A story which ended with a moral
charity pays in a long run .
And something about charity pays in a long run
Answers
The accusation is that charity helps the recipient with their problem, but it doesn't do much to deal with the causes of that problem.
Particular aspects of this are dealt with in the next two topics.
It certainly is true that some charities do stopgap or 'band-aid' work, either exclusively or some of the time.
But in fact, a lot of charity work is devoted to dealing with the fundamental causes of problems: for example trying to reduce global poverty, or doing research into diseases like cancer.
These two examples highlight very different problems.
Combating cancer is a relatively simple scientific problem, while global poverty requires more than a scientific operation, or finding a better way to manage world resources.
Combating poverty involves slow processes of political, cultural and social change, with many stakeholders, significant opposition and serious issues of self-determination and coercion to be navigated.
And long-term campaigns pose another ethical problem: should we spend to make a better world in 10 years' time if that means that people who we could have fed starve to death tomorrow?
The famous story of the boy and the starfish shows why using charity to fix individual problems can be very valuable.