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I think that fits better with my argument than yours. The reason money doesn't translate into results in America is because the elites are following terrible ideas. The reason why it didn't translate into result in Afghanistan is because the American elites in charge of it were following terrible ideas.
I thought you brought up Afghanistan's poverty to point out some material limit to what they could to, my point was that with the amount of resources that the US actually pulled there, there were no such material limits.
Nations may just buy into absurd ideas. But a lot of the time the reasons bad ideas keep being implemented has to do with some underlying political reality that's much harder to change than one's mind.
This is clearly true in the US. I would expect it to be worse in Afghanistan because it's a much worse country with a never-ending insurgency (fighting this was what had the unlimited budget, not educating Afghans).
The US may be able to power through bad ideas caused by granting too much power to self-interested group like teacher's unions. Enforcing nationalism via the awful Afghan education system has bigger obstacles and building a fully modern one across the entire country (when part of the problem was control and legitimacy throughout the entire country) has bigger ones.
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