It's a difficult question, I've thought quite a bit about it. Begging has increased massively in my city over the past few years (common in most of northern Eu

It's a difficult question, I've thought quite a bit about it. Begging has increased massively in my city over the past few years (common in most of northern Europe)[1][2]. Some thoughts on this (totally understand if people disagree, it's a difficult topic): - These people are obviously poor and miserable. Feeling sorry for them is a natural and human thing. - But, if everyone were begging all humans would starve to death. It's not scalable. - There are ~1 billion people on less than $1 a day (even with PPP adjustment that's probably less than most beggars make). - Begging is sort of a 'squeaky wheel gets the grease' allocation method. It's likely that there is someone else that would need the money more. - It feels like a bad thing to incentivize. - These people have harsh lives, and often they've started with unfavorable odds. But I think it's more useful to focus aid/effort on structural issues, like fighting corruption, improving world trade, good institutions, education, etc (in both developed and developing countries). - Human civilization as it stands today is a product of long, hard struggle. Most people have lived grim lives. - Mostly an anecdote, but I watched a movie called 'Last Train Home'[3], about a Chinese family that works 12+ hours a day, 51 weeks per year. They saw their kids 1 week per year. That's quite the struggle. I'd guess most people watching the movie would feel that these parents lived a harder life than many people begging in rich western cities. I'm not arguing these are in any way optimal (or even good choices), but things I've donated to are Transparency International, Amnesty and Wikipedia. [1] http://www.newsweek.com/half-swedes-want-ban-begging-319327 http://www.newsweek.com/half-swedes-want-ban-begging-319327 [2] http://www.newsweek.com/influx-roma-norway-leads-begging-ban-bill-304727 http://www.newsweek.com/influx-roma-norway-leads-begging-ban... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Train_Home_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Train_Home_(film)