Personal experience story time that prompted this question:

I was telling my co worker about a time I was on pub street in Cambodia. It was like 1am and a lady kept picking my shoulder asking me for money to buy baby formula. She was holding a baby who was sound asleep, which was off putting for me as ww were standing in the middle of a long strip of bars, blasting music from every direction.

I told her "no, im sorry." Which was morally hard for me. I shared that experience with a guy who worked at my hostel and he got a bit sad and said

"Awe, fuck man. Those are the saddest encounters for me. Those babies are rented by the tuktuk mafia and theyre usually either dead or really high on heroin."

Another begging experience i had:

I was out for lunch in Sieam Reap, laughing and having the best time with some travel friends. I suddenly heard chanting and clapping from behind me. I turned around to see a little girl standing in front of an old man, while they were at a table behind me. I noticed the little girl was repeating a motion of clapping and supplication; Meanwhile the old man was chanting something really loudly over and over again with outstretching cupped hands. The moment I looked at the old man, I noticed both his eyes had been gouged out. Only sockets. Thats an image that will always remain vivid in my mind. My energy shifted from happy and laughy, to just downright heartache.

Out of everywhere in Asia, Cambodia was probably the worst for heartbreaking exposure to begging.

After sharing these encounters with my co worker we started talking and asked ourself the following question:

If tourism wasnt a thing down there, would all the child torture for begging purposes exist? Say travelers from all over the world were fully exposed to this sort of thing and attained no empathy for it, would kids still be amputated, sold or mutilated for money? If not, what would the hustle revolve around?