Original reply:

Yes, I have a lot of criticisms of it. I was talking to my son the other day about something and he gave me the supporting example that a charity in Africa found that if it gave away mosquito netting to poor moms to protect their babies from diseases carried by mosquitoes, they typically sold it. But if they sold the netting for 50 cents, which was half a day's wages for these women, then proper use of the netting shot up from something like 10% to something like 80%.

Giving away things for free tends to undermine self esteem and self determination, tends to come with a lot of controlling conditions, and tends to be very poor quality. I left the soup kitchens as soon as I could in part because the food is terrible and it exposed me to concentrations of people who were often ill and actively smoking cigarettes next to me. Staying away from sick people and cigarette smoke and eating good quality food is part of how I stay out of the ER.

I could go on but I don't really see much reason to. I have a lot of very practical reasons. It is not merely some kind of negative psychological reaction. It is a very well reasoned position, based in part on having done a lot of volunteer work when I was younger and a lot of reading about such topics.

I don't think we should eliminate all charities but I do think that the more we can find other ways to solve problems, the better those solutions are likely to be. Charity tends to produce pretty bad solutions which keep people limping along and generally does not have a good track record of lifting people out of poverty.