5 ms·

Most of the USAID spending that was cut should be funded by charity contributions. I'm just not a fan of foreign spending using taxpayer funding at all. There

Most of the USAID spending that was cut should be funded by charity contributions. I'm just not a fan of foreign spending using taxpayer funding at all. There's plenty of room for charity in the world, and less bureaucracy in the middle.

foxyv 1y ago
My therapist had a saying I like to repeat. "Shoulds" are a lie we tell ourselves. There really should be enough private charities to keep every man woman and child fed and healthy. There are not. I imagine that this is in large part due to the greed of small men and women who own 90% or more of our economy.
danudey 1y ago
The US government used USAID to buy soft power around the world to spread influence; private charity contributions don't do that, and doing things on a larger scale and at a higher level leads to economies of scale that small-scale charity contributions can't ever reach.
- Mars008 1y ago
  [flagged]
1659447091 1y ago
> I'm just not a fan of foreign spending using taxpayer funding at all. If only things were that simple. The US spent billions of dollars for food from US Farmers. Ask them about their lost billions for sorghum, corn, beans, soybeans, rice, vegetable oil and other crops that they could sell to the US government in bulk. Not just the farmers, but also the small town USA communities that benefit from the farms. Or the US AID funded innovation labs that "was providing market access to U.S. farmers [...] not just in trade negotiations but also in indirect ways by creating a populace that is not starving so they have extra income to buy poultry, for example, which in turn expands the global market for soybean-based feeds.”[0] Here is a site[1] that attempts to piece together a "reconstruction of USAID's agricultural connections across America" "following the removal of the official USAID website, which contained comprehensive data on agricultural partnerships" from archived reports and other public sources. [0] https://www.agweb.com/news/policy/politics/usaid-dismantling-what-it-means-farmers-and-ag-research https://www.agweb.com/news/policy/politics/usaid-dismantling... [1] https://www.usaidstopwork.com/agricultural-impact https://www.usaidstopwork.com/agricultural-impact
os2warpman 1y ago
USAID was charity in name only. It is, or was, more of a marketing and not-quite-coercion-but-something-softer-and-gentler-than-that body. And it was a pathetically small attempt at it, too. Bureaucracy is irrelevant. What matters is bribes. China and Russia are bribing the shit out of everyone and everything. USAID was practically our only way to do that quasi-morally and almost certainly on the order of their masters the administration destroyed it. All to save a rounding error’s worth of annual spending we fucked ourselves and its absence will only benefit our adversaries. Edit: it could just be stupidity and not conspiracy. These are the same people who think vaccines cause autism and don’t understand how space research leads to cordless power tools, a hippie studying lizard spit in the 70s leads to GLP-1 drugs, and nuclear warheads lead to microprocessors. The simple clay of the new America. You know, morons.
smarm52 1y ago
The primary purpose of Foreign Aid isn't about charity. McGillivray, F., & Smith, A. (2008). Punishing the prince: a theory of interstate relations, political institutions, and leader change. Princeton University Press. It's about influencing governments. It's a really nice way to "bribe" foreign officials for things that a government wants.

foxyv 1y ago

My therapist had a saying I like to repeat. "Shoulds" are a lie we tell ourselves. There really should be enough private charities to keep every man woman and child fed and healthy. There are not. I imagine that this is in large part due to the greed of small men and women who own 90% or more of our economy.

danudey 1y ago

The US government used USAID to buy soft power around the world to spread influence; private charity contributions don't do that, and doing things on a larger scale and at a higher level leads to economies of scale that small-scale charity contributions can't ever reach.

Mars008 1y ago
[flagged]

1659447091 1y ago

> I'm just not a fan of foreign spending using taxpayer funding at all. If only things were that simple. The US spent billions of dollars for food from US Farmers. Ask them about their lost billions for sorghum, corn, beans, soybeans, rice, vegetable oil and other crops that they could sell to the US government in bulk. Not just the farmers, but also the small town USA communities that benefit from the farms. Or the US AID funded innovation labs that "was providing market access to U.S. farmers [...] not just in trade negotiations but also in indirect ways by creating a populace that is not starving so they have extra income to buy poultry, for example, which in turn expands the global market for soybean-based feeds.”[0] Here is a site[1] that attempts to piece together a "reconstruction of USAID's agricultural connections across America" "following the removal of the official USAID website, which contained comprehensive data on agricultural partnerships" from archived reports and other public sources. [0] https://www.agweb.com/news/policy/politics/usaid-dismantling-what-it-means-farmers-and-ag-research https://www.agweb.com/news/policy/politics/usaid-dismantling... [1] https://www.usaidstopwork.com/agricultural-impact https://www.usaidstopwork.com/agricultural-impact

os2warpman 1y ago

USAID was charity in name only. It is, or was, more of a marketing and not-quite-coercion-but-something-softer-and-gentler-than-that body. And it was a pathetically small attempt at it, too. Bureaucracy is irrelevant. What matters is bribes. China and Russia are bribing the shit out of everyone and everything. USAID was practically our only way to do that quasi-morally and almost certainly on the order of their masters the administration destroyed it. All to save a rounding error’s worth of annual spending we fucked ourselves and its absence will only benefit our adversaries. Edit: it could just be stupidity and not conspiracy. These are the same people who think vaccines cause autism and don’t understand how space research leads to cordless power tools, a hippie studying lizard spit in the 70s leads to GLP-1 drugs, and nuclear warheads lead to microprocessors. The simple clay of the new America. You know, morons.

smarm52 1y ago

The primary purpose of Foreign Aid isn't about charity. McGillivray, F., & Smith, A. (2008). Punishing the prince: a theory of interstate relations, political institutions, and leader change. Princeton University Press. It's about influencing governments. It's a really nice way to "bribe" foreign officials for things that a government wants.