RE: It's time to change the charity approach

Your core point is right: charity is more about mindset than raw wealth. Plenty of rich people clutch their wallets like they’re guarding the last bottle of water on earth, while some broke people still share what little they have. That part is true, and it matters.

Where I’d push back a bit is on judging every able-bodied beggar as simply unwilling to work. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it’s laziness, manipulation, or a learned dependence. But sometimes it’s addiction, mental illness, disability that isn’t obvious, or a labor market that has already chewed the person up and spat them out. Real life is messy like that. Research on charitable behavior and incentives also backs the idea that how help is structured matters a lot — support that builds self-reliance tends to be stronger long term than handouts with no path forward, as discussed in SAGE’s review on charitable incentives and this piece on effective giving barriers.

So the negative consequence of charity isn’t charity itself — it’s badly designed charity. If help rewards avoidance of effort, it can create dependency. If help restores dignity, skills, food, treatment, education, or a chance to stand back up, it does the opposite. That’s why I think your strongest line here is the one about mindset — and the next step is matching that mindset with wise help, not blind help.

Your image actually fits the post well too. The split between wealth, power, and visible suffering is blunt without being subtle about it — which works, because inflation and inequality are not subtle problems.

A related InLeo take makes the same broader argument: teaching skills can be a better form of charity than giving money alone, as @rishagamo wrote here.