Perhaps there was more to it, but as told — that’s a story of incredible hubris! Truly amazing to fly across the world to tell Mongolians how to live on the steppe.
At least, this person (sorry, I can not recall name) acknowledge, that it was naive and hubris!
UPDATE: I was not first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39640882 need to read whole thread before answering!
And afterall it’s the Mongolians who might starve. Any port in a storm.
Judging from a lot of HN discussions so, Americans should really understand the rwluctance of anyone to listen to people from other countries explaining how things should be done. Exihibit A through Z: every single discussion about health care or city planning. Or gun control.
Why should anyone trust every busybody's advice? If the volunteers have put their money and started a herd and proved that their herd is better managed, then it is possible to get others to follow. Giving management advice without doing it yourself is just bullshit.
Just imagine how you feel if someone, say a consultant or a agile master, shows up at your work and tells how to do your job without having any experience with it, or the environment you are doing it for. There are even multiple threads on HN every week accusing those consultants of hubris in various ways.
The only thing that shows more hubris than telling foreigners how to live is foreigners dying en masse because they refuse to change their way of life - see, America on cars or gun control.
For sure that's not just virtue signaling and youthful delusion. For sure.
I don't know the case, so yeah if it was just people without knowledge coming in and forcing it on them... ok.