CaptainAhab

I will try to move from the specific, to the general:

Specific: 

Shoes: The problem is, as my friend explained to three things:

1.  That shoes/bicylces/engines/etc. is not a consistently donated good across time. Interest waxes and wanes. That means an unsteady supply of "free goods". 
2. It also doesn't allow the country to progress in up-skilling manufacturing, as many Asian countries have done. I forget the model name, but the one where they move from raw materials, to manufacturing, to low-level electronics, etc. - its hard to simply move from rural farmer to semiconductor engineering - for various reasons ranging from income to sustain education, etc. 
3. It destroys what capacity already existed. If people and businesses invest in

I'm more interested in what I initially perceived your title as suggesting...

What if, by continually helping children in ponds, you in the long-run incentivize people leaving children in your ponds? This sounds obscure at analogy-level,  but consider...

Donating shoes/bicycles/etc. to developing nations is a bad idea, because it disrupts and destroys the local economy shoe-production. There simply isn't enough regional demand, factoring in the large donations, to develop the proper economics of scale. I have no literature on this, but a well-thought out philantropist friend has noted this concept to me many times. 

On a macro-scale, i have an even "meaner" comment... I am personally in favor of moderate immigration, but consider: If immigration... (read more)