I mean, the real problem with Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos is the illegal war the US fought there to maintain the value of the dollar.
Charitable donations are by definition a response to a failure of society in one way or another (regardless of whether your political views consider it a failure of the market, a failure of government, or some of both). Even in the ideal case, they exist because some problem is so bad that someone feels morally compelled to give their spare money to try to solve it. We donate to provide water to certain places in Africa (or Michigan) because there isn't reliable infrastructure there, but we don't need to donate to provide water to San Francisco. We donate to specific medical research goals because the funding system for medical research (again, whether it's government-backed or market-backed) isn't investing in some problem, and we think throwing a bit of money at it might cause us to happen on a cure, and at the same time we complain about how other medical costs for different problems are out of control. We donate to legal activism nonprofits because, bluntly, we believe our justice system will fail to be just without that intervention. We donate to Mozilla because there's no money to be made in selling web browsers thanks to the various vertically-integrated competitors but we think independent web browsers are still valuable. And the Gates Foundation donates to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos because the kids there quite frankly will never grow up to be Bill Gates without rebuilding some infrastructure first.
(Or, of course, charitable donations are PR - a way for the Andrew Carnegies of the world to deflect questions about whether they've quietly caused more failures of society than they're currently loudly fixing.)
The reason that your town needs a food bank is that there are people in your town who can't just afford food and need to rely on the whims of people who believe in private charity in order to not starve to death. Running the food bank is great, and I'm glad that there are people with those whims, but making it so that nobody in your town has that problem would be even better. It doesn't matter if your answer is "more taxes to support welfare" or "more teaching people to fish," either of them is more sustainable.
I'm not saying we shouldn't donate to worthy causes. I do, quite a bit, and I think those of us who make tech-industry salaries do in fact have a moral obligation to do that for as long as these failures of society exist. But let's admit that it's a second-class approach.
Donations cannot solve problems. They can at best soothe the effects of a problem. There isn't really any fundamental difference between the guy with a sign on 101 asking for a dollar every day, the kid in Vietnam asking for a dollar every day, and the New York Public Library emailing me to ask for many dollars every day. Or, ultimately, even the beloved local for-profit business with a Kickstarter to save them from shutdown asking for a (hopefully) one-time pile of cash to make rent. All of them feel like their best shot is to hope for donations. Let's figure out where they should be getting funds from instead.
Charitable donations are by definition a response to a failure of society in one way or another (regardless of whether your political views consider it a failure of the market, a failure of government, or some of both). Even in the ideal case, they exist because some problem is so bad that someone feels morally compelled to give their spare money to try to solve it. We donate to provide water to certain places in Africa (or Michigan) because there isn't reliable infrastructure there, but we don't need to donate to provide water to San Francisco. We donate to specific medical research goals because the funding system for medical research (again, whether it's government-backed or market-backed) isn't investing in some problem, and we think throwing a bit of money at it might cause us to happen on a cure, and at the same time we complain about how other medical costs for different problems are out of control. We donate to legal activism nonprofits because, bluntly, we believe our justice system will fail to be just without that intervention. We donate to Mozilla because there's no money to be made in selling web browsers thanks to the various vertically-integrated competitors but we think independent web browsers are still valuable. And the Gates Foundation donates to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos because the kids there quite frankly will never grow up to be Bill Gates without rebuilding some infrastructure first.
(Or, of course, charitable donations are PR - a way for the Andrew Carnegies of the world to deflect questions about whether they've quietly caused more failures of society than they're currently loudly fixing.)
The reason that your town needs a food bank is that there are people in your town who can't just afford food and need to rely on the whims of people who believe in private charity in order to not starve to death. Running the food bank is great, and I'm glad that there are people with those whims, but making it so that nobody in your town has that problem would be even better. It doesn't matter if your answer is "more taxes to support welfare" or "more teaching people to fish," either of them is more sustainable.
I'm not saying we shouldn't donate to worthy causes. I do, quite a bit, and I think those of us who make tech-industry salaries do in fact have a moral obligation to do that for as long as these failures of society exist. But let's admit that it's a second-class approach.
Donations cannot solve problems. They can at best soothe the effects of a problem. There isn't really any fundamental difference between the guy with a sign on 101 asking for a dollar every day, the kid in Vietnam asking for a dollar every day, and the New York Public Library emailing me to ask for many dollars every day. Or, ultimately, even the beloved local for-profit business with a Kickstarter to save them from shutdown asking for a (hopefully) one-time pile of cash to make rent. All of them feel like their best shot is to hope for donations. Let's figure out where they should be getting funds from instead.