It seems to me that an individual feeding the homeless, given that there is a very large supply of homeless people and the individual does not have unlimited resources, might make the individual feel better, and might make three or four homeless people feel better, but DOES NOTHING TO AMELIORATE THE PROBLEM. On the other hand, passing a program to tax everyone who is reasonable well off and using that money to fund a carefully and responsibly designed and administered program to aatack the problems of homeless people, has a greater than zero chance of ACTUALLY IMPROVING conditions for society as a whole (we all benefit from measurable decreases in the homeless problem). The comparison to the streetlight fails on a number of grounds. I only hope Landsburg's other economic analyses aren't similarly facile.