It doesn't cost much to improve someone's life
ourworldindata.org
ourworldindata.org
Once I have that arranged, I can think about giving again.
Supposedly Hiram Maxim was prompted to invent the machine gun when an acquaintance told him:
"Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility."
- A large portion of the population is incarcerated
- The population is weaponized
- Many people are dying because they don't have proper access to health care
- The economy leave a lot of people on the side of the road producing highly anxious people
- School shoot / police violence
- ...
The problem of the US is indeed with high incarceration rates, long sentences, bad prisons where more hardened criminals educate the newcomers to be more efficient criminals; this whole system is screwed, and needs to be replaced.
Lack of access to health care, while increasing mortality and decreasing morale, is not violence; rather, it's a lack of mercy, and lack of resources. That same lack of resources limits access to (quality) health care in EU, but in different ways: long wait times, limited prescription of expensive but efficacious drugs, etc.
is this a typo? I'm autistic and can't see how autism has anything to do with weapons or being weaponized. in fact, I usually see the opposite (sheer numbers being weaponized against autism), but I'm probably the most biased possible source for that.
if that hadn't happened you'd likely be facing the same situation, i.e. having 30 neighbours instead of 2
it's quite significantly larger
now, imagine if today that 80% wasn't part of the US, and was instead controlled by the indigenous population (likely tens of sovereign states)
would there have been large scale wars in the 19th and 20th century? it's quite obvious the answer would have been "yes"
See: the Trail of Tears, the actual, literal death march of natives out of their ancestrial lands because "manifest destiny"
The US is a terrible ally, for all the reasons you cite, but unless they somehow become a democracy, China would be worse in every way.
I am no longer considering the US as a democracy. From a west perspective, China doesn't want to annex Canada or Greenland.
Lack of direct threats to sovereignty, reliability (in the sense of honoring commitments) and basic diplomacy are characteristics that trump ideological compatibility in domestic functioning. The EU is not gonna buy the chinese equivalent of the F-35, no one thinks they are "friendly" but a turn to China is inevitable. It doesn't help that your democratic institutions are closer in the spectrum to a Putin "election" than a Swiss one.
This is even more true for weak and small countries, Trump's Panama obsession has caused irreparable damage to an already frayed positive perception. Paraphrasing an interview with then Chilean president Ricardo Lagos when he explained to Bush his decision to not vote in favor of the invasion of Iraq in the security council:
How did you approach that moment of saying no to the United States?
I mean, I think there are two important elements here. The first is to understand that Chile is a small country. The international role we play is not very big. But precisely because we are small we demand rules in the international arena. Because if there are no rules, the big ones will mistreat us. Consequently, I explained this to President Bush on several occasions: We need rules because we are a small country. Bush found it difficult to understand the point about rules.
By what metric?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_indices
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
Because they have elections?
I always thought that when Americans say they’re a democracy they mean that in sort of propagandist way. Like, installing democracy as justification for military aggression.
But it seems that now some people really believe it? The bi-partisan system sponsored by corporations, where candidates are vetted through the systems - it reminds me of the Chinese communism with two parties instead.
Just compare it to Swiss democracy.
When was the last time an candidate from an independent political party became a president in the USA?
Despite the current administration being in power explicitly because it genuinely won a recent election in which the incumbents would have preferred to win instead. Trump's frequent shittiness and feces throwing aside, he got his second term through the long-established and very stable American democratic process.
That you would then go from this to claim China as somehow better, a country in which authoritarian one-party rule is absolute and in which nobody can throw an incumbent out of office, is just.... really absurd.
IMO the simplest and most realistic way to reconcile "democracies don't invade each other" and "the US might do invasions now" is that the US is not a democracy within this model.
It certainly still is in a technical sense that is sometimes useful. But by other metrics, like "can the president start an unpopular war with a steadfast former ally" uhhhhh. If the military refuses an elected president's order to invade is it still a democracy?
Yes, because the military can't follow an illegal order, which is what a declaration of war without the approval of Congress would be. The military also can't spend money Congress hasn't authorized, even if the president tells them to.
When the people want a king, what's written in the rule book doesn't matter anymore.
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-3134,0...
When was it ever?
Tibet doesn’t count either, it’s been a part of China for centuries and it was the serfs and slaves that sought reunification to escape the monks’ brutal rule.
More likely in my book is the existing wars in the EU spreading, and civil war breaking out in the US. The EU wars are already expanding, loosing stability, and generally getting more politically divisive even if US policy had a strong impact on them. Those tensions aren't new, and at least from this side of the pond it seems like the US was keeping those expansionist actors in check more than encouraging them. Things are not going well in the US politically, and I'll leave it at that.
From the economic side, if there is a US economic collapse, and its definitely not going up, the economies that are going to hurt the most are going to be those built on top of the US dollar as they have outsourced control over the fundamental tools you can use to stabilize your economy in rough times.
These labels are being misapplied in my opinion. What people saw after the first assassination attempt was the opposite of cowardice, and I think it helped Trump win. As for bullying - there’s certainly some. But you can also look at how Biden bullied private companies to implement the Democrat’s censorship machine and find that bullying appears in many forms. Is the EU any better? Given their love of censorship and slip towards authoritarianism, I don’t think so. What about Canada? We saw their authoritarian handling of protests, where they literally denied protesters access to financial assets, and I view that as extreme bullying.
> He might be willing to go for a small country like Panama (and that would still be an _insane_ move)
Would it be insane? The canal was built by the US. It is a key part of economic and national security. Panama is violating treaties around its handover (https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/1/senators-sound-alarm-...). Why do you think China is so upset about the recent sale to Blackrock? It’s because they have been quietly gaining control over the canal.
> the economies that are going to hurt the most are going to be those built on top of the US dollar as they have outsourced control over the fundamental tools you can use to stabilize your economy in rough times
I would say the opposite is true - they benefit from the world’s most powerful and best managed currency. That stability makes them resilient as well. Countries trade in dollars and accept debt in dollars for basic but well thought out reasons. They aren’t making irrational choices.
Yes. Invading Panama, a peaceful democratic ally, would be insane. Let me clear that up for you.
They are a sovereign state. They get to build relations with whoever they want. That's how sovereignty works. The way you win those countries over is with the use of soft power, something that China understands but seems to be outside the grasp of the current admin, who is banging around like a band of drunken apes.
The US values democracy and free speech more than any other country. The EU only somewhat shares these values, which we can see from the normalization of censorship in its regulations, frequent calls to ban political parties, and the cancellation of election results in Romania. Europe has a vast history of expansionism, which we saw in brutal colonization across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Greenland itself is a result of expansionism.
China is also a country that is pro censorship and doesn’t value democracy. It annexed Tibet and Xinjiang and will do the same to Taiwan. The CCP has caused tens of millions in deaths, not just in the annexed areas but even among its own people.
I can see Europeans practicing some of those same authoritarian tactics China does. So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at this statement of viewing China as a better partner. But it still seems odd to see people here admitting that they prefer an authoritarian dictatorship as their friend. In my opinion it says more about Europe than America.
I hope we will finally make peace with reality and stop giving sh*t about things valued in this or that country.
It is completely irrelevant for the EU what US values or loves and what kinds of authoritarian practices are present in China. What matters is what they can give us and what do they want in return.
US makes it clear it won't give us anything, and will demand a lot. It is China, then.
Trump is destroying democracy and free speech (notably press freedom).
Regarding freedom, I don't buy the US vision. The US culture values individual freedom at the expense of the many. From my point of view, freedom is not possible without equality between people. Otherwise, some people impose their will (their freedom) on others. In this sense, regulation is an instrument of freedom.
Can you name specifics? What freedom does the press not have that they had a few months ago? How is there any less democracy now than before? Nothing has changed about the rights of people to vote or publish - if anything these things are getting better by removing wasteful spending propping up one side of the press, stopping illegal immigration, etc.
> The US culture values individual freedom at the expense of the many. From my point of view, freedom is not possible without equality between people.
It’s an interesting point that I need to think more about. Personally, I still think individual freedom is the only real freedom. The US law is well thought out in limiting individual “rights” in minor ways (like not being able to harm others) while preserving most of it. Those choices let everyone live freely and more equally than any other system.
Every week, Trump is threatening the free press that criticizes him. He suspended the Associated Press from acceding to the Oval Office just because they speak about "Gulf of Mexico". He said that that negative cover of his actions should be illegal.
> How is there any less democracy now than before?
A free press is an important pillar of democracy. By repeatedly threatening or even attacking it, you are attacking the very fabric of democracy. Democracy is not just voting, you have to be informed otherwise you are blind. You must also be educated to make decisions in your own best interest. A true democracy requires that anyone has access to education.
Democracy also needs time to make decisions, and to make decisions collectively (at least in a parliamentary way). Trump decides unilaterally by issuing decrees. This is closer to a dictatorship than a democracy. Moreover, he decides so quickly that the DOJ cannot ensure that the Constitution and Human rights are respected. Some of Trump's allies even claim that the USA will need him in 2029: they are ambiguously threatening the very existence of an election.
Trump is attacking free speech by banning the use of some terms in emails, attacking schools (e.g. Columbia) and threatening companies with DEI programs.
I could go on.
> if anything these things are getting better by removing wasteful spending
Even if it was true, you need time to change something. Otherwise you break lives and companies.
Unless it decides to go down fighting and gets something important blown up it could easily remain a nice place to live for centuries. Nobody threatens the US, it is hard to see how it'll ever be in anyone's interest to threaten them, they can re-learn how to be an industrial powerhouse if they have to. Almost all its real problems are ill-advised domestic policies that can be changed pretty quickly if people decide the situation is hairy enough to be honest in politics.
It might be in everyone's interests for the US to dissolve but it won't be as bad as the USSR dissolution was. It'd probably be a good outcome if they went back to the constitution as intended, depowered the federal government and became a collection of powerful states. A lot of the political tension is because whoever wins the fight over controlling the central government ends up with far too much power.
Those cultural ties will take tens, perhaps over 100 years, to weaken enough to cause a civil war.
We’ve offshored manufacturing, cut funding for education, have failed to invest in infrastructure.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...
Education funding per pupil has steadily increased year after year. Maybe we should spend even more, but our problems with bad educational outcomes are mostly due to other factors rather than a lack of money.
https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...
https://www.axios.com/2021/06/17/automation-ai-income-inequa...
Even if we bring back all the manufacturing jobs we've lost, they represent fewer positions and automation will continue to be a downward force on wages.
[0] https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/global-robot-density...
As to "which countries don't seem like they'll collapse with over 1 in 10 odds within 10 years"... Most of them? I guess if you thought this risk was exceptionally high the EU's visa free travel would be the best hedge you could get right now.
Nuclear option is not likely to be used for some "minor" conflict like that, because it would go both ways quickly.
However, in my opinion the United States is not going to collapse, worst case it will be replaced like the British Empire, leaving an advanced Western country (i.e. UK) behind it, minus the entire managing the world part
Also you should read about The Decline of the West, and its influence on Nazi ideology, not every prophecy is correct, and not every prophecy is beneficial to follow
Didn't something similar happen to the Roman Empire? It just kinda ... slowly broke apart?
the UK was a rare exception here, it is certainly not the norm
I'm not happy with the rise of populism and radical parties, but just to put some nuance, I'd argue the "radical" right in Western Europe isn't even comparable to Trumpism. To give an idea, Marine Le Pen in France voted to put the right to abortion in the constitution. On many social issues, they are closer to Bernie Sanders than Trump.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine had a negative impact on international markets, but if you were from either country you would have been better off living abroad when it happened.
Similarly, you would be better off almost anywhere outside of Europe from 1933 to 1947.
When you are pessimistic any country has a dark future, while judging from history, historical events do not look inevitable before they actually happen, and are hardly expected.
For example, recently half of the world, including many in the west, believed in the inevitable prophecy of socialist utopia, where there will be no private property and everyone will be free of the oppression of capitalism. Millions of lives later and oops
There are factors at play in historical development which make the development predictable.
The Chinese would have to go through half a dozen hostile countries to reach New Zealand. These countries have a combined population of around 300,000,000. Even if the Americans abandon the region, there is no feasible scenario in which the Chinese can afford to invade and occupy New Zealand.
You may also overestimate the relevance of banking for the countries finances.
Also without bank, a lot of people will find themself without any properties and will likely get more violent. Again, in part of the world where people own real objects and not number in a computer in a datacenter, this won't happend.
If you want to live there is different question for a number of reasons, but I do think it is probably your best bet avoid the impact of a US collapse (which I think is very unlikely).
Am I close?
https://manifold.markets/ianminds/will-manifold-implement-lo...
Looking back, it really felt like a waste of time. I should have taken a hint when I saw mostly old people there, and early 20 something political science majors. Two groups that have a lot of free time on their hands or have a personal reason to be there.
I have lost a lot of faith in these people over the last few years. It was hard work to get AOC into office and a lot of her original hard fighting crew have been pushed out post election. While AOC is making waves on Twitter, I haven't seen any tangible positive changes that have been a result of her being there. We could talk about pieces of the GND being in the IRA but still thats a stretch.
What I dont understand is why you believe these people are talking about a 'collapse'? I haven't heard this too much from the progressive left.
Thats more the right wing e/acc folks that want to push the country to collapse faster because then they can rebuild faster or something like that.
But think about someone who has been foreclosed in the last financial crisis, people who have no perspective of ever retiring, who a are a paycheck away from becoming homeless. Do you think those people will see our institutions in the same sacred light as we do?
We should get rid of our condescending attitudes and really try to see things from other's perspective. And on the other side, unless I am talking to an anonymous Peter Thiel, Musk ou Zuckerberg, it is not like we are truly part of the same elite the downtroden see with some much contempt.
I've been appropriately humbled by the experience. Worst bet of my career
I think it’s a 5% chance over the next 100 years.
Without consulting wikipedia, I can only think of about 17 off the top of my head.
What % chance do you think there is that the US collapses in over the next 10, 25, 50, and 100 years?
You know, schools used to teach this type of stuff.
Does not bode well for the future of informed populi
The lazy argument is that China will take over everything, that they think in 100 year increments. However they have terrible demographics, have serious risks like food security, and have mucked up their economy through their real estate collapse.
We all know of the US's issues and there is no other country that is really challenging these two....so how about everyone fails and we are all poor and destitute together?
If the world collapse happens, it’ll be a result of pandemic, meteor, solar storm, nuclear war, or something like that and not some country “taking over everything.”
Also, leading countries in Asia and Africa into debt traps and dependence on them through the BRI is not very different from taking over.
And like, idk if you know this, but the world bank and the IMF are the ones offering the predatory loans. Countries choose to work with China instead exactly because the terms of their loans are better than the western alternatives.
I know it's a controversial doctrine, but power projection does have a hand in keeping the peace.
people would lose access to Teams and Office
but who cares, there's plenty of substitutes
That's a very US-centric POV. It's not like half the world would suddenly cease existing if the US collapsed.
Beyond the hoses and water what do we need the fire trucks for?
Our market.
And the sanitation.
On average, governments last 250 years — which means we have a 0.4% chance per year. Using that figure, 100 years has a 33% chance of collapse — as our background.
Or roughly 4% per decade.
People wave off that risk because there’s not a lot that can be done: we don’t know how to make perfect governments and we’ve never discovered a good way to, eg, eliminate the ratcheting tax burdens that destabilize society.
I'm not too crazy about this as an anarchist, mind you, I think there are better stable equilibria we could get to. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I guess.
I’m not giving it a second thought personally.
If it happens it will be so bad that I’ll almost certainly die as a result (due to chronic illness) so I should just keep on living as-is and not worry about it.
As an example, when we were in Portugal 8 years ago we needed to get my wife's prescriptions refilled and the person we were staying with said to go to the ER. We confirmed repeatedly and then did as they suggested.
The doctor at the ER questioned us and said "we could have been busy and you would have had to wait."
But long story short, we spent about half an hour all up to get the prescriptions, and it cost us $27. That was with zero insurance, paying full freight. Filling the prescriptions with no insurance cost less than the co-pay in the U.S.
As far as I've researched:
Portugal will let retirees in and after five years you can get citizenship -- you might still want insurance, but it's affordable.
Spain is similar I think, and we're also looking at Italy, Greece, and Croatia.
In Uruguay you need insurance, but if you start a business it's straightforward.
In Thailand healthcare in general is excellent and mostly affordable.
We're looking at 30-40 countries all up, but those are the main ones we're looking at.
"Wealthy" is relative -- for example the minimum monthly income to get a visa for Portugal is something like $1,000 for one person, $1,700 for two. And we don't plan to live the high life, we just want someplace with nice weather, nice history/scenery, and that won't require us to do GoFundMe's to fund our future.
In no sense has the current administration expressed that “women” are enemies.
Feminists, like myself, need to quit it on the arguing “anyone who is anti-feminism is anti woman”.
It’s the exact same rhetorical flourish as “anyone who is anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic”.
In this era of Trump’s statements bearing no relationship to truth, we can’t sink to the same lows. Or the bullshitters have already won.
This period looks wild, in no small part because 90% of even the fringe-y media don't like Trump, but I doubt much of his shenanigans will hold up once court cases happen. People will get bench-slapped (the only lawyering pun I know, but it's a good one).
Sure something is always the most pressing threat to stability, but that does not imply all eras are similarly unstable.
i personally believe communities composed of the former cannot survive. coincidentally enough, american people are overwhelmingly of the former type.
HMOs, later PPOs, etc. in the U.S. seemed like a good idea, but health insurance wasn’t available or affordable for the minority. But there’s Medicaid, Medicare, the ACA, and much more, so the U.S. government has subsidized care and assistance.
Another “workaround” for unaffordable health insurance is going to an emergency room at a hospital, assuming you can get there, but many can. It’s slow as hell, but being seen in hours can be better than being seen in months. The downside is that this results in crippling debt for some. Bankruptcy can be declared, but then your credit is shot, and if you’re poor you may need credit.
Healthcare quality overall is quite good, though, even for the minority. It’s far from perfect, but compared to rest of the world, it’s not the worst place to get sick.
Now- why did an activist president, house representatives, and senators get elected that are cutting funding for global and U.S. healthcare? I can’t imagine it’s not the fault of foreign actors and the ease of manipulating 50% of the country through Fox News and social media. You wouldn’t believe how different the belief sets are here between that group and the rest. It changed radically in the last ten years.
The rest of us are far from indifferent to what’s happening. We just don’t know how to fix it. Protesting probably won’t change it, though we protest. Boycotts probably won’t change it, though we boycott. We don’t have enough in the government to even impeach, and what good would that do? They own all three branches of government. They used Gerrymandering and fired election officials, replaced leaders, subordinates, and did mass layoffs to ensure all future victories. They kicked certain news media out of the W.H. and are considering shutting other media companies down.
It all happened so quickly. Much more quickly than in the past in Germany or Russia.
Also remember that you can significantly contribute in non-financial way (ie: teaching, connecting people to jobs, etc..)
The cost of gutting healthcare is going to go way up. It’s much more costly to fight 10 pandemics that are affecting 90% than it is to maintain vaccinations and control of 10%. That 10% affected becomes 90% affected quickly without assistance.
The nonsense tariffs being thrown at allies and uncoordinated destruction of government foreign aid/social services seem like net negatives to me. I could see the United States Bitcoin reserve thing bumping up the value of crypto, but that whole space is so volatile I would only put in money I'm willing to lose.
> Your personal donations can also make a difference, especially if you focus on where they can go the furthest
https://ourworldindata.org/foreign-aid-donations-increase#yo...
Good time of year to donate (in the UK at least, as the tax year starts in April). Various ways to donate depending on your jurisdiction.
(Many of you may even find it is so non-scary to donate 0. 5 % that you choose to scale up to a larger percentage. But I have yet to find anyone who is willing to donate but claims 0.5 % is too much for them.)
The inherent fraud of not using funds for what donors intend and diverting money from a charitable organization to line private individual pockets can be surprisingly difficult to spot.
What? I'm very curious how people arrived at such a number. I wouldn't be very surprised if people thought it was, say, 5%. But 31% is a wildly implausible number. 15% of people thought it was over half the budget, which is too far from the Lizardman's Constant to just be trolls, but at the same time it's such a wildly high guess that I can't imagine a normal person sincerely making such a guess.
See this graphic that made the rounds recently (e.g. 1% are transgender, people thought 21%. 6% are military veterans, people thought 40%, etc).
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/tky94p/ame...
It turns out the figures are rounded in that graphic because the source article [0] (posted by another commenter) has it at 0.6% (which is likely rounded too).
Interesting when you consider how much certain topics seem to dominate current political discourse.
[0] https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41556-americans-m...
There were also no deaths from measles for 10 years, because, well, not enough people had measles.
It is super contagious, so yes, prior vaccines everyone got it. Mortality is 1-3 in 1000 of sick. Plus some people get deaf and some get brain damage (dunno how many now).
So, nowadays super rare, used to be normal and harmless is not a word I would use for someone that kills 1-3 in 1000 kids.
- military is 2.7% GDP for US: https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2002099941... vs 1.9% for Europe: https://www.google.com/search?q=europe+spending+on+defense+a...
- US spent $62B on foreign aid, vs 0% from China and Russia, whose GDPs are far larger...
If you include foreign development assistance, which you are in your ‘$62B’ number, then China has provided hundreds of billions through the BRI and other initiatives. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-china-fill-the-void-i...
Russia’s foreign aid is also primarily development assistance, though much less than the US, UK, EU, and China.
Moreover, the US’s larger defence budget also reflects its self-assumed role as the global stability guarantor of the post-war order it built for its own benefit. It’s that order that made the dollar the world’s reserve currency, requiring most of the world to invest in American financial instruments, and which gave it and its companies an outsized advantage for decades.
That was not an international order built for benevolence or which harmed the US. Americans are going to deeply regret how their place in the world and personal wealth shrinks after this administration is done.
Maybe there are cognitive reciprocals of these numbers: "all", "some", "half", and "none".
So when you ask for a fraction, they say 50%.
People are just bad at estimating, and apparently none of the ones making the absurd claims know (or their listeners/readers don't know) that all this data is publicly available.
All of that is to protect foreigners. Europe, east Asia, etc. When you hear about the US navy going after pirates off the coast of Somalia, that money wasn't spent protecting US citizens in most cases. When we were dropping drone bombs on ISIS, was ISIS any threat to the US mainland?
And that's just the military. There are so many slush funds going on, I don't think anyone can truly know just how much cash gets sent to or spent on foreigners. I don't think it's quite to 31%, but that guess isn't an order of magnitude high or anything like that.
Not directly, but it is protecting the financial interests of US companies whose products are on said ships.
I hate to break it to you but the majority of products sold by US companies are not made in the USA any more. You are welcome to see how well the US economy performs when their is no policing of the world's shipping routes or security around the underseas cables your tech companies rely upon.
That sounds more like it's to China's benefit than the United States' (or Europe's). If that wasn't spent, not only would there be an easier tax burden, but more incentive to manufacture domestically, employing people here.
I've lived my whole life through the China-makes-everything era, and the few pennies people saved getting cheap junk never outweighed the reduction in income they suffered when jobs went away.
>I hate to break it to you but the majority of products sold by US companies are not made in the USA any more.
How are they US companies, if they're selling products manufactured elsewhere, employing 1/50th (or even less) of the workforce they should? They're more like the overseas offices of Chinese companies with an English-friendly name.
>You are welcome to see how well the US economy performs when their is no policing of the world's shipping routes
I've already seen how it performs with the policing. And it can't get any worse for anyone who is in the bottom 90%. It can't get much worse for the greenies worrying about global warming, but failing to put together that making things 12,000 miles away and shipping it across the ocean embiggens the carbon footprint.
Ocean lane policing is the bad solution to a problem we should've never had in the first place, a problem we can get rid of, and it costs too much besides. Saying "but we should protect Chinese profits!" doesn't much change that.
Yes it was. The primary threat is the illegal drug trade, you know, the one that results in more than 100,000 overdose deaths per year in the US. The drug trade is a huge part of how groups like ISIS get financed. When you take out the group, you take out the people playing the drug trade to finance them, and you weaken the drug trade.
consider e.g. https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2017/07/isis-is-so-desp...
At the end of the day, there's the rules-based international order, and then there's everybody outside it. The law and the outlaws. Outlaws will collaborate to fuel their self-interest. When you weaken some outlaws, you weaken the rest; when you weaken some areas of the law, you weaken the rest as well.
China plans to spend 7.2% of their budget on defense in 2025.
Russia plans to spend 32.5% of their budget on defense in 2025.
I think you mean of GDP, not federal budget.
Anyway, it looks like USA is #1 now, but Trump wants to make USA #2 by military spending (with purchasing power parity) by 2030, which is not a smart move in the middle of WWIII.
> Yet some analysts have recently argued that China’s defense spending is much larger still, and their new numbers have gained the attention of wider audiences. The Economist has reported that China’s defense spending has already reached two-thirds of U.S. spending and is “catching up quickly.” Then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told Congress in 2021 that “the Russian and Chinese budgets exceed our budgets if all the cards are put on the table.” In September 2023, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan claimed that China’s defense spending is “probably close to about $700 billion” — three times higher than Beijing’s official defense budget. Apparently worried that China is poised to match or even surpass U.S. spending, Congress introduced legislation in June 2023 calling for the development of new methods for measuring, comparing, and reporting on China’s defense spending.
So, China and Russia increased their military spending a lot, while Trump disarms USA like Zelenskiy did just before fool scale invasion.
Unfortunately, it only made that difference for him because of the low exchange rate. If he were to receive free money from the government, for example, businesses with just raise their prices to account for the extra money in the system. Prices would go up and he would be left in the same situation that he was in.
Looks to me like the OWID article is saying that the aid from the US is a good investment.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/how-trump-s-di...
This is not to say that is or isn’t the case, just that it’s an effective end-result of letting them have massive influence globally.
Additionally, many of China’s deals are meant to bring nations into serious debt, rather than to truly lift them up. Again, this may also be the case with the US, so the question is who you would rather be your creditor.
Well the US seems to be allying itself with a murderous dictator and threatening to annex it's neighbours.
China is less murderous than Russia, less warmongering and for those of us in Canada/EU, probably more reliable than a potentially fully-fascist US.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_case_of_Meng_Wan...
And yes, we did it for who we thought was our biggest ally, and the fallout definitely wasn't worth it, considering the charges were eventually dropped.
Living in Canada and having European family I can tell you the attitudes towards both the US and China have shifted a lot recently.
Basically, Canada's recent history was the US saying "jump!" and Canada asking "how high?"
The man implemented social credit scores and will warn neighbors of your bad behavior, to include encouraging shunning you. Dropping the score low enough is enough to get you banned from trains and planes.
Political dissidents, highly respected lawmakers, and billionaires can disappear from public at the pleasure of the president.
I sincerely hope you were simply speaking out of ignorance.
"Religious minority" is one way of framing it. "Political movement that spreads notions repugnant to all decent people" would be another. Every developed country has cult deprogramming and support efforts, and that's usually seen as a good thing.
> The man implemented social credit scores and will warn neighbors of your bad behavior, to include encouraging shunning you. Dropping the score low enough is enough to get you banned from trains and planes.
Whereas the US keeps their no-fly list secret and requires you to figure out people's credit score from context, so that's better? Any amount of antisocial behaviour should be ok as long as you made enough money from it?
> Political dissidents, highly respected lawmakers, and billionaires can disappear from public at the pleasure of the president.
Whereas in the US only nobodies get black-vanned at protests, and the CIA torture flights are only for foreigners, so that's better?
> Political movement that spreads notions repugnant to all decent people
Exactly, specifically, what is so repugnant to “all decent people” about being Uighur?
> Whereas the US keeps their no-fly list secret and requires you to figure out people's credit score from context, so that's better?
The US’s. Is this a serious question? Of course it’s the US. It’s the US version a hundred times over. And yes, people can act how they want. I don’t particularly give a shit how you or daddy Xi think I should behave.
> Whereas in the US only nobodies get black-vanned at protests, and the CIA torture flights are only for foreigners, so that's better?
Once again, I cannot tell if this is a joke or not. Yes, of course this is better. I don’t want my government actively suppressing real citizens like you do. I really do not care if they said Xi was fat, or hurt your feelings, or practiced a religion that makes you cry incessantly. In the real world, you need to get along with people you don’t like - you can’t just sterilize them in a camp. Xi is a dipshit.
So in the end, it doesn't matter whether America fucks you or China fucks you, or Europe fucks you, either way you're fucked.
Could you provide a recent example (since 2000 if possible; if not, since WW2) where the US oppresses other nations through debt? I am genuinely curious.
I find the idea of "superpowers" (or very specific values) more of a Hollywood invention to make people afraid and docile. Yes, some countries do have resources and influence, but lots of times things don't go the way they plan it (values or otherwise).
Needless to say, Afghanistan was a mess too. This article (2) sort of summarizes the entire US occupation. People now think George W. Bush was an OK president (thanks Donnie), but he really did fuck things up big time. I suppose Bin Laden is grinning in his grave, someone's said that 9/11 cost Al Qaida about 500K to stage, if the goal is the destruction of America, what an ROI that's still returning.
1) https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/book_review/imperial-life-eme...
2) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/the-other-afgh... / https://archive.is/VfRmL
I also completely disagree. I’d rather be fucked by Europe or USA than China any day of the week. At least at the end of the day, we share vaguely similar values.
People will support the premise of going to war in the Middle East to "spread democracy" far more than to "defend the petrodollar and distract the public from Saudi Arabia's complicity in 9/11," for instance.
No countries are purely altruistic, but there is a big space between pure altruism and simply being exploitative. This ignores the role of norms in foreign policy. For example, think of how the US attitude to the Taliban was (and still is) conditioned by the differences in their beliefs about women in society.
If you think it doesn't matter whether America or China is in charge, you will be in for a shock. These countries have deeply different values, and their foreign policy will express that. I note also that you didn't mention Russia. I think it is obvious that Ukraine is not indifferent between being "exploited" by Russia and by the US.
Unfortunately, his graph of polio results would indicate the opposite.
It's similar, in my mind, to school spending in Chicago and Baltimore correlates to educational outcomes:
When the problem needs both a systemic change and broad-based endemic change, more money is not necessarily the answer.
(For Afghanistan/Pakistan, it's to counter the anti-vaxx narratives that caused the program to stall out. For those school systems, it may start with food and shelter security for students)
More people come to rely on the status quo for their livelihood, which can reduce their willingness to support or even consider transformative changes.
Educational spending per pupil has gone up in real terms, by about 2.5x over 40 years. This is already inflation adjusted so there isn't any comparison to the inflation rate. I'd say a 2.5x increase is pretty dramatic!
But anyway hasn't the GDP and accumulated wealth of the nation increased much more over that length of time? How much of that new wealth is it appropriate to spend on education?
It might be appropriate to spend a lot on education, if there were a benefit! But as you can see in the first chart, its not at all obvious that all this increased spending has had any measurable positive effect.
Not always the case but definitely for a lot of aid spending. Where I'm located (Mongolia) aid spending just gives the government an excuse to free up the budget for handouts to get them elected. It's pretty useless.
[1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/03/06/the-demise-of-f...
It was just common sense to share this knowledge the best we could and yet...
We did successfully eradicate all but one strain of Polio, and I believe they've stopped vaccinating except for the remaining one.
O/c, the UN (a body with a majority of non-democratic members) will want the taxpayers of democratic countries to finance it, all without any real accountability
Any country that has not yet solved its own domestic problems should not donate money to other countries
Instead it should loan money, but only if it's proven that it will be beneficial, and there is an accountability on the receiving side
The purpose of government is advancement of the common good of the citizens that form the polity. The good of people outside of the polity is beyond its scope and responsibility. Any aid to or alliance with a foreign nation can only be justified with tangible benefits at home.
The split is aligned with politics [1]; and the two sides can’t even agree on which direction demonstrates a lack of empathy. To some people, it’s moral to take from your neighbor and give to a stranger; to others, that’s antisocial behavior.
[1] - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Heatmaps-indicating-high...
Solving problems abroad can prevent them from landing on your doorstep. I'd rather fight wars overseas, protecting economies that buy American products, then let the problems fester, cripple international trade, and risk reaching the American continent (9/11).
All I ask is you look one layer deeper into these problems rather then buying the news headline. You are having your pocket picked if you believe Elon Musk or other parts of the current administration are acting in the nation's interest.
Still, if it somehow is the case, then this message isn’t directed at you. It’s just a little hard to imagine most developers can’t handle giving up a thousand bucks a year or whatever, which could literally save lives in some cases.
There are quite a few Americans for whom it is, and I'd also like to see more aid given to Americans who need it. Unfortunately, I don't see any effort towards that. Any savings from canceling foreign aid appears to be directed into tax cuts -- sadly, not something that benefits those who can't afford eggs.
Also nobody said you can’t improve your own life at the same time.
Also you helping other people doesn’t have to be necessarily monetarily.