You're leaving the grocery store when someone approaches asking for money. They look unwell—maybe homeless, maybe struggling with addiction. You have cash in your pocket. You want to help. But a voice in your head asks: What if they spend it on something that hurts them?

This moment captures one of everyday ethics' thorniest puzzles. It's not really about money at all—it's about how we balance our desire to help against our fear of causing harm, and whether we have any right to control what others do with our assistance. Let's work through this together.

Here's a philosophical framework that might surprise you: treating someone as a full human being means respecting their right to make choices you disagree with. This is what philosophers call autonomy—the capacity for self-governance that defines us as moral agents.

When we refuse help because someone might misuse it, we're essentially saying: "I know better than you what you need." That's paternalism—overriding someone's choices for their own supposed good. The problem? It treats adults like children. It assumes their judgment is so impaired that they've lost the right to direct their own lives.

Consider this: you probably make choices others would consider self-destructive. Maybe you eat poorly, work too much, or spend money unwisely. Would you want strangers refusing to interact with you economically because they disapprove of your habits? Autonomy isn't conditional on making choices others approve of.

Takeaway

Before deciding someone can't be trusted with assistance, ask yourself whether you'd accept that same judgment applied to your own imperfect choices.

But wait—autonomy isn't the whole story. If you hand someone money and they immediately buy something that kills them, haven't you participated in that harm? This is where consequentialist thinking pushes back against pure autonomy respect.

The concept of enabling suggests that sometimes our help doesn't actually help. If your assistance predictably leads to suffering—yours or theirs—then your good intentions don't erase your contribution to that outcome. A parent who keeps bailing out an adult child's destructive choices isn't being kind; they're removing the natural consequences that might prompt change.

Here's the tension: we can't actually know what someone will do with our help. We're working with probabilities and assumptions, often shaped by stereotypes. The person asking for money might buy alcohol—or medicine, food, or a bus ticket to a job interview. Our certainty about their choices often says more about our biases than their reality.

Takeaway

Worry less about what someone might do with your help and more about whether your assumptions about them are based on evidence or prejudice.

Philosophy rarely offers clean answers, but it does offer creative alternatives. What if the choice isn't binary—give cash or give nothing? Many people navigate this by offering specific assistance: food, transportation, direct payment for services. This preserves dignity while addressing the fear of enabling harm.

But even this middle path has complications. Offering food instead of cash can feel infantilizing—like saying, "I'll help, but only on my terms." Some philosophers argue that truly respecting someone means trusting them with unrestricted resources, even accepting the risk they'll choose poorly.

Perhaps the wisest approach is this: make a decision and own it. If you give, give without resentment or conditions. If you don't, acknowledge you're making a choice under uncertainty, not a moral judgment about their worth. The worst response is giving while simultaneously resenting and judging—that serves no one.

Takeaway

Whatever you decide in the moment, commit fully: give freely without strings, or decline without judgment. Grudging, conditional help often harms more than honest refusal.

There's no formula that resolves this dilemma permanently. Each encounter asks you to weigh autonomy against consequences, dignity against safety, trust against evidence. That discomfort is the point—ethical thinking isn't about finding easy answers but about taking moral complexity seriously.

What you can do is approach each situation with genuine reflection rather than autopilot judgment. Ask what you actually know versus assume. Consider what respecting this person's humanity truly requires. Then make your choice—and accept that reasonable people, thinking carefully, might choose differently.