The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was chaotic, highly visible, and roundly condemned across the political spectrum. Images of desperate evacuations and abandoned allies made it impossible to ignore. In contrast, the abrupt shuttering of USAID programs will cause far more suffering over a longer period, yet it will pass largely unnoticed. One was a public spectacle of failure; the other is a quieter, even more ignoble retreat that won’t dominate headlines as sharply, but its consequences will be greater.
I guess when tomorrow in relative terms they go after Medicare, Medicare, community health centres, education, federal Pell grants for students, affordable housing it will begin to hit some people. Remember that Musk used the same blitzkrieg tactics on Twitter and X is now significantly less valuable and it likely to suffer a similar fate to TicTok in Europe sooner than later. History is clear, the USA will not do well from this. I was on a call last night and heard a proposal that the EU not ban but force X to make user profiles portable, so they can just transfer to Bluesky or another which was Dorsey's vision; prevent monopoly by making it easy for accounts to relocate to a new platform.
Cutting corruption only cuts the crooks money. Assume everyone in gov't is a lying thief getting kickbacks. Do a start over, reform USAID it as JFK began it.
Blowing things up and "starting over" is the kind of thinking that appeals to people who don't understand complexity. It's easy to tear something down; it's much harder to build something better in its place. USAID, for all its flaws, serves a strategic purpose, pulling out without a plan just cedes ground to other powers. This is Trump's Afganistan withdrawal, which was actually, also his. JFK understood that development was about influence and stability, not charity. If you really want reform, you need something more than the lazy fantasy of a reset button. Otherwise, you're just advocating for chaos.
Look at Twitter. Elon Musk didn't understand its real value to most users, it wasn't about "free speech absolutism" or his personal ideology, but about network effects and accessibility. By gutting moderation, alienating key communities, and making basic features worse, he opened the door to competition in a way that beggars belief. Now, X is increasingly a shell of its former self, bleeding value and relevance. Turns out, "burn it all down" isn’t much of a strategy after all.
With USAID offline, raw material prices will increase worldwide. Instead of flooding the money supply to inflate stocks. They're nationalizing raw materials worldwide which will increase asset values of each country.
This statement is a gibberish mix of buzzwords with no coherent economic logic. You don't understand basic macroeconomics, commodity markets, or monetary policy. If anything, USAID being “offline” would have little to no effect on raw material prices, and nationalizing resources tends to hurt economies more than it helps. Killing USAID won’t make raw material prices increase worldwide but it could create power vacuums that resource-rich countries like China will exploit.
I just remembered the Chesterton's fence thing. Warning against taking things down before understanding their purpose. This is like Trump pulling CDC staff placed in China because they were an Obama program following H1N1, their role was to see another pandemic coming and we all know what happened.
Reality vs. Public Perception USAID’s budget is typically around $30–40 billion per year (fluctuating based on congressional allocations). U.S. GDP is roughly $27 trillion (as of 2024). That means USAID’s budget is about 0.1–0.15% of GDP A tiny sliver. Yet public surveys consistently show Americans believe foreign aid is 10% or more of the federal budget, when in reality, all foreign aid (including USAID) is far less than 1% of federal spending.