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by estearum 1y ago
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- gottorf 1y ago[flagged]
- estearum 1y ago[flagged]
- 650REDHAIR 1y agoGutting USAID has killed people. There isn’t any other way to look at it.
- estearum 1y ago[flagged]
- gottorf 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y ago> What a ridiculous argument. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- estearum 1y agoHuge portions of the United States do in fact have a very similar relationship with their water companies, because their water companies are given water rights by the relevant state governments. I think if someone decided to save money by shutting off water to Phoenix or Los Angeles, they will have some portion of the relevant blood on their hands. That's especially true if they did so with zero effort toward a smooth transition.
- tastyface 1y agoYou are absolutely wrong. People have died as a direct result of USAID cuts and will continue to die. Here's some reporting on the subject: https://archive.is/YknTv https://archive.is/YknTv There are ethical ways to reduce humanitarian aid. Eliminating it all at once ain't it.
- gottorf 1y agoSorry, I did not make myself clear enough. I'm not disputing that there exist people whose lives depend on USAID. I'm disputing the claim that there is a direct moral culpability on the part of the people who work for the administration that cut USAID funding, or the American electorate that empowered said administration, for those deaths; and that said moral culpability means it's fine when those people are victimized by criminals. > There are ethical ways to reduce humanitarian aid. Eliminating it all at once ain't it. The nature of government-funded programs is that the actual source of the funding, the taxpayer, has very little direct say in it, and the people who are involved have very little incentive to remove it. Politicians love attaching their names to bigger and bigger budget numbers in headlines, and of course the people whose salaries depend on that budget aren't inclined to make it go away. Every now and then the taxpayer gets fed up and elects some boor to make a hatchet job out of it, and intellectuals remark on how heartless it all is. To me, the true ethical blame is on whoever it is that allowed these millions of people to be permanently dependent on aid.
- tastyface 1y agoSorry, but no: the person pulling the trigger does not get to shirk ethical culpability, especially if they're sadistically relishing their hatchet job.
- gottorf 1y agoThere is no trigger being pulled, metaphorically or not. USAID isn't a force of nature that would have continued to flow, as though water going downhill, if only it weren't for those sadistic meddlers at DOGE! It's humanitarian aid funded by the American taxpayer and brought to life by every dedicated worker involved. To choose to stop being a part of this chain of actions is to go from acting on something good to becoming neutral, not becoming evil. What's next, calling someone ethically culpable for quitting their USAID job?