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I’m all for reducing our military spending but wouldn’t support giving it to the UN. Why would the UN be better at spending it than congress?

csee 5y ago
That's my position. I don't want to give the UN money (look how dysfunctional and corrupt the WHO is), but I do want military spending to go down. Why make it more politically difficult than it needs to be. What's the benefit of coupling reductions in military spending with giving more money to the UN... These are totally unrelated things and coupling them needlessly achieves nothing.
- yhoneycomb 5y ago
  In what way is the WHO “dysfunctional and corrupt”? Everyone I know with ideas like that seems to have a very questionable world view.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-health-organization-employees-took-part-congo-sex-abuse-during-n1280315 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-health-organization... Child sex abuse, for starters
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      That's like throwing away Congress because Matt Gaetz exists. There may or may not be good reasons to abolish Congress, but Matt Gaetz alone ain't it.
      - csee 5y ago
        Matt Gaetz is a single person. The linked article shows that this was an institutional problem at the WHO involving corrupt management. So the analogy is flawed. Also the sex abuse isn't the only thing wrong with the WHO.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- golemotron 5y ago
  Yes. If they are to be decoupled, I'd rather give the peace dividend to Elon Musk.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > look how dysfunctional and corrupt the WHO is [citation needed] - but like, an actual one. I know this is a popular conspiracy theory at the moment.
  - csee 5y ago
    One was provided already by another poster. I don't even need to give more because that should be sufficient. But if you want to dig further, you should look at the timeline of the WHO's actions and see how slow they were to recommend masks, recommend border closures, and declare a pandemic, then ask yourself if they helped or hurt our efforts to contain COVID throughout 2020. No citation is needed for that, it's all in the public domain - their press conferences and their Twitter.
    - valtism 5y ago
      I don't think any of what you are saying here amounts to any sort of corruption.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - csee 5y ago
        Read the article. The management of WHO covered up sexual abuse, up until an investigative journalist blew it open. Yes, they are a deeply corrupt organization.
        arcticbull 5y ago
        That's not corruption as it pertains to their objectives though. That's a crime, one that should be punished, obviously. It doesn't have anything to do with the primary objectives of the WHO, especially not as it pertains to for instance COVID. Corruption would be, hypothetically, taking payoffs or bribes to avoid doing their jobs. You have not, and nor has anyone else here, offered evidence of corruption.
robbedpeter 5y ago
It's hard to justify any of the un budget. All of its committees and bureaucracies seem compromised, if not outright corrupt. I'll keep my money at home, where there's at least a minimal chance of accountability.
- XorNot 5y ago
  The UN exists because the alternative is a series of international crises caused by people having literally no idea how to talk to their counterparts. Let it not be forgotten that some of the finest wires of the Cold War came down to the delays in international diplomatic communications between Washington DC and Moscow due to the need to relay messages via embassies. People have gotten so used to an international power structure with high speed communications and well defined diplomatic channels that they mistake the purpose of these organizations for their effectiveness. The alternative is a lot worse.
  - worldsayshi 5y ago
    Yeah and this might be too obvious to spell out but can we really expect the UN to be efficient when its purpose is to coordinate organisations that themselves are neither efficient nor willing to cooperate much of the time. Isn't the only way to make UN more efficient to make nation states more efficient?
  - InTheArena 5y ago
    The above is not true. It was not speaking to each other that caused world war 2. It was Mr. Chamberlain talking to Mr. Hitler and believing him that caused the problem. It was also the League of Nations failing to live up to it's principles when Japan invaded Manchuria. The UN was a dream to try and resolve things in a multi-laterial world, and sometimes early on was effective (See Korea). after the debacle of the Korean War (Moscow boycotting rather then using their veto), the progress in the cold war was almost always bilateral. (not always though). In it's current form, it's useful - but I think the WTO / World Bank and the Red Hotlines have been far more useful.
    - 5y ago
D-Coder 5y ago
Being worse at spending military dollars could be a good thing.

csee 5y ago

That's my position. I don't want to give the UN money (look how dysfunctional and corrupt the WHO is), but I do want military spending to go down. Why make it more politically difficult than it needs to be. What's the benefit of coupling reductions in military spending with giving more money to the UN... These are totally unrelated things and coupling them needlessly achieves nothing.

yhoneycomb 5y ago
In what way is the WHO “dysfunctional and corrupt”? Everyone I know with ideas like that seems to have a very questionable world view.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-health-organization-employees-took-part-congo-sex-abuse-during-n1280315 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/world-health-organization... Child sex abuse, for starters
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    That's like throwing away Congress because Matt Gaetz exists. There may or may not be good reasons to abolish Congress, but Matt Gaetz alone ain't it.
    - csee 5y ago
      Matt Gaetz is a single person. The linked article shows that this was an institutional problem at the WHO involving corrupt management. So the analogy is flawed. Also the sex abuse isn't the only thing wrong with the WHO.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
golemotron 5y ago
Yes. If they are to be decoupled, I'd rather give the peace dividend to Elon Musk.
arcticbull 5y ago
> look how dysfunctional and corrupt the WHO is [citation needed] - but like, an actual one. I know this is a popular conspiracy theory at the moment.
- csee 5y ago
  One was provided already by another poster. I don't even need to give more because that should be sufficient. But if you want to dig further, you should look at the timeline of the WHO's actions and see how slow they were to recommend masks, recommend border closures, and declare a pandemic, then ask yourself if they helped or hurt our efforts to contain COVID throughout 2020. No citation is needed for that, it's all in the public domain - their press conferences and their Twitter.
  - valtism 5y ago
    I don't think any of what you are saying here amounts to any sort of corruption.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - csee 5y ago
      Read the article. The management of WHO covered up sexual abuse, up until an investigative journalist blew it open. Yes, they are a deeply corrupt organization.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        That's not corruption as it pertains to their objectives though. That's a crime, one that should be punished, obviously. It doesn't have anything to do with the primary objectives of the WHO, especially not as it pertains to for instance COVID. Corruption would be, hypothetically, taking payoffs or bribes to avoid doing their jobs. You have not, and nor has anyone else here, offered evidence of corruption.

robbedpeter 5y ago

It's hard to justify any of the un budget. All of its committees and bureaucracies seem compromised, if not outright corrupt. I'll keep my money at home, where there's at least a minimal chance of accountability.

XorNot 5y ago
The UN exists because the alternative is a series of international crises caused by people having literally no idea how to talk to their counterparts. Let it not be forgotten that some of the finest wires of the Cold War came down to the delays in international diplomatic communications between Washington DC and Moscow due to the need to relay messages via embassies. People have gotten so used to an international power structure with high speed communications and well defined diplomatic channels that they mistake the purpose of these organizations for their effectiveness. The alternative is a lot worse.
- worldsayshi 5y ago
  Yeah and this might be too obvious to spell out but can we really expect the UN to be efficient when its purpose is to coordinate organisations that themselves are neither efficient nor willing to cooperate much of the time. Isn't the only way to make UN more efficient to make nation states more efficient?
- InTheArena 5y ago
  The above is not true. It was not speaking to each other that caused world war 2. It was Mr. Chamberlain talking to Mr. Hitler and believing him that caused the problem. It was also the League of Nations failing to live up to it's principles when Japan invaded Manchuria. The UN was a dream to try and resolve things in a multi-laterial world, and sometimes early on was effective (See Korea). after the debacle of the Korean War (Moscow boycotting rather then using their veto), the progress in the cold war was almost always bilateral. (not always though). In it's current form, it's useful - but I think the WTO / World Bank and the Red Hotlines have been far more useful.
  - 5y ago

D-Coder 5y ago

Being worse at spending military dollars could be a good thing.