Comment by WalterBright
1 day ago
Ok, let's examine principle. There are many food charities for starving people in foreign countries. If Bob does not donate to those charities, does that make Bob a murderer?
Donating other peoples' money is not virtuous. Donating your own is.
I am donating my own. But that's besides the point: shutting down an existing aid program, especially in the way it was done directly kills people. You can't just handwave that away as 'we are not donating'. You were donating. The donations were done to such a degree that lives depended on them. If you then shut it down without so much as a slow withdrawal to avoid systemic shocks then you are doing this out of cruelty, not because you want to save some money.
> I am donating my own.
Then you are indeed virtuous.
Stick to working on programming languages that nobody uses, Walter. The pseudo-intellectualism on display here is embarrassing.
The 'never meet your heros' thing is so true.
> Stick to working on programming languages that nobody uses
This is why I always find it a bit funny when people start blowing smoke up his ass. He's just some old guy who spouts points at this thread as a perfect example ideological nonsense and when challenged on it digs in harder in the face of evidence to the contrary - just what you'd want to lead a project (/s).
1) What he did was illegal. Those aid programs and the funding they were to receive was written into law by congress - elected by the people - with overwhelming bipartisan support
2) No of course we are not necessarily morally obligated to donate aid in perpetuity. We can decide to stop if we want to. But it was not Musk's or even Trump's decision to make. But since they assumed that mantle of illegitimate authority, they assumed the moral blame that comes with it.
(And yes, every Trump voter also shares significant moral blame for the deaths of all those people. Atrocity was a predictable and likely consequence of a Trump vote in 2024)
its not about virtue and its not even about starving. Its about making a global economy more stable so the world is richer and the US almost always profits from that.
Do you have any evidence that is the result? Perhaps all the aid does little but prop up their criminal governments?
https://ourworldindata.org/us-foreign-aid-saved-millions
Commodities. They power the economy and they're worldwide. Ofc you want the free flow of goods. From the US's perspective who cares who runs what nation, as long as its not hostile and its stable then the commodities can flow from it. Then manufacturers can make whatever they want to create products to generate growth and wealth, the vast majority of which flows into the US and into their stock market.
As it stands the war in Iran is creating problematic issues with many petrochemicals and their derivative products making it harder for countries to generate wealth to invest in the US stock market.