The steelman argument is that it was the sudden process that people object to. But the steelman against that is that slow processes are used adversarially to pr

The steelman argument is that it was the sudden process that people object to. But the steelman against that is that slow processes are used adversarially to prevent action from being taken. In the end, the only people who seem to get outcomes are the ones who rush things. Everyone talked about getting out of Afghanistan and only President Biden did it. The objections were predictably ones against haste. But we’d been in there for a decade past the time we wanted to get out. In this event, considering that most of this aid has not been replaced since by other participants one can only conclude that it would have taken at least this long in a slow rollout. Even an emergency of unbelievable proportions did not incentivize other nations to act. It’s unlikely they would have acted when faced with what looks like yet another austerity project that is going to be inevitably rolled back. In such a universe, if USAID was going, it was only going to go fast. If it wasn’t going to go fast, it was staying. And it’s generally true that people subscribe to the famous Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics. Once we started providing AIDS treatment we were responsible, in their eyes, forever. Given that, I think future charitable efforts should be evaluated in terms of such 50 year costs or so on. To save all the lives that US funding on PEPFAR saved we had to forgo an amount that would domestically have given us CA HSR. I think if you ask most Californians they’d rather have CA HSR than any charity program directed outside so in some respect we are just treating these people as our sin eaters.