> The person taking the brunt of the hardship is clearly the person suffering

Of course that is true. That doesn't mean that the cost imposed on others is zero.

> Of course that is true. That doesn't mean that the cost imposed on others is zero.

It's never zero. But you're making it out to be a significant cost relative to the effect on the person making the decision. Having a way to internalize the cost of others' displeasure at being aware of their possible misfortune wouldn't materially affect their decision one way or the other, because it's so much smaller a factor than the possible misfortune to begin with.

For an individual, yes. For society as a whole, no. If you have one homeless person on the street who is seen by 1000 passers-by, their discomfort on an individual basis has to only be 0.1% as much as the homeless person's in order for the aggregate cost to be the same. This is just the tragedy of the commons in another form.

It's still true even with that kind of multiplier. Would you rather see a homeless person a thousand times, or be a homeless person? It's no comparison.

But you're making a fine argument for charity. If a thousand people don't want to see a person go homeless, it doesn't take much from each of them to make it so they don't have to.

That's the wrong analogy. The correct one is: would you rather be one poor person living amongst 1000 wealthy people, or one rich person living amongst 1000 poor ones?

And if 1000 is not a big enough number to make you think twice, then make it 10,000. Or 100,000. (The number of homeless in the U.S. is considerably larger than that BTW.)

> And if 1000 is not a big enough number to make you think twice, then make it 10,000. Or 100,000. (The number of homeless in the U.S. is considerably larger than that BTW.)

You're comparing the entire US homeless population to one person. The actual ratio is less than one in five hundred.

I guess you're right. Six million homeless people is nothing to worry about. Lost in the noise. What was I thinking?