How To Clear Snow in Kentucky

[Kellemora]

I already know about all the insect fragments and other things in our food, hi hi.

If you have the proper diagnostic equipment, most mobo's will now tell you what is ailing them, hi hi.
I had a computer that would be working fine and then suddenly just shut off for apparently no reason.
I could check the temps on a few things and nothing was out of range right before it would clonk out.
I replaced the power supply thinking it might be that, it wasn't.
Took it to the shop and the guy got mad at me because of all the dust inside the computer.
He took it outside and blew out the fins on the CPU heat sink, and after that it worked like a charm.
So ever since, I would take my computers and blow them out about once a year.
But then I still had one that would run for about an hour and clonk out, and it was clean as a whistle inside.
It also was not showing it was overheating. Took it in and the guy plugged something into it and let it run.
It clonked out on him too, but his fancy machine didn't tell him why. So I left it with him.
He calls about a week later and said the CPU socket appears to have a problem. Can't be fixed, and cannot move the CPU to a new mobo either. If I get a new mobo it will have to have a new CPU too, and memory sticks.
I went ahead and let him rebuild that computer for me, and it only came out to like 250 bucks.
Worked like a charm ever since, and up until we took that lightning hit which killed most of my equipment.

[yogi]

Dust is a better insulator than you would suspect. As you now know, enough of it on those cooling fins of the CPU fan will prevent the fan from doing its job. The fan and fins I have on this tower is enough to keep your car engine cool. LOL Well, maybe it's not that good but it certainly is over kill for what I'm trying to do here. The advantage is that I can accumulate a lot more dust over time without it affecting the radiation of heat. More and bigger fins give greater surface area over which to transfer heat. Why this fan works is something of a mystery. The processor is pretty large (2" x 2"?) and uses a very high clock speed, 4 GHz. While it's true that it doesn't clock at that speed 100% of the time, there is a substantial amount of heat being generated. The cooling fins of the fan are in a stack I'd estimate to be 2x4x6, which as I said is a lot of surface area. The interface between the cooling fins and the processor case is a copper S-shaped run of metal that certainly does not cover the entire surface area of the processor. And, of course, there is a thermal compound between the two. Since the S-shaped copper doesn't cover the entire surface of the processor I was very skeptical about its ability to keep things cool. But, here I am more than 5 years into using this arrangement, and never once had a thermal shutdown problem. All I can say is that copper must have a wonderful heat absorbing capability.

The processor itself fits into a socket specifically designed for it. The number of pins and the spacing between them determine the socket size. It's indexed so that there is only one way to insert the CPU. As far as I can tell, if the socket becomes damaged, it's a simple matter of lifting the processor out and placing it into another similar socket, presumably on a different motherboard. In other words, the microprocessor is not soldered into place. The socket is. Likewise with RAM. The only need for care is to be certain the interfacing chip set on the new motherboard is compatible with the processor. Given the age of my system, replacing the motherboard with something compatible may be a problem. Hopefully I will never need to do that.

You got a good deal if you got a CPU, RAM, and a motherboard for $250. I realize it is indeed possible, but I can't even find a CPU to my liking for that price. LOL

[Kellemora]

One of my older computers here, no longer in service, had a humongous heat sink, about 6x6 square 3 inches high.
Why they had such a big one I don't know. It definitely was NOT a powerful computer, hi hi.

That's what the guy told me, he couldn't get a new mobo for the CPU I had.

Since I was billed for just the components on the build invoice, it showed the three mobo's as 65, 85, and 85 dollars each.
And the CPUs were like 120, 165, and 185 dollars. All AMD.
I know when I checked them on places like Amazon, their price was always like ten to fifteen bucks less.
I could dig through my old paperwork and get the exact model numbers of the mobo's and CPUs.
But I do know that currently prices are crazy high. Especially RAM which kept going down for a long time there, now it is like doubling in price every time you turn around.

Those prices were for the computers I bought that were about 5 years old when I got the Silver Yogi.
A whole computer with mobo CPU 4 gigs of RAM and the Case with Power supply was around 300 to 350 bucks.
I could bring them my old case, but almost always they needed to use a larger power supply which was around 40 bucks.
But almost everything else in there could be reused. Well, until everything went SATA, then I had to buy new drives.
But I always took the smallest drive they offered, which was either 250 or 500 gigs, since I keep my data on external drives and backed up.

[yogi]

One of the driving forces behind the price increase of GPU's is crypto-currency mining. Apparently nVidia is making a killing selling processors to people running them in parallel. I guess it's the equivalent of unlimited cores attached to a main processor. nVidia can't make GPU's fast enough to supply the demand for their regular product line, and that has become a huge problem. AMD isn't bothered by such things and has been successful at cutting into nVidia's market share as a result. In an effort to get the situation under control, bring down the demand, and make their regular customers happy again, nVidia is doing something really unusual. They are building circuitry into their processors that inhibit the digital currency mining activity. Hopefully that will slow down the miners and bring the prices back down to earth.

Memory might be expensive, but there is a lot more memory available for the price these days. I recently paid the same price for a 2TB drive that I paid for a 500 GB SSD five years ago. The prices in theory should have dropped a lot more by now, but there is this slight issue with imports from China being taxed excessively these days. I can't imagine how that happened.

[Kellemora]

I did BitCoin mining for four years using six computers, and never made enough money to even cover the electric the computers were using. I think there is some other way of doing it on the market these days where instead of mining, they are handling transactions instead. Not sure, because when I stopped, I never looked back again.

I never could figure out why AMD CPUs were often less than half the price of Intel when they were rated close to the same.
The mobo's that used AMD chips were either the same price or in some cases 5 to 10 dollars higher priced than the same board for Intel. That didn't make sense to me, the computer guy told me why, but it was so long ago I don't remember what he said, other than it was logical the way he explained it.

Any company will try to up their price just to see what the market will bear, and I think that is why the price of memory has been going up more so lately, also supply and demand.
I remember memory for our early computers cost and arm and a leg and in some cases your first born son.
Then when memory stick had a whole lot more memory on them the price started dropping, in some cases like a rock.
I could buy 2 gig memory sticks for half the price of a 512 meg memory stick. Same with hard drives.

Would you believe my first dot matrix printer cost 1,600 bucks? It was a commercial grade with a Ford Aerospace engine in it, sold by Integral Data Systems. Same printer used in many specialty products of the era too. It never wore out, hi hi.
But the way computers sent data to printers did change drastically so it became obsolete.
I loved that printer though, because it was straight through feed and although it only used tractor drive paper, I learned a trick of sticking card stock to the tractor drive paper and it would print on fairly heavy card stock.
I knew it would because it would also print on 3 part forms which were thick, and that back page was thin cardboard.
You could not do graphics of any type though because it used its own internal fonts, and there were only like four or five to select from.
But then later dot matrix printers that the computer sent which pins to fire, those could do crude black and white graphics.
And of course, along came ink jets, and then color ink jets, hi hi.

[yogi]

My first dot matrix Epsom printer cost slightly over $900. It was nothing special other than the 132 column printing capability. I don't recall much about the fonts, but I think you are right about the printer's having their own. I was using Word Star at the time with CPM and there wasn't a lot of choices for format. It didn't really matter to me at that time because all I was doing was printing out code for the programs I was writing. I did find some software to do crude ASCII art, but you can't expect much from a dot matrix, can you?

Until recently no chips were made in the USA. China and Japan are where all the silicon comes from. Apple is daring to design it's own CPU and will be making their own chips too, if they have not done so already. But, that is such a niche market that it will have zero impact on the prices of the competition. The shortage of silicon chips these days, and the increased prices for what is available, is purely political. China is the dominant figure in this market and they seem to have a lot of influence on Taiwan and Japan as well. Production is down, and exports to the USA are restricted. Thus the normal market forces of supply and demand determine the price. In a normal market the costs increase with changes in technology. Once the tech is established then it becomes a blood bath and prices drop dramatically. I've not looked for such things recently and only know what I read. Perhaps when I try to assemble the parts for that new computer I want to build, I may decide to go buy a Dell instead.

Today's markets are infiltrated by what is known as hedge funds. These are guys who anticipate the worst and take action ahead of time in preparation. Their buying and selling is a hedge on what they think will happen, and it does in many cases affect the price of equities as well as bit coins. There is money to be made in mining, but these hedge fund guys are killing it without looking for secret wallets that may or may not exist. It's kind of like gold speculators. If you guess right you win big, but you have to lose nine times out of ten first. I read recently where the central banks are claiming it's feasible to have a market in digital currency. If that does occur you can say goodbye to paper and plastic money. But, the way the prices for bit coins fluctuate these days, I don't see how a stable world currency market would be possible. The exchanges already exist, but how well they will be adopted has yet to be seen.

[Kellemora]

I made some interesting designs on my old dot matrix printer, using characters like the @ sign.
Some guys were even able to make photo images using only text characters that looked decent from a distance.
In later years I had a dot matrix printer that could use paper or tractor drive.
Using roll paper not perforated, I could print really long banners with it too. Any width also, since I could use adding machine rolls with it also. Handy for making fake receipts, hi hi.

I thought some of the chips were made in silicon valley? If not, what is it they do there?
There used to be a company in Texas who made Transistors, the larger power switching transistors used in pinball machines and I'm sure many other places too.
I once saw some transistors that stood like four feet tall and was around a foot thick, and two feet wide. Have no idea where they were being shipped to or what they were for.

A fellow I used to work with used to buy things like rail cars of cotton, tobacco, and a few other things. Thought he was really smart buying them and selling them for a profit. Then he got stuck with a boxcar of something the price dropped down on, and he had to pay big time to have the boxcar moved and stored. Lost his shirt on that deal for sure, hi hi.
My brother bought a whole ocean container of little hoverboards from overseas. About 85% of them were not wired right, so he had to work on every one before he could sell them. On most it was just switching a couple of wires around the other way, but others were a total loss. Some didn't even have the battery packs in them. He was madder than a wet hornet over that deal. But he did make a decent profit from them, even with the added labor, and the high loss.
He also got into electric scooters for a short time. Turned out they were smaller than he thought they were based on the pictures. He expected them to be the size of a Vespa, and they were about 1/3 smaller than that, but looked about the same.
Rather than sell them directly to customers, he managed to sell them to several companies that already dealt with scooters. Ended up selling every one of them, and they all worked just fine. I think most of the dealers sold them as kids toys though.

[yogi]

Maybe I exaggerated a bit to say ALL chips come from the other side of the Pacific. There was a time when everything silicon was made in Arizona, Texas, or California, but the memory chips became way too popular and the demand way too high for them to be made in this country. Japan was the first country outside the USA to make memory chips at a fraction of the price they could be made for here. In those days the labor market in Japan was similar to China's meaning the people did not get paid much above subsistence wages. So, we pretty much gave the memory market away because we could import them cheaper than we could make them.

The high tech that goes into microprocessors does not lend itself the the economy of scale as do memory chips. Thus the CPU market in Silicon Valley is still viable. It's not what it used to be and there are strategic reasons too for why we did not ship the CPU manufacturing off shore altogether. The shortage I referred to has to do with automobile computer chips, which are sophisticated but not like what you have in the computers in your office. Apparently most of those chips are imported and we are now finding out why that is a bad idea.

India is a major player in the silicon game too and they will likely end up being the biggest market in the future. Japan and China are rapidly increasing their standards of living which is bringing the labor costs up to par with the rest of the world. India doesn't seem to have that problem yet.

People who deal in commodity contracts are living on the edge. Great fortunes can be made if you corner a market or are an expert at timing. The price of a carload of corn can change dramatically from the time it is loaded in Iowa and shipped by train to a cannery in Indiana. The commodity brokers who handle such things try to maintain a stable market, but things like train wrecks happen. The really complicated commodity to deal with is crude oil. The price of a tanker full of crude can change dozens of times on a trip across the Atlantic ocean. Somebody is making a killing and somebody is losing a fortune all the time. If you deal in those kind of contracts you have to be prepared for spectacular losses as well as handsome gains. I knew somebody who worked at the Mercantile Exchange in Chicago and heard some pretty interesting stories about commodities from her. Then the Exchange had to close down because computers took over all the trading. I often wondered why stocks still have brick and mortar buildings for their trades. I guess it's just tradition.

[Kellemora]

I've only been to China twice, both times with my brother on buying trips.
Both times he had to hire a business exchange person to take his orders and figure out who could make the stuff for him.
Even then, they rarely got an order correct. He ordered stuffed pool balls, like stuffed animals. They didn't get the right numbers with the colors, and the 8 ball came in all colors, not just black like he ordered, hi hi. It didn't much matter since they were for stocking crane machines in arcades and restaurants. But when they are given samples to work from, and still get it totally wrong, makes one wonder about them, hi hi.

If we look at the cost of living here, especially in different cities, you will see the average mean income is considerably different around the country. China is not much different, because they have a much lower cost of living than we do, salaries are in line with their cost of living. And like you mentioned about Japan, I've also been to Hong Kong many years ago. The cost of living in Japan has gone steadily up, inflation and the like, so naturally the salaries have gone up with it.
Now although it has been many many years since I was overseas, even back then, I really didn't see that much of a difference as to here. About half the people live from paycheck to paycheck here, about the same over there. The big shots are always wealthy, and the peons work for peanuts, just barely enough to get by.

The sad thing about inflation is, it hurts us older folks the most. Heck, we were proud to bring home 18k to 26k per year. But then our kids go out and they bring home 55k per year. In order for that to happen, the cost of everything has to double or triple, so those of us on fixed incomes can no longer keep up with true inflation. Inflation is in dollars and cents, but reported inflation is as a percentage, which is basically meaningless. If an 88 cent loaf of bread now costs you 3 bucks. How does that 1.8 to 3% SS increase help when the dollars were so low to begin with.

Speaking of SS, I was able to get my SS raised by 2 bucks. I ran across a law regarding SS and Medicare. We may get a 2% increase on our SS, but the Medicare Part B went up 11%. They can get by with this is your SS check is over a certain amount, but if you are at the low end of the scale, there is a law that says your SS check cannot go down due to Medicare increases.
Medicare cost still goes up, but now they have to add in the amount your SS check would be less due to that increase.
But what it means in real life is your SS check actually never goes up that 2 or 3%, but inflation is still going up by that much.
So us seniors keep getting further and further in the hole. And our supplemental insurance has gone up about 10% per year, but it does not affect our SS check, even though we have to pay for that out of our SS check. So in the end, we have less disposable income as before. Yet inflation keeps going up, but not our funds to cover it.

[yogi]

I think there are some common social structures no matter what part of the world you live in. Even in tribal societies there is rank, and power goes with that authority. It seems to be a law of nature where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The only differences are in the cultures where it plays out. Whether your mean income is $10/mo or $1000/wk the numbers are relative. That $10 in China is worth the same as that $1000 in the USA, but that's not what determines the standard of living. That standard is determined by what is available to the consumers. Income is part of the standard which is why China is said to not be at the same standard of living that we are here in the USA. All of that is fairly intuitive and has nothing to do with the quality of life. The quality is basically a socio-political phenomena. The ability to improve one's standard of living is determined by the quality of life, and that is where the big difference is between China and America. Our current system of governance allows for pursuit of the American Dream while much of what people can achieve in China is dictated by The Party. So yes, the superficial appearances might be similar between here and there, but the quality of life and the standard of living is dissimilar.

The inflation you talk about is part of the Standard Of Living calculations. When compared to historical performance we are doing quite well in terms of inflation this century. The fact that inflation exists is actually a good thing because it indicates a healthy economy. In your case it is not contributing to your quality of life, and in fact is a detractor. From its inception Social Security benefits were not intended to be the sole means by which we live. You did an in depth study of the system and I'm certain you discovered that Social Security payments are intended to be a supplement to retirement income. And therein is the catch. You are indeed taking in other income, but even the combination of SSA benefits and other income is not enough to maintain a decent quality of life. None of that is too complicated to understand. The unaddressed question in your comments is what can, or should, be done for people in your situation. The most often cited answer is a government subsidy. However, providing such assistance opens up an whole Pandora's Box full of arguments, most of which are politically based. I've read your warnings about how this country is poised on the brink of socialism but also wonder if you, and others, would have a better quality of life under such a system. It's just a hypothetical question, of course. Neither you or I want a fully socialized government controlling our lives. There may be alternatives. None come to mind right now.

[Kellemora]

This may sound odd, but I have nothing against the rich getting richer, when it does not come on the backs of the poor getting poorer as happens in socialist countries.
Here in America, whether you agree with it or not, everyone has the same basic opportunity to get ahead.
Even when they are down and out so to speak. Those go getters will still rise up again. I know, I've seen it many times.
Even in my current situation, if I still had the desire, I could get another business going, even in my poor health.
But I'm three years into an expected five year lifespan. I assume I will beat the odds and live longer than two more years.
After all, I'm doing everything I can to make sure that happens. But I am going downhill faster than I would like to be going.

Those who do get rich starting from scratch, usually do so by providing jobs for other people, and by expanding their business.
Along the way they create a lot of high paying jobs, some medium paying jobs, and some low paying jobs.
But more than that, they help fuel other industries for the materials they need for their business. Which in turn helps those businesses to grow also.

In many cases, as a business grows, they may buy out or start businesses that produce the materials they need in their main business, and perhaps later on businesses to supply the businesses they already own.

Now the common man cannot live on 3 cents profit per item from a single business.
But if he diversified and had 20 businesses, each generating that 3 cents profit per item, he is doing well.
Some businesses cater to those who are making the big bucks, and in so doing get 50 cents per item as profit.
A business right next door might be one only getting 3 cents profit per item, so has to sell more to just break even.
While the other business is making money had over fist. But this only works if they can continue to draw in the higher paying clientele. When people start thinking, this is crazy to pay 5 bucks for this item when the guy next door has it for 2 bucks.
Then you may either see the downfall of the higher priced company, or he lowers his prices to keep his business.

One thing I do know about those who are rich is they don't waste their money, especially if they are old money.
Old money folks often drive older cars, wear their clothes for years longer, things like that.
Where the upstarts need to show off and buy fancy luxury cars, always wear new clothes, eat at fancy restaurants, etc.
That's great as long as they are making it. But they won't get rich rich by living that way.

A good majority of people live from payday to payday, even though they may earn a decent salary.
For many, but not all, their problem is trying to keep up with the Jones's.
The sad thing is, they set the stage for their own children to fail by giving them everything they want.
Name brand shoes and clothes, Schmartz-Fonz, and often a new car.
This is one of the reasons you don't find kids wanting to do something to earn money anymore.

As far as socialism goes, it only works until they run out of other peoples money!
In that light, in some ways communism is better than socialism, because no one owns anything.
But then the production levels of state owned business is usually low, as is the quality of workmanship.

If government would have kept their mitts off of SS, everyone would have been much better off.

[yogi]

I like your comments about old money. There is a lot of truth to the statement claiming those folks do not flaunt their wealth. I read a very interesting remark about Prince Philip who had to be the epitome of old money. The story goes that he wore the same shoes every day, which were the shoes he wore when he married the Queen. That's 70+ years of shoe wearing by a guy who could wear a brand new pair every day of his life, but didn't.

People from wealthy families have a different mindset than what we call rich people. Bill Gates is rich and a self-made man. But even with all the billions of dollars in his bank accounts, he knows the value of money because he worked hard for every penny of what he has. Prince Phillip, on the other hand, doesn't know what money is. There never was a need for him to find out.

And, just for the record, I consider it a fallacy to lump all rich people into the same category. There is a lot of stereotyping going on and by definition it's false. As in your case I think America is great for being a place that allows and encourages the accumulation of wealth. Not many countries on this planet operate on that principle. The downside is that everybody is deemed equal. You in your old age and unable to live the quality of life that you deserve are considered equal to my buddy Bill Gates. Thus neither one of you are given any special consideration (in theory) by law. To put it another way, if you are not willing and able to pay your own way, tough luck for you. That might be a great theory, but in practice it means some people have to be losers by design. Too bad if you are one of them.

While there is no law nor moral obligation to do so, it seems the wealthy could be doing more than they are to assist the less fortunate. If they are unwilling, then the only recourse is the public treasury. Some people call that socialism. Others see it as compassion.

[Kellemora]

Most of the wealthy do help the less fortunate.
But they normally only help those who need a boost up, not those who are lazy good for nothings like the government supports using our tax dollars.
There's a big difference between being down and out, and being downright lazy.
Plus we have the aged, and infirmed also who really do need help, but never seem to get it.
In our little town of Des Peres, every widow, and senior without means, was well taken care of by the community.
I knew several of them personally too. Everybody watched out for everybody else back then.
Today, most people don't even know their neighbors, or in many cases, even associate with them.
Social services is a far cry from socialism.

[yogi]

I concur that it's difficult to impossible to form a consensus on who in our society should receive unsolicited assistance. You can distinguish people in need from people who are lazy, but you can't get everyone to agree with your perceptions. Therein lies the problem because lawmakers are plagued by the same subjective judgments that us regular citizens are. A person of wealth reaching out to needy people is using their own resources. Not so with public entitlements. The net result is that not everybody who needs it gets the help they deserve. I also think there is a lot of deliberate confusion regarding the term socialism. Government support of it's own is not socialism, but those against the idea label it as such. I'm not here to argue the fine points, but I can say the variance of opinions is why all people are not treated equally.

[Kellemora]

There are many groups that help folks that the government never sees, or even hears about.
But most of the time, someone who is a member of those groups has to let them know of a family who needs assistance.
It's sorta sad the number of families who really and truly need help, but fall though the cracks, because nobody knows anything about them. Nor are they in contact with anybody who might know how to help them in some way.

We had a new mailman on our route last year.
He noticed an old lady he delivered mail to had not picked up her mail in about a week.
I guess he got worried about her and called the police to go check on her.
Apparently they never did, so he took all of her mail up to her back door.
Found her in a chair with empty cereal boxes around her, eating them dry, and she herself was very dehydrated.
While there he called the police again and told them he needed an ambulance at that address also.
The ambulance showed up and took her away to the hospital, the police never showed up before he had to continue on his route.
He locked up her house and put the keys under a statue by the back door.
After he was off work for the day, he found what hospital they took her too and went and checked up on her.
Said she was already looking much better, but he could only see her through the window, not being a relative.
He stopped by the hospital again three days later, and they had moved her somewhere, but would not tell him where.
For over six months after that, there was no activity around her house, but he could tell the electric was cut off.
I don't know if he ever found out anything about her, because he was replaced by another mailman on our route.

[yogi]

That story is sad because it is only one of many such cases. I can't say how many times I've heard or read about older people who live alone and can't care for themselves. If it were confined to the old and feeble it would be easier to understand, but I've also heard of younger families and children dying because they have no means to support themselves. There is no shortage of sad cases. The question I often ponder is what obligation does our society and country have to locate and assist the indigents among us. More perplexing is where do we draw the line. Reading the current news the line seems to be our southern border. I'm not prepared to take a stand on how much we as a country should be helping other nations, but I do know the primary focus should be on our own citizens first, if we are going to reach out at all.

[Kellemora]

One of the churches I belonged to a number of years ago, was organized such that they checked on every member and several non-members every single day. In some cases they would bring food and supplies to those who could not get out. They also managed to get some older folks moved into super low cost seniors facilities, but not state housing which is usually bad.

I have two seemingly opposite thoughts regarding how we help others.
The first is, we should take care of our own first, then take care of others.
The second is, are we all not brothers and sisters regardless of where on the planet we live.

The problem basically lies in, how do you help the needy without including the lazy bums who can work but would rather live on handouts. Then there is helping those who need a step up to get back to work again.
The way our systems work now, it seems only those who fight and complain get the help, when the quiet ones nobody knows about suffers greatly, mainly because it seems nobody cares.

We send billions of dollars overseas to help the poor, but 90% of it ends up in the hands of poly-TICK-ians and the people never see it. So in the end, the money is only wasted, and the people are still starving.

When I served on my two mission trips to east central Africa, we were able to get 24 small farms started, and taught the families how to till, plant, care for, and harvest the crops. How to store some of it and how to sell some of it. The problems they had were neighboring tribes would either come and steal what they could, or just come in and trample down the crops so nobody got anything. So on our second trip over, instead of making the farms behind the huts, we made them right down the middle between the rows of huts, like down main street so to speak. This way the crops were well guarded from all sides. It did make a big difference. Raising their own food, plus what they got from the jungle, and by selling some got them money for more tools, etc. But what they did after we left is anybodies guess. More often than not, once we were gone, they would stop working on the farms and let them go to waste. As other missionaries came, they never found what they expected to find. Tribes always reverted back to their old ways.

In some cases, giving a few of these tribes a taste of modern methods may not have been wise. A few kids may have made it to the larger cities and became cultured, but the rest seemed to only get more lazy, since they knew missionaries would come bringing stuff for them. So helping may have actually hindered them!

[yogi]

Those lazy bums looking for a handout are on the borderline of determinations regarding who gets help or not. It's a nearly impossible situation to resolve fairly because being lazy might not be the result of free will choices. A structured approach would include people who are non-deserving, such as those administrators of the foreign aid we distribute. Thus subjective judgments are about as bad as all encompassing regulations. It's not easy to be fair about it. Also, you bring up a good point about altruism affecting the future life decisions of those being helped. Extending a hand to the unfortunate could result in unexpected outcomes.

It all boils down to a sense of values. Helping others is a humane endeavor, be it a one on one endeavor, a community action, or a global initiative. You are correct to note that we are indeed all part of the same brotherhood, but does that imply a responsibility to look after each other? I'd say there is no intrinsic obligation for one human to help any other, but there is a sense of worthiness one feels as a giver and as a receiver. That sense of self-worth I believe is uniquely human and aside from the instincts to nurture and protect. Thus helping a fellow human just because you can adds value and worth to the lives of both parties. Your missionary work was prompted by a group of like minded people recognizing the need for others to experience the same kind of self-worth that your group experienced. That same kind of group can be scaled to the size of a country wherein millions of like minded people reach out to help millions of destitute people. Lacking a feeling of worthiness, makes it pretty easy to draw the line where generosity stops and greed begins. For most people on this planet it's not that easy. We all think we have value in our being.

[Kellemora]

Even when we do find someone who truly needs help, sometimes they are too proud to accept it. They would rather starve to death than accept a handout.
On the other side of the coin, you have those who want to see how much stuff they can get for free, even stuff they don't really want, but will take anyhow. Probably to try and resell to buy drugs, the illegal kind.

I have no idea what they can do to fix the system!

[yogi]

It's very natural to want to reach out and give a hand to somebody you think would benefit from it. But, I have met a few people who really could use some help but are too proud to ask for it or accept it. The same applies to giving simple advice. I'd have to agree with you and say there is no simple solution to counter every situation. On the other hand we as a country have the resources needed to care for the neediest in our midst. It's ironic that there still are so many needy people in spite of the availability of help.