The analysis above falls prey to the moral illusion of immediacy. While it may be absurd to say that the existence of “better” (more utility optimizing) alternatives negates the moral worth of a given act, it is at least equally absurd to suggest that any unreciprocated conferral of value, qua charity, is automatically deserving of praise. If this were so, then leaving $20 on the sidewalk as a gift to the next passerby – or for that matter, for Donald Trump – would be deemed “morally salutary.”
For a deed to take on a moral quality, the doer must first contemplate the good it will do, and then perform the deed as a calculated means of achieving that end. Beggars cut off this process of deliberation by demanding the dole right then and there. Handing over a dollar from one’s pocket, to the exclusion of more efficient charitable uses of that money, thus privileges the beggar’s claim based sheerly on immediacy. In other words, an amoral consideration (immediacy) overrides a moral consideration (the most efficient/humane allocation of charitable resources).
Indeed, the immediacy factor is amoral at best, given the social costs associated with vagrancy – from the annoyance of pedestrians to the cycle of crime that such “broken window” symptoms of disorder may set in motion. One might then question whether, in a larger sense, encouraging vagrancy is truly a charitable act at all – whether it is not merely “morally neutral” but “morally wrong.”