This is a beautiful answer, thank you. Here's a twist that I read about from Tyler Cowen, from marginalrevolution: for reasons a child of your comment has pointed out, handouts to the people asking for handouts creates something of a perverse incentive; Cowen recommends going to random people in third world countries who seem to be in need but are _not_ begging for money, and give them your money. Not sure about the practical effects of this (there's a whiff of the kind of paternalism that economists, including Cowen himself, debunks in other economic domains) but thought-provoking nonetheless.