Trump

mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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sus said:
If I wanted to sensemake this one, I'd be listening to people who have firsthand close knowledge of Musk and Trump, or have spent decades in Washington, or have worked for USAID, etc.
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Please let us know what these "insiders" are saying; I doubt their far superior experience will confer more insight than simple logical deduction.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
for spendo - the chief economist of USAID. he's pretty well known, as a person who spent most of his life trying to work out and measure whether or not aid programmes were achieving anything or not.


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www.npr.org

Once the new administration took over, when did you start to get a sinking feeling about the fate of USAID?

It became clear to me that something big was happening a week after the inauguration when a large swath of 58 senior people at USAID, including me, were all put on administrative leave. Initially, there was no reason given. But even when a reason did surface the next day, it made no sense. No one I knew was doing anything in violation of the executive order. So there was a lot of bewilderment that the stated reason for the administrative leave was likely false.

How were you feeling during this period?

I recognized that we were likely witnessing a blueprint for how to dismantle an agency — and USAID was the first to go. Why USAID? One argument is that the advantages of USAID aren't seen by most of America.

The benefits are there, of course. But it is true there's a lot of people in America who don't see that benefit day to day. And so that makes it easier pickings to test the waters. And that was our first thinking — this is DOGE figuring out how to dismantle an agency, and they're using USAID as the guinea pig to figure that out.

My feeling of puzzlement then turned into devastation and horror.

Can you unpack those words?

We're watching psychological warfare against a workforce that has been committed to furthering the lives of other people. This was a career choice they made to help others even if they disagreed about how to improve USAID.

If you want to reform foreign aid, this isn't the way to do it. This approach is going to radically increase the cost of all future foreign aid. That's because if you want to work with anybody in the future and you tell them, "No, no, no, this time we're here. We're not going to fold on you," how are you going to convince them of that? When you can't trust someone, it makes you reluctant to make agreements with them. And that means doing less good with more money to have the same positive impact as we were having before.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
shakahislop said:
for spendo - the chief economist of USAID. he's pretty well known, as a person who spent most of his life trying to work out and measure whether or not aid programmes were achieving anything or not.


Loading…

www.npr.org

Once the new administration took over, when did you start to get a sinking feeling about the fate of USAID?

It became clear to me that something big was happening a week after the inauguration when a large swath of 58 senior people at USAID, including me, were all put on administrative leave. Initially, there was no reason given. But even when a reason did surface the next day, it made no sense. No one I knew was doing anything in violation of the executive order. So there was a lot of bewilderment that the stated reason for the administrative leave was likely false.

How were you feeling during this period?

I recognized that we were likely witnessing a blueprint for how to dismantle an agency — and USAID was the first to go. Why USAID? One argument is that the advantages of USAID aren't seen by most of America.

The benefits are there, of course. But it is true there's a lot of people in America who don't see that benefit day to day. And so that makes it easier pickings to test the waters. And that was our first thinking — this is DOGE figuring out how to dismantle an agency, and they're using USAID as the guinea pig to figure that out.

My feeling of puzzlement then turned into devastation and horror.

Can you unpack those words?

We're watching psychological warfare against a workforce that has been committed to furthering the lives of other people. This was a career choice they made to help others even if they disagreed about how to improve USAID.

If you want to reform foreign aid, this isn't the way to do it. This approach is going to radically increase the cost of all future foreign aid. That's because if you want to work with anybody in the future and you tell them, "No, no, no, this time we're here. We're not going to fold on you," how are you going to convince them of that? When you can't trust someone, it makes you reluctant to make agreements with them. And that means doing less good with more money to have the same positive impact as we were having before.

There's a lot of good that USAID has done across the board in terms of health, education, helping farmers, and helping people in crisis.

Now, there are people who are going to be radically worse off and sick and not educated in the same way because of what's happened. Literally taking people who are in hospitals and stopping treatments because the money is not there.

And not just that — people are going to die. A lot of people.

So we now have a million million tragedies that could have been avoided.
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This guy isn't very bright. He should have seen the writing on the wall when JD Vance said that it's better to sort out your nearest and dearest rather than [undermine local economies in far-flung places].

Why can't these subversive foreign projects seek funding in the oily countries?
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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shakahislop said:
what do you mean
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e.g. we give our Rick Owens trainers from last season to Oxfam and then there's a flood in Africa and suddenly Oxfam dumps 10,000 Geobaskets in the market and the local Rick Owens stockist is hugely undercut and ends up closing, meaning that when Oxfam cuts off their supply there's no-one there to meet demand for Geobaskets, Ramones, Adidas Collabs, Converse Collabs.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
i think it does happen. i haven't seen any properly good examples of aid having a negative impact on an economy. there's been people like dambisa moyo who have made this kind of argument but it's always felt a bit thin. maybe there are examples are out there. but then there are also plenty of examples where aid boosts an economy.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Experts say Africa has lots of countries and they're quite capable of building resilient backup options for emergencies themselves. Whitey should provide know-how rather than concrete stuff that Africa can make or grow for itself.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
e.g. we give our Rick Owens trainers from last season to Oxfam and then there's a flood in Africa and suddenly Oxfam dumps 10,000 Geobaskets in the market and the local Rick Owens stockist is hugely undercut and ends up closing, meaning that when Oxfam cuts off their supply there's no-one there to meet demand for Geobaskets, Ramones, Adidas Collabs, Converse Collabs.
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i actually spent a little bit of time specialising in this / the rag trade. oxfam are pretty careful not to do this, they have these big recycling plants and so on.

the rag trade isn't aid. i think some charities still do it. but it's mostly private sector. all the stuff from those big clothes donation bins in car parks basically get sold to intermediaries, who sell big bundles of undifferentiated clothing to market traders in various places, you see it being sold on the street in a lot of countries. it is one of the reasons, maybe not the main reason, why there are countries especially in east africa don't have much in the way of domestic garment production. the other reason being that cheap clothing production worldwide is quite concentrated in a few countries eg bangladesh turkey vietnam.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
Experts say Africa has lots of countries and they're quite capable of building resilient backup options for emergencies themselves. Whitey should provide know-how rather than concrete stuff that Africa can make or grow for itself.
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that is pretty much how it works. everyone knew what you were saying by about 1990. there's exceptions eg the US has (well had) a lot of rules about having to buy food aid from american farmers. even the know-how bit is more and more about figuring out how to have people in poor / middle countries who have it.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
the transposition of the rentier state idea that people had about extractive industries over to aid always made sense to me though. it never seemed true in the countries that i know well though. still looking for examples of this where someone has properly documented it.
 
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