The Problem with "Moral Hazards"

A dangerous comment has been made on this site, which one would usually expect to find in the Daily Mail or the Conservative Party manifesto. This is the issue of “moral hazards”. Such hazards are usually perceived by those who have not actually immersed themselves in the subject or scenario within which they have seemingly found a danger to morality.

What is morality? This is a philosophical question which I am not qualified to answer, for it has been confounding the greatest minds in the history of the subject, and I by no means compare. What I can do is reflect on my own sense of morality, and upon doing this, I find myself drawn to help people such as the homeless for two reasons. The first is duty, combined with guilt. The second I borrow from religious tenet ‘Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you’. I have a roof, food and am not in a position to be without them. I have family and friends who if things really did get that bad, would be in a position to help me. As such I see it as something of a duty for those who are in such a fortunate position to aid those who are not in whatever way is available to them. This is a basic tenet of many international political and charitable organisations, and I try on the level at which I am currently able, to do similarly. Further to duty comes fear. Fear that were I to lose my fortunate position and need the help of others, that I would not receive it.

Begging is a humiliating thing to have to do. You have to deal with sneers, unkind remarks and a feeling of alienation. You would be hard-pressed to find somebody who begs when it is not necessary to do so. As such when people give money to beggars on the street, they would have to be very unlucky to have been duped into giving to someone undeserving. People need not even be homeless to be in desperate need. If someone who is begging owns a mobile phone, this does not mean that they are undeserving. It means that they have a phone, but then they could have acquired that from anywhere. They needn’t have bought it new, and if they are ever to be contacted they will benefit greatly from one if they did. To get a job or to be contacted by the Housing Association, the benefits of having a phone are many when you do not have an address. Of course it is incredibly rare to see a beggar with a mobile phone, and if one or two do, this leads into the fear of the dubious realm of morality hazards. People too often assume that if a beggar has a phone or some Nike trainers, that they are wasting the money they are given and are somehow tricking an unsuspecting donor, when in fact there are plenty of reasons, some of which I have outlined, as to why they would be in possession of such things. Could they not have owned them before being forced to beg? Could they not have been given them by a charity (old mobile phone collection boxes can often be found in charity shops)? I am not saying that all beggars are entirely honest and lovely people, but it is not our place to judge or accuse in a mass condemnation of beggars based on individual incidents or assumptions.

Jimothy in his Should We Give to the Homeless? article remarks that the Ta Chill Our Blood article by John seems to suggest that all beggars are deserving. For the reasons I have outlined above I believe they are, even though I don’t think that John necessarily implies that. How will not giving money help those who use tactics not to everyone’s liking to get help stop them doing so? The greatest problem in the Jimothy vs John dilemma I believe to be that John is actually homeless, and though he will be biased because of this, he has far more of a grasp than Jimothy could ever have on the situation.

Homeless charities do a lot of good work, and I would encourage people to give generously to them. However, on a day to day basis, people are still begging because they are forced to. The charities can only work so fast, and hand out what they can. The beggars have to eat, drink and find shelter every day and the charities through no fault of their own, or through the fault of the beggars just cannot be everywhere at once and help everyone all the time.

We each have our own sense of morality and our own justifications for giving (or not) to those in need. How helping someone who needs help to help themselves can ever constitute a moral hazard – something which either threatens the very moral fabric of our being or something used in an ill-informed and insubstantial excuse – seems to me an impossibility. I am aware that some will argue that by giving to beggars we are not in fact helping them to help themselves but hindering their chances of getting off the street. This “dependency trap” (Jimothy 2006) of which they speak is both insulting and patronising to those who beg. I have not met a single beggar yet whom I have spoken to at length, who feels that “If he doesn’t absolutely have to pull himself up, then, perhaps, he won’t” (Jimothy 2006). Is this an insinuation on Jimothy’s part that if they just worked a bit harder they could sort themselves out? This is a narrow-minded and clearly uninformed opinion if so. I am also aware that the founder of the Big Issue has spoken out against giving money directly to beggars, but then I cannot agree with him either for the reasons I have outlined.

My plea to everyone is to search for the basis of their own morality before they come out with Daily Mail style rants, based on websites and newspaper articles about subjects they have not gotten directly involved in. Would you like to be spoken of in the way that Jimothy’s articles has, or as so many people on that bastion of Kent University bigotry – The Student Bar have, if you were placed in the position where you were forced to beg? Get to know the homeless of this city, talk to them and be aware that not everyone is trying to scam you, and not everything is always as it seems when you actually open your eyes.

By David Nettleingham

Copyright March 2006