I agree that what we do here is not reproach her to spend this money (it's indeed better than hoarding it, which is the main issue about it), but we reproach a system that allows for such different universes, in which what saves one's life is just futile amusement for another - and we're speaking at whole other scales than what $5 would respectively do in the third world or for a western student.
I also agree with most of what TinyE says, about the futility of the charity excuse, but I don't think it's a camera thing. Charity is often spontaneous and sincere, and the giver is his main public. The ambiguity resides in the fact that it is a good deed, both an important and a superficial one : it helps, but it doesn't challenge the situation that makes it necessary to the reciever. In fact, it reinforces the status quo, maintains and validates the privilege of the giver. Charity is an act of free will, that makes the giver heroical and puts the reciever in moral debt, adding a moral hierarchy to it. In other words, it adds another layer of symbolic domination : the giver buys himself good consciousness, doesn't change anything to the situation (especially when, on the other hand, voting for the very laws that maintain this poverty and wealth differential) and gets thanked for the heroism of, at some point, having had his
selfless moment.
This is why charity and generosity get so often opposed to each other. What is to be avoided at all cost, for the proponent of the "charity solution", is : the loss of individual control over redistribution (it still has to be "when he feels like it", and has nothing more fun in mind at that time), the questioning of the very system of domination that puts him in the crumbles-giving role and puts the other in the crumbles-begging role (let's not challenge the social system), and, in the worst cases, his ownership of "his poors" with whom he may have a self-flattering, direct or indirect, patron relation (with, sometimes, a competition between givers, or a bitterness towards the emancipation of "his poors", or anything resembling to "ingratitude" in front of the expected, bought, submission).
So, lots to say about charity business. Giving is better than not giving, but living in a society where people depend on capricious and self-serving charity instead of actual institutions and social support, is an issue itself, that charity doesn't solve, and that is often avoided by people who prefer to maintain the most spectacular inequalities and the power (practical and symbolic) that it gives them upon others. Social support, generority, implies that everyone is entitled to decency and survival. Charity implies that the recievers should be all surprised and moved and grateful and humbled and guilty of being offered some help by some ostentatory generous hearts. Social support and actual generosity imply that this help should just be a normal system, the very ground and purpose of society in the first place, and that participating in it is mandatory anyway.
This is why I care more for state help and state-based redistribution than charity patches. The latter should exist in addition to the former, but is unfortunately most often a ponctual excuse to avoid the responsability of actual social solidarity, and to excuse undermining it. But it's even more an excuse given to oneself, than publicised for others.
There. Aaaand, I do my best with my english, but I'm quite insecure about it, so, thanks for the encouragements on that. Bear in mind that any mistake grants me ruthless PM-whiplashes by Krypsyn, so I kinda have an incentive to keep the standards as high as I can...
