That's why I tend to give my money to the homeless.

Directly.

I know they end up getting 100% of the money.


They might buy booze or drugs?   Good.  Being homeless is deperssing and if they're persistantly homeless they probably aren't one hot meal away from a new life and probably don't have much time left anyway.

May as well numb up some of the horribleness.

Though that said, you can actually find a lot of charities where the money goes directly to the people if you try.

That sounds depressing.

I totally agree with this. It's jsut that your examples didn't illustrate this at all. You had institutions do all those things, and you couldn't even call the non-governmental institutions either. Not to mention that the corruption of such institutions (and their ulterior motives) certainly won't encourage him to change his views regardign charity (and hospitals and adoption agencies are not charity organsiations, and they're run by the Government, are they not?).

Nah, the only time I get depressed is when I see a homeless guy and I don't have any money on me.

Which happens more often now that I use a Debit card for all my purchases.  So I pretty much only keep cash on hand to hand it out.  Or when i ride the bus.

Nothing that depressing to me to know that you helped someone get through another day.

If you can ever get your hands on a TV show called Sports Night.  I'd suggest the episode "The Quality of Mercy at 29K."

A speech a character named Isaac gives out about the subject explains it better then I can.

Edit:  Found a transcript.

Dan: Isaac, you got a second?
Isaac: Sure. What's on your mind?
Dan: You make a lot of charitable donations, don't you?
Isaac: I try.
Dan: Who do you give your money to?
Isaac: I used to give money to the Democratic Party.
Dan: Not anymore?
Isaac: Well, you get your heart broken enough times, you learn your lesson.
Dan: Who do you give your money to now?
Isaac: I give it here and there. There are plenty of good causes.
Dan: That's the problem.
Isaac: Hmm. Danny, every morning I leave and acre and a half of the most beautiful property in New Canaan. Get on a train and come to work in a 54 story glass hi-rise. In between, I step over bodies to get here. 20, 30, 50 of them a day. So as I'm stepping over them, I reach into my pocket and give them whatever I've got.
Dan: You're not afraid they're going to spend it on booze?
Isaac: I'm hoping their going to spend it on booze. Look, Danny, for these people, most of them, it's not like they're one hot meal from turning it around. For most of them, the clock's pretty much run out. You'll be home soon enough. What's wrong with giving them a little novocaine to get them through the night?

But why shouldn't we try to help these people turn their lives around? Wouldn't that be a better strategy, mainly in the long run?

Society isn't set up for that kind of situation.  Helping people in the long run is ironically seen as cruel.

From foreign aid, to welfare to homeless charities, they almost all treat the problem the same way.  By giving people stuff.

You take a homeless person, and what are his issues.

He's homless, why's he homeless?  He can't get a job.  Why can't he get a job?  Well because he's homeless... you can't really impress people in a job interview if your homeless.   Even if you give him a place to stay, which most cities do have places for these people to stay... it doesn't fix the root cause that these people don't have jobs... and are basically in a situation where they can't get jobs.

So what do you do?  You take one of your homeless shelters... put in a bunch of telephones, and get some telemarketing contracts.  Start with the US Census if you have too, they need work done all the time.  You run the government.  You train the homeless to do telemarketing.  It's not that hard and nobody wants to do it.  Put in some rules about when they can leave, set a curfew to make sure people are alright, hold back a portion of their salary to make sure they have money when they get out and drug test to make sure people stay clean.

Then theoretically when a year or so has passed.  You've got people with some money in their pocket who have some work expierence in a field that's almost always hiring.  Use whatever money is left over to open up new "franchises" in different areas and have a welfare program that expands.

Only problem is, Democrats would say you were explointing the homless and being cruel when you should just give them money, Republicans wouldn't want to pay for it... and if you organized it through a private orginization the government would do everything they could to shut you down for "exploiting the homeless".  With an orginzation like that and dealing with the homeless, minor violations of some sort of city or governmental code would be almost impossible to avoid even when trying your hardest watching everything and the slightest excuse would be used to shut you down.

Even then, you wouldn't save everybody... there are a lot of people you can't save.  People with addictions who refuse to get rid of them, people with mental problems who don't want to take their medicine.

You can't force these people to get treatment, and it's hard to just ignore them.

If i'm ever rich, i'd like to give it a shot, though I'd imagine it'd just end up with most people thinking I was some sort of evil sweatshop CEO monster or something.  Only since it's the evolution of an Idea i've had since like, 5th or 6th grade.

Actually they aren't.

I mean, there are government run hospitals, but most hosptials and adoption agencies in the US are run privately I believe.

Mostly because they are usually better run then the government run ones.

The only real exception are the Veterans Affairs hospitals, which are some of the best hospitals in the world.

However, those hospitals only got to be so good after decades of them being some of the worst hospitals in the country, culimating in a scandle where actual dead bodies were found in a VA hospital that were somehow just "lost."

Though actually, I don't know if the VA hospitals are still the best.   Afterall back when i researched them it was before Afghanistan and Iraq really were going.

The PTSD bombshell that's setting off and just massive influx of patients to VA hospitals... they might be doing horribly now.  With the large influx of patients and likely not an equal increase in budget.

Healthcare is just a messed up road of nonsense to be honest with you.  For example, Nonprofit insurance plans actually usually end up costing more then for profit ones and tend to have lower satisfaction ratings.  How that's possible, i'm not sure.

I think that you have the right ideea on how this should be handled properly. The main problem I've alwys had with charity is that it only provides short term solutions (and makes the people who contribute feel better about themselves), but in the long run nothing changes. The poor people stay poor, and that's due to the vicious cycle you pointed out (poor 'cause you don't have a job, can't get a job because no one wants to hire a poor vagabond).

The fact that Western people (and most humans really) in general only make deicsions that have short term effects and instant gratification is probably a reason for this. You can see this in pretty much every field (business, education etc.), not just regarding charity. I think the whole ideea of charity should be redefined, as charity in it's current form (handouts) is deeply flawed, and offers benefits mostly to the people who donate (psychological benefits), not the people who need help.

Back during the Communist regime, here in Romania it was illegal not to have a job. If you didn't have a job you were sent to jail, and after you were released you were trained for a certain traid, and then given a job. Obviously this is extreme, but it would be nice of teh Government (excuse me for this, but here in Romania, due to what has happened historically, we think that it's the Government's job to handle this type of things) had some sort of program that helped homeless people gain work skills and money (in other words the very thing you proposed).

I can understand the reason Republican's would be against it (greed), but the Democrat's reason is just plain stupid. How is helping people gain workskills and earn money "exploiting" them? If you were underpaying them, or not paying them at all I could understand that argument, but surely regulators would make sure that isn't happening.

The problem with private individuals taking such an initialtive would be that you can be sure some sweatshop monster CEO would try to take advantage and exploit the homeless. The Government is an entity who at least theoretically serve's the people (including homeless people), while a private person serves him/herself and may have ulterior motives (didn't private people exploit convicts during the Civil Wars you guys had?). I suppose though that some sort of non-profit organisation could handle this.

As for some people not wanting help, that's true, but many do want help, while other have given up simply because they see no way out. Lots of people could be saved.

Well, in Romania most of the hospitals are run by the Government, though they're all terrible (mainly due to the fact that the Government's corrupt and incomeptent, but that's not the case in other countries, and because doctos are sadly a self regulating body, and quoting Mad Men, "doctors don't say bad things about eacthother"). I could tell you stories... but I won't because I don't wanna think about them, they make me sick to my stomach. Still, hospitals are not run by charity organisations, no? And I'm pretty sure even private adoption agencies need Governemnt approval (else it would essentially be human trafficking).

Mother Theresa also said that divorces should not be made legal in Ireland which only drove the wedge deeper there, then when her friend Princess Diana got divorced she basically wished her the best.

Any form of morals in charity work is fundamentally challenged when you add prosetlytization  to the mix.