> All of your post hinges on the premise that you feel responsibility for individual problems should be collectivised, by force presumably, and that I am required to morally feel obliged to help any and all strangers by virtue of being born or living in roughly the same area.

I categorically reject that this is my position and am sorry I wasn't able to explain it better. Let me try further:

I'm not suggesting that you be required to do anything. At all. It is your choice to choose to do nothing.

However as a member of society, of which the only way of really escaping is to escape the proximity and influence of those who comprise 'society' you do have a collectivized stake in the outcome of society. If you for example choose to do nothing about drug addicts, and the rest of society does the same... society is then responsible for what happens as a result of untreated drug addiction. You, as a member of society, have some small part ownership over what happens.

Does that make sense? I'm talking in a very abstract sense, not a direct "here is a kid -> take care of it" sense.