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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33245 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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I never understand this argument - the "if it was really so important then surely someone else would already be dealing with it" thing. "Someone has to do it, and it happens to be the United States that has, as a matter of fact, taken up the slack" is a perfectly logical proposition. This is like saying "why are you jumping into the water to save that kid? if he was really drowning, someone else would have already jumped in". It's meaningless.

By all means, you can say "even if it is important, the US shouldn't be bearing the cost, someone else e.g. the EU should take care of it". That's very different. And I'm not even making a positive claim as to whether it is as a matter of fact important (though I'm concerned about the kind of global Bystander Effect this kind of bucket-passing might lead to). But I just don't see how 'nobody else is stepping up to do the hard thing that someone is already doing' supposedly proves that the hard thing isn't worth doing and the second guy is a chump for bothering.

The problem is that because we’re stepping in all the time, first of all, it’s just expected that every global problem is our responsibility to fix. And it isn’t sustainable to keep doing this. We have finite resources, limited by not only how much we can produce, but how much our own people need.

Secondly, it’s actively working against getting countries to clean up their own messes. Why would Africans demand their government give them better education or health care when Americans show up and do it for them? For that matter, why would Ghanaian government officials bother to not steal education money when we’ve already given them money to build schools and buy books? Why spend money you could put in a Swiss bank account to buy TB drugs when Uncle Joe Biden will just give them to you for the asking?

It doesn’t even give us good will. The programs don’t seem to make other countries respect us or even like us. They see us mostly as the stupid people who give them stuff no strings attached. We’re suckers. Iraq hates us, but despite that, and despite the fact that they don’t like us, don’t like democratic values, we’re going to fund them.

All this is sensible. I'm not trying to debate its merits as a coherent position.

I was specifically complaining about FistfullofCrows' pithy "if it was so important to have these millions for the poor people dying of TB then maybe soros or the whole of the EU can pitch in a few millions to go cure people", which I think is a bad and kind of baffling way to frame the question. It's really the "if it was", as opposed to "if it is", that sticks out to me. It seemed to be saying "we can prove, right now, that all this foreign aid isn't actually important, because the EU & Soros aren't taking up the slack". Which is bonkers and not the point. It can be genuinely important and still not a reasonable burden for the US to shoulder indefinitely, for all the reasons you cite. Or indeed the EU's or Soros's. People's unwillingness to do a hard and costly thing might be circumstantial evidence that it is indeed intractably hard and costly (duh) but it's just not some kind of gotcha that proves that the hard thing was never important. At the end of the day humanity can just collectively and intractably fail at doing an objectively important thing, because it's too hard and coordination problems are a bitch. That's life.

I don’t think you’ve fully understood the objection. It’s not “somebody else would already be dealing with it.” It’s “Somebody else should now start dealing with it.”

A man jumped into a pond to save a drowning child. Halfway to shore, he stopped swimming and let the child go. From the shore, no one knows why—maybe he cramped up, maybe he decided he hated the kid, maybe there was some other reason—all the bystanders know is that he’s not going to keep helping the kid to safety. From that point on, it’s quite reasonable to ask why none of bystanders will jump in to take the man’s place instead of just standing around hurling abuse at him. If the kid’s safety is their true concern, they should do something to prove it. Otherwise their criticisms of the man ring hollow.

I see what you're going for - but this seems to start from the premise that it's the other countries slash charitable billionaires who are positioning themselves as moral arbiters and saying the US should keep doing what it's doing. This seems… wrong? It's mostly American liberals and centrists writing the think-pieces, angry tweets, open letters, and so on. So within the drowning-child scenario I am picturing all of this as an internal debate within the swimmer's warring conscience.

And anyway, the important question is surely whether it is as a matter of fact important to save the child; not whether the outside observers who may or may not wail about it are cowards. As a hypothetical, "The bystanders are, to a one, a bunch of sanctimonious dicks who won't, actually, take over if the swimmer stops in his efforts to save the child" is many things, but it's not exactly a moving reason for the swimmer to stop what he's doing.

not whether the outside observers who may or may not wail about it are cowards

You misunderstand.

That wailing is not genuine; it is merely an exercise of power to force you to serve their moral ends.

Whether their moral ends are objectively correct in this case is not relevant (stopped clocks right twice a day, and all that)- the rescuer is perfectly justified in refusing their request on those grounds. And yes, that means it is the bystanders wagering the kid's life, if that bluff is called he dies, and that's the way it is; shame on the bystanders for using a drowning kid as such a bluff.

"Won't someone please think of the children?" is never about the children and never has been: it's about the power.

the rescuer is perfectly justified in refusing their request on those grounds

Well yes, but this is my sticking point: since when is it the outsiders' request at all? The people complaining about USAID are not foreigners in a position to step up to replace it, even if they wanted to. They're American liberals. That's where the wailing is coming from. (Whether because they sincerely think it's import or because it was a useful power-seeking ploy for them; doesn't matter here.) The people complaining about cutting USAID are not people who could take up the slack once America pulls out, because they are Americans. This is why I am saying that what the EU does or does not do about this has no bearing on the validity of the claim.

The people complaining about cutting USAID are not people who could take up the slack once America pulls out, because they are Americans.

Why couldn't they privately pick up the slack for the cutting of USAID? Charitable aid doesn't need to go through the government. There is nothing preventing them from raising funds themselves and providing this aid. Again it comes back to power--they don't want to bear the cost of their preferences and instead want to force others to subsidize them.

But I just don't see how 'nobody else is stepping up to do the hard thing that someone is already doing' supposedly proves that the hard thing isn't worth doing and the second guy is a chump for bothering.

You never know if someone else will step up until the person already doing it steps back and opens up that opportunity.

In my view, if any truly important program is shut down along with USAID, someone will step into that vacuum, whether it's a non-profit or a private philanthropist or a religious organzation. Maybe there will even be a new federal program created if such a need is identified.

But this idea that the U.S. government is responsible for all charity throughout the world is not only a logistical problem but also a conceptual problem, neither of which will ever be corrected as long as the US govt continues to enable it.

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