Do you want some more?

A few weeks ago I read this interesting article. What I liked about it was not that it just summed up my feelings about giving aid to the third world, but that it was also from a native and it had a solid logic reasoning. How long do we (I'm using "we" in the first world sense) have to keep giving "aid" to the third world with no difference in the long term outcome before we start to question what we are doing? The charitable side of me would like to think that we keep giving aid in the same way because even though we realize that we are only helping some people directly and in the short term it's better then nothing, isn't it? My cynical side suggests that it's because it's easy to give money and wash our hands of the problem having assuaged our guilt. Of course why we feel guilty about it is a whole different debate ....