[pyrophane]

Maybe. I don't think we yet have a good understanding of how many deaths he will have caused as a result of DOGE so abruptly cutting off assistance to so many vulnerable people around the world, but I've heard estimates hover around 600,000.

Assuming that number turns out to be close to reality, how do you weigh so many unnecessary deaths against VTL rockets and the electric cars?

Perhaps a practitioner of Effective Altruism could better answer that question.

[C6JEsQeQa5fCjE]

> I don't think we yet have a good understanding of how many deaths he will have caused as a result of DOGE so abruptly cutting off assistance to so many vulnerable people around the world

Nor how many deaths will be caused by his support for far right parties across Europe, when they start ethnic cleansings.

[roboror]

I've seen corruption in the police. Government. Hospitals. Do you support immediately shuttering those offices with no replacements?

[abustamam]

There is corruption everywhere. But do you deny that these organizations by-and-large provided aid and therefore saves the lives of folks who may have otherwise died from illness?

This doesn't make corruption OK. But he tore out a lifeline for some people without giving them an alternative way to get aid.

[ceejayoz]

> The US taxpayer has no moral obligation to send welfare "around the world".

Sure. It's a transactional purchase of stability and goodwill, via which the US has benefited enormously.

[asadm]

Correct. But also, it's a bandaid (and a really ineffective one ie. 99% lossy) on real issues of that world.

[mptest]

> The US taxpayer has no moral obligation to send welfare "around the world".

I mean, by way of the atrocities we've committed around the world, we kinda do.

Even if we buy your thesis, foregoing morals, geopolitics, and history, it's a useful soft power strategy...

I'm not saying fund USAID before healthcare for all in america. I'm saying of all the insane things our government wastes money on, USAID was far down on the list of most egregious.