"The solution" to what? The things you mentioned will not solve poverty or homelessness. They will not even make a dent in the problem. Do you think that talkin

"The solution" to what? The things you mentioned will not solve poverty or homelessness. They will not even make a dent in the problem. Do you think that talking to the homeless guy will warm his heart and brighten his whole day? Not as much as your heart gets warmed; not as much as your day gets brightened. The only problem you are really solving is your own guilt. And tomorrow, and in a year, and in ten years, there are going to be just as many poor and homeless people around, to provide you the same service. And shaming people on HN serves the same purpose. If you want to help the poor, work harder and give the extra money you make to good charities. That is not going to solve the problem, either, but it will improve things more than anything else you could do in the same amount of time. The direct personal involvement you seek only serves to benefit you, at the expense of greater possible material improvements for them. If that sounds inhuman, that's because our moral intuition, like so much of our instinct, does not scale. What is good for a single poor man is not necessarily best for poverty as a social problem.