Technique 1 Altruism.

Take money from your pocket (or control) give it to the other. Forget about it.

Problem You can't help many people this way and you hurt your self in the process. Good for friends to melt the ice and improve relation. Not good in general. Good for small scale though.

Technique 2 Authoritarian.

Demand government to help. This is the most dangerous technique there is. Maybe good for small scale. However, government will simply say, "Okay we need to help the poor so I'll raise tax make this rule and that rule." What happen after this is our freedom time and money is controlled more by government. What happen when money is "udah ditangan orang?" Our bargaining position become so low that often what ends up with is like giving money away to that person irrelevant of the original deal is.

By giving more and more power to governments we are just like giving more and more money to government's officials. That way government's official, presidents, legislators, and parliament members, drive better and better cars while the people/us will become poorer. You can check this by going to a political parties office and see what kind of cars being parked there. Ever wonder why they worked so hard getting our votes? History shows that the more governments in a country regulate the economy, the poorer the country will be. The danger doesn't stop there.

When legislators see that poverty motivate people  to give them more power, they let poverty strikes harder. Ever wonder why we are not taught micro economic and business in school? Why technique essential to business like sales are prohibited in school? Why commercial purpose is associated with evil? Government rather than the market create the curriculum and therefore arrange that poverty mindset is what is being taught.

Poverty make people demand governments to bail them out, and give them more power to the governments' official, that will happily use the power to create more poverty. That will then make a vicious cycle, which can be broken by being rich capitalistically.

This is not just a problem in Indonesia. Being in US, I saw they have a very similar issues too. Corruption, nepotism, and collusion are big problems but those are still not our biggest. They are just symptoms, top of the iceberg, of a much bigger dangerous problems, the big size of government.

Government's official are not very motivated to make people rich. Rich and happy people are harder to control and enslave. I bet all those terrorist and suicide bombers have low income relative to people that keep seeing doctors for check up. When live sucks, people will be willing to sacrifice it for "greater cause" which can easily be weaved by politicians for their bidding.

Technique 3 Capitalism.

This is the most effective way to help others. As Mr. Kiat says, "Sambil menyelam, ngerokok." There is no limit on how many people in the world you can help through capitalism. How many people Bill Gates help? Many people says Bill Gates are selfish, greedy, evil. I bet those shrews have not donate anything near $1billion to the poor or contribute $100 billion to economy as a whole. It's people like Bill that make the world a better place. If you care about others, be like Bill.

Of course, politician do not like this because individual freedom and capitalism will undermine demand for more government power. For legislators, less demand for government mean less government and that means less bribe, and salary for parliament members. Which is why this 3rd and far superior technique is under advertised and is often demonized  under much higher morality standard claiming that greed and selfishness as sin. No where in the bible I've read that greed is sin, but that's what's often advertised to us. Now I see why Lao Tze says, "The higher the moral standard, the lower the result."

Under capitalism, according to Micro Economic class whose calculation I have examined, under a certain basic assumptions that is often fulfilled, "When every one maximize their own profit, productivity as a whole will be maximized." Resources allocation, will automatically arrange itself to what maximize productivity as a whole. Lao Tze once says, "Few rules and people will get richer by themselves." People are naturally good. As long as they are just following their nature, with a few fine tuning will live in harmony. A harmony that rulers often want to destroy.

So, when you try to help others, please do it in a way that maximize your wealth too. You'll help more people that way. As long as you do not hurt other's meritocratically assigned right, the more you try to get richer and richer, the more you'll realize that what you do is the most benevolence thing you can do to everyone as a whole. So never let anyone, including yourself,  make you feel guilty because you're rich :D Trying to get as rich as possible, done through productive means,  is the most benevolence thing anyone can do in this world.