Pursuit of Virtuous Cycle

One of the striking things of visiting China is the prevalence of panhandling in the city. But they're not homogeniously the same. I saw the following:

1. young musicians
2. young people running out of money
3. 1 or more limps not functioning
4. with very young children (5-10), and those kids will come up to beg and steal.

Why it's much easier to go to a different city in the States to find job or school, find new friends, and settle down, but not so simple in China? First, languages and cultures are quite different between the prosperous areas and the impoverished areas. Second, the government policy does not encourage this.

The newspaper reported a local millionnaire adopted and hired 20 beggars, in an effort to help them. He succeeded in certain extend, but his business also failed.

It's not the physical condition as much as the mental state that needs to be helped, although physical comfort is pre-requisite for mental aversion to become self-sufficient and contributor to the society.

An effective philanthropic system should generate a virtuous cycle in which ex-panhandlers help others to become self-sufficient. An effective process should be designed. And the process should be well-known, so that people can easily participate to help. At least they can hand out a "name card" to point to the help resource, instead of giving money. The subway ad should say "give this card to those in need, so they can get help and food at this address", instead just tell people. Empower those who wants to help so that when they want to give something, cash is not the only option.

And we need to give people education. It's about choices, the choices you know available to you. Of course, for some, they still have rooms to grow to become a contributing-member of the society (when they're young and healthy). For some, they seem to lose all the ability to do anything (crippled and retarded) other than extending their life meaningless with any resource they can live on from the society. At this point, we have a difficult job to do. Of course we might be able to prevent this at the first place. Then we talk about the source of this, the impoverished areas, the assistance of first-line defence -- good family, the route to economic viability, education, and all that.

It might be a problem larger than I can handle (at this time).