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While often disparaged these days, the US has long been one of the most charitable countries in the world both in terms of private citizen contributions and pub

While often disparaged these days, the US has long been one of the most charitable countries in the world both in terms of private citizen contributions and public government aid. Glad to see some of the good deeds finally being recognized!

gumby 9y ago
I agree but (per my other comment on this topic) don't forget that the US had been invading Russia from the revolution to shortly before this famine.
- Fins 9y ago
  Had the allies really been invading Russia, the world would have been a much better place. Unfortunately, their role was very limited.
  - BenSahar 9y ago
    It would have depended on which part(s) of the White Movement would have been included in the new government. There were a lot of leaders in the movement that had no problem with autocracy as long as it was their autocracy.
    - Fins 9y ago
      It is quite unlikely that any part of the Whites would have engaged in mass slaughter of its own citizenry at quite the same scale as communists.
      - boomboomsubban 9y ago
        That's a pretty tough sell. The White terror was pretty terrible during the war, supposedly killing more people than the counterpart Red terror. And given the antisemitic nature of that killing, there are some incredibly grim possibilities for what the following years would have looked like.
        Fins 9y ago
        That looks like it came straight out of a Soviet textbook... Even assuming high-end range for White Terror and low-end range for the Red one, it is not a given that whatever White faction might have theoretically won would continue to engage in persecution. For bolsheviks it is a given fact. By the 1920s they were happily gassing peasants. And by the mid-40s USSR was quite antisemitic anyway, so I find it rather doubtful that a victory by any other party would have been worse than bolsheviks.
        boomboomsubban 9y ago
        >That looks like it came straight out of a Soviet textbook... You really think a Soviet textbook mentioned the Red Terror? >Even assuming high-end range for White Terror and low-end range for the Red one, it is not a given that whatever White faction might have theoretically won would continue to engage in persecution. For bolsheviks it is a given fact. By the 1920s they were happily gassing peasants. Yes, there are hypotheticals that play out better than actual events. There are also many that play out similarly or worse. Given the main warlords controlling the White forces, winning the war probably starts with a massive purge, fairly common in those situations. Those warlords would also have more in common with Facist Italy and Nazi Germany, leading to a potentially terrifying thirties. Russian history is filled with tyrannical cruelty, before and after the Soviet era too. That wasn't likely to end with a civil war.
        Fins 9y ago
        I had to study Soviet textbooks. They definitly did mention it. Of course as a completely necessary response to those naughty Whites, and they completely glossed over concentration camps, mass executions etc. etc., but they did mention Red Terror. Main warlords were generally tsarist generals who may or may not have went to the Provisional Government side, but at least they were generally somewhat educated and somewhat reasonable people. Which, of course, never stopped anyone from committing all kinds of atrocities, but at least one could expect that they would not, after the war was over, engage in mass slaughter for no logical reason whatsoever, which is what bolsheviks did.
        9y ago
pm90 9y ago
The US has always been disparaged for policy missteps that have resulted in much destruction around the world. The only reason it seems more evident now is probably due to easy access to information through the internet and the ability to share "disparaging" viewpoints more widely.
- dmix 9y ago
  Not to mention how much war, conflict, and death it prevents due to power projection.
refurb 9y ago
Knowing just how much anti-Americanism exists on HN, I'm not sure why I assumed this wouldn't be downvoted.
- dandare 9y ago
  There surely is some irrational anti-americanism but don't confuse regular criticism with anti-americanism.
- adventured 9y ago
  Well consider the extreme history absurdism going on here, that is being upvoted. A very small contingent of US soldiers is involved in an allied invasion of Russia. Mostly those US soldiers do nothing, two hundred die (half from disease), they go home a very short time later having done almost nothing at all in terms of conflict. Then in this thread, that is being blamed for the forced Communist famine deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainians. It's the ultimate combination of Communism apologism (apologizing for the mass genocide and slaughter of millions of people under Lenin's policies), and blame America for everything'ism. And all of that is happening in the thread for an article that is about how Americans altruistically contributed historically vast quantities of food to keep millions of other people from starving to death.
  - zipwitch 9y ago
    I suspect what you are seeing is a reaction, or over-reaction, to how Americans have long censored our own history. Once you figure out the official (accepted, schoolbook, popular) depiction of history edits out the nastiest bits in favor cheerleading, the presumption that anything "left out" should be taken in the worst possible light comes naturally. This is especially true when the information in question ("The US invaded Russia? And we just dont mention it?!) seems so potentially loaded and relevant to current world events.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - 9y ago
lostlogin 9y ago
A lot is sent, but per head and as percentage of GDP it isn't high. As a country, it is the largest government sector donor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
- adventured 9y ago
  That only shows government aid. The US is famous for its vast private charity. Just Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg together will give away over 3x more than all the OECD countries on that list combined (on an annual basis). Or roughly equivalent to what Japan - the world's third largest economy - will do every ~35 years total. Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg, Bezos = plausibly $450 billion in combined charity over time (assuming Bezos spends ~$20 billion on space). France at the government level does $9 billion per year by comparison; it'll take France 40-50 years to match just those four private US citizens. No other nation in world history has seen its richest citizens routinely give the bulk of their wealth away (from Carnegie & Rockefeller, to Howard Hughes, to Gates & Buffett). The scale of private US charity is unprecedented and amounts to trillions of dollars over a century of time. Contrast that with eg Germany, where 65% of their billionaires inherited their wealth, or Europe broadly where dynastic wealth is extremely common: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/10/10/where-the-super-rich-inherit-their-wealth-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/10/10/where-... Meanwhile in the US, over a hundred billionaires sign on to the Giving Pledge: https://givingpledge.org/ https://givingpledge.org/
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    The parent said that the US government was one of the most charitable too and I was disputing that. There are some extremously generous private donors.
    - plandis 9y ago
      Probably a lost in translation sort of thing but as an American I took that to include me, an individual, as I am a citizen of that country.

gumby 9y ago

I agree but (per my other comment on this topic) don't forget that the US had been invading Russia from the revolution to shortly before this famine.

Fins 9y ago
Had the allies really been invading Russia, the world would have been a much better place. Unfortunately, their role was very limited.
- BenSahar 9y ago
  It would have depended on which part(s) of the White Movement would have been included in the new government. There were a lot of leaders in the movement that had no problem with autocracy as long as it was their autocracy.
  - Fins 9y ago
    It is quite unlikely that any part of the Whites would have engaged in mass slaughter of its own citizenry at quite the same scale as communists.
    - boomboomsubban 9y ago
      That's a pretty tough sell. The White terror was pretty terrible during the war, supposedly killing more people than the counterpart Red terror. And given the antisemitic nature of that killing, there are some incredibly grim possibilities for what the following years would have looked like.
      - Fins 9y ago
        That looks like it came straight out of a Soviet textbook... Even assuming high-end range for White Terror and low-end range for the Red one, it is not a given that whatever White faction might have theoretically won would continue to engage in persecution. For bolsheviks it is a given fact. By the 1920s they were happily gassing peasants. And by the mid-40s USSR was quite antisemitic anyway, so I find it rather doubtful that a victory by any other party would have been worse than bolsheviks.
        boomboomsubban 9y ago
        >That looks like it came straight out of a Soviet textbook... You really think a Soviet textbook mentioned the Red Terror? >Even assuming high-end range for White Terror and low-end range for the Red one, it is not a given that whatever White faction might have theoretically won would continue to engage in persecution. For bolsheviks it is a given fact. By the 1920s they were happily gassing peasants. Yes, there are hypotheticals that play out better than actual events. There are also many that play out similarly or worse. Given the main warlords controlling the White forces, winning the war probably starts with a massive purge, fairly common in those situations. Those warlords would also have more in common with Facist Italy and Nazi Germany, leading to a potentially terrifying thirties. Russian history is filled with tyrannical cruelty, before and after the Soviet era too. That wasn't likely to end with a civil war.
        Fins 9y ago
        I had to study Soviet textbooks. They definitly did mention it. Of course as a completely necessary response to those naughty Whites, and they completely glossed over concentration camps, mass executions etc. etc., but they did mention Red Terror. Main warlords were generally tsarist generals who may or may not have went to the Provisional Government side, but at least they were generally somewhat educated and somewhat reasonable people. Which, of course, never stopped anyone from committing all kinds of atrocities, but at least one could expect that they would not, after the war was over, engage in mass slaughter for no logical reason whatsoever, which is what bolsheviks did.
      - 9y ago

pm90 9y ago

The US has always been disparaged for policy missteps that have resulted in much destruction around the world. The only reason it seems more evident now is probably due to easy access to information through the internet and the ability to share "disparaging" viewpoints more widely.

dmix 9y ago
Not to mention how much war, conflict, and death it prevents due to power projection.

refurb 9y ago

Knowing just how much anti-Americanism exists on HN, I'm not sure why I assumed this wouldn't be downvoted.

dandare 9y ago
There surely is some irrational anti-americanism but don't confuse regular criticism with anti-americanism.
adventured 9y ago
Well consider the extreme history absurdism going on here, that is being upvoted. A very small contingent of US soldiers is involved in an allied invasion of Russia. Mostly those US soldiers do nothing, two hundred die (half from disease), they go home a very short time later having done almost nothing at all in terms of conflict. Then in this thread, that is being blamed for the forced Communist famine deaths of millions of Russians and Ukrainians. It's the ultimate combination of Communism apologism (apologizing for the mass genocide and slaughter of millions of people under Lenin's policies), and blame America for everything'ism. And all of that is happening in the thread for an article that is about how Americans altruistically contributed historically vast quantities of food to keep millions of other people from starving to death.
- zipwitch 9y ago
  I suspect what you are seeing is a reaction, or over-reaction, to how Americans have long censored our own history. Once you figure out the official (accepted, schoolbook, popular) depiction of history edits out the nastiest bits in favor cheerleading, the presumption that anything "left out" should be taken in the worst possible light comes naturally. This is especially true when the information in question ("The US invaded Russia? And we just dont mention it?!) seems so potentially loaded and relevant to current world events.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- 9y ago

lostlogin 9y ago

A lot is sent, but per head and as percentage of GDP it isn't high. As a country, it is the largest government sector donor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...

adventured 9y ago
That only shows government aid. The US is famous for its vast private charity. Just Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg together will give away over 3x more than all the OECD countries on that list combined (on an annual basis). Or roughly equivalent to what Japan - the world's third largest economy - will do every ~35 years total. Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg, Bezos = plausibly $450 billion in combined charity over time (assuming Bezos spends ~$20 billion on space). France at the government level does $9 billion per year by comparison; it'll take France 40-50 years to match just those four private US citizens. No other nation in world history has seen its richest citizens routinely give the bulk of their wealth away (from Carnegie & Rockefeller, to Howard Hughes, to Gates & Buffett). The scale of private US charity is unprecedented and amounts to trillions of dollars over a century of time. Contrast that with eg Germany, where 65% of their billionaires inherited their wealth, or Europe broadly where dynastic wealth is extremely common: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/10/10/where-the-super-rich-inherit-their-wealth-infographic/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/10/10/where-... Meanwhile in the US, over a hundred billionaires sign on to the Giving Pledge: https://givingpledge.org/ https://givingpledge.org/
- lostlogin 9y ago
  The parent said that the US government was one of the most charitable too and I was disputing that. There are some extremously generous private donors.
  - plandis 9y ago
    Probably a lost in translation sort of thing but as an American I took that to include me, an individual, as I am a citizen of that country.