What if the thing he [sic] most needs right now is to buy a pack of cigarettes or get drunk or whatever?
This is a valid question, but I think you also need to allow the possibility that these things are not what the beggar most needs right now. Not all attempts to substitute one’s own decisions for someone else’s involve “impos[ing] your values on the person.” Sometimes people make decisions that do not further their own values, and in such cases, I think it is morally justified to try to respect their values rather than just their choices. Not to say that this is easy, and that we shouldn’t be incredibly wary of the possibility that we’re actually just projecting our own values on others. But claiming that others’ decisions are morally inviolable seems like an overreaction to me (albeit one that is founded in a legitimate concern).
It’s worth noting that a non-trivial percentage of homeless individuals are considered mentally ill, which generally means that society has, for better or worse, deemed them systematically incapable of making appropriate choices.
A lot of the homelessness problem in the USA came about from the big deinstitutionalization push in the 60s that… didn’t really work as intended. Policy on homelessness since then has mostly been built around “make them go somewhere else”.
This is a valid question, but I think you also need to allow the possibility that these things are not what the beggar most needs right now. Not all attempts to substitute one’s own decisions for someone else’s involve “impos[ing] your values on the person.” Sometimes people make decisions that do not further their own values, and in such cases, I think it is morally justified to try to respect their values rather than just their choices. Not to say that this is easy, and that we shouldn’t be incredibly wary of the possibility that we’re actually just projecting our own values on others. But claiming that others’ decisions are morally inviolable seems like an overreaction to me (albeit one that is founded in a legitimate concern).
It’s worth noting that a non-trivial percentage of homeless individuals are considered mentally ill, which generally means that society has, for better or worse, deemed them systematically incapable of making appropriate choices.
A lot of the homelessness problem in the USA came about from the big deinstitutionalization push in the 60s that… didn’t really work as intended. Policy on homelessness since then has mostly been built around “make them go somewhere else”.