) is “masked” selfishness. Do we call that psychopathic, or just immoral? Ayn Rand calls it (altruism with self-interested motives…she doesn’t see any other kind) a fake selflessness. She doesn’t think there is genuine selflessness. And somehow, ironically…she sees it as self-hating, because she thinks it guilts people, none of whom (to her) are genuinely selfless/altruistic, including those who practice rational self-interest. She was right about masked selfishness, but wrong about genuine selflessness. And it’s wrong to call other-focused joy “selfish” and to say rational self-interest that is other-focused is a “virtuous” selfishness. It isn’t selfishness at all. She makes profiteering without regard for others look good by spinning people around in a semantic whirlwind.
And what if one does have buy-in other than the empathic joy of others’ needs being met? Is it automatically selfish like Rand suggests? No more than unintended negative consequences, even if foreseen, that could not have been avoided, make an act immoral—despite the fact that intending them WOULD have definitely been immoral. Was the buy-in intended? Was it avoidable? Rand would not counsel someone to check their motives there.
But… she DID contrast that against the Nietzschean brute 