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Comment by perks_12 | Hacker News Reader

The WHO has a budget of over $4 billion dollars; we are talking about $25 million here. Surely they could pay for this instead of paying a brigade of useless analysts to estimate amounts needed.

It would be nice if the US provided the money, but I do not understand why it would be their responsibility in the first place. Germany, France, etc., paid only $2 million, they could afford more. anAnd I say that as a European myself. Europe has to finally up their game instead of throwing pocket change in the ring, when in fact the Americans did all the heavy lifting. Meanwhile, we act as the moral instance in all of this and now that the US isn't playing ball anymore the emperor stands naked.

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> but I do not understand why it would be their responsibility in the first place

The original rationale for aid activities was to promote global stability, strategic interest, economic benefits, and humanitarian relief.

You can argue that those things things are no longer necessary. But you also need to bear the consequences of losing those benefits.

Does Europe not enjoy the benefits of global stability?

Not to sound inhuman (well I'm going to sound inhuman anyways), but DR Congo is perhaps the most irrelevant country geopolitically for the 115 million population it has. The stability of DR Congo does not make a difference to the stability of Africa on the whole in any way - if DR Congo were to descend into civil war (like it has before), it won't make a difference in any way, except for perhaps Rwanda. DR Congo could disappear one day and the world would continue moving forward like nothing else happened.

This is a country with hundreds of ethnicities and sub-ethnicities, that should not exist as a cohesive entity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Con...). The three decades it existed without a civil war, it was under the autocracy of Mobutu Sese Seko, under whose regime corruption and extrajudicial killings were rampant, as is typical with any autocratic regime. Following which, the army took control, which led to civil war and even more corruption and extrajudicial killing, which continues till today. This country is a money pit, something the Soviets learnt during the Cold War, and the Chinese today, and any initiative to uplift this country is going to end up in a blackhole. After all, how the heck is anyone supposed to establish anything longlasting in Africa's own backyard bullpen?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Con...

This country is Panem Manifest.

This definitely sounds inhuman.

This reminds me of some early human remains they found in a cave Georgia (the country). It looked like one human lost teeth and in those times that would basically mean death by starvation. But the evidence suggests someone chewed the food for this person and they survived longer.

We thrive as humans because we look out for each other even when it seems irrelevant.

It is most certainly likely that the person who chewed the food for the person who lost his teeth was of the same tribe as the latter. We thrive as humans in a tribe, whose members look out for each other. The smaller the tribe, the more tightly we look out for each other. For bigger groups, mere tribalism won't work - that's when democracy shines. But then you always have the looming threat of your democracy descending into tribalism with political factions.

Africa is a mishmash of extremely poorly drawn borders, decided on the whims of arrogant aristocrats in hall rooms in Europe, without paying any attention to the inherent tribal cultures that were present in Africa - and the DRC is the most evident example of this. That's why you have a tiny country like Rwanda being able to support a significant rebellion in Eastern DRC, why DRC has more than 700 communities, with no community making even 10% of the population, why the government is unable to create any form of integration within the country. Like on what basis can the government unite the people together? "We all suffered under Leopold II of Belgium together"??

> but I do not understand why it would be their responsibility in the first place

The world is a fucking complex mess and it's all just state. All things are set up in a certain way at this point in time and interact. As a leader in this setup it's simply not sensible to point at a single thing and say "Weeeellll, this seems like it's not how it is for others — and I really don't like that!" and then just stop doing it, and use that as justification to disregard the total amount of additional suffering this course of action causes.

If you do, you are at best unfit to have any power but possibly also just evil.

nonsense. it is time to dismantle the current state of affairs and to start thinking about better ways to approach things. Sure, we can keep all the things rolling as they are. Every once in a while something will flare up in Africa, we send money, we do the work, everything is back to normal a year later, we do it again.

Or maybe we start to question if there is a better way to do things. I don't want to say Trump is doing everything right, but at least he tries. He got the Rwandan president and the Congolese at one table and told them to stop the bullshit.

If Trump ends the war and gets Western countries into the DRC to do proper mining, the DRC will be one of the richest nations of all time, and they will finally have enough resources to educate their population on the dangers of fucking bush meat.

That is a misreading so fantastic, that I hesitate to react at all. I'll rephrase:

If an actor with power changes something with regards to the state of the world – which they obviously should, if they don't what are they doing? — the rational can not be "I think this singular thing is unfair, I will not do this anymore". If everyone did that, the world would collapse.

There is no concept of "fairness" that you can simply presume (and if it mattered at all, which it does not, it would certainly not be the US that draws the short straw). Everything is state and connected. You are not in kindergarten. This is the state of the world you have to work from, if you aim to be a serious and trustworthy actor, and the amount of suffering you willfully cause is not a detail.

(And just so we don't get side tracked, what I was responding to is exactly: "but I do not understand why it would be their responsibility in the first place")

The difficulty here lies in the fact that there’s a leap involved from “someone should do something” to “you in particular should do something”. If everyone in the room expects you in particular to do something and never does things themselves, nor even appreciates your doing of things, it is correct and reasonable to point out that it’s not really a sustainable, fair, or reasonable reaction to get angry when “you in particular” stops doing the thing. Seems pretty obvious and straightforward on its face.

But, you see, it's not obvious or straightforward — because everyone does do something themselves. There are all these millions, billions of interactions and setups, past and ongoing, that have let the world to exactly the state it is in right this second.

It's entirely idiotic to then say "But hey, look at this single thing, I now decide to judge to be of utmost importance, what are you doing here right this second!?" Well maybe jack shit. And that may not be optimal, or it might be. But the important thing is: Any actor can find any amount of those isolated instances where someone did less/worse/different/bad, and then proceed to demand retribution on that basis and sabotage absolutely all cooperation in the process. But that is obviously idiotic.

> You are not in kindergarten. This is the state of the world you have to work from, if you aim to be a serious and trustworthy actor, and the amount of suffering you willfully cause is not a detail.

I think it is very kindergarten-ish to shove $25M into the DRC on an almost yearly schedule. Almost like the kindergarten teacher telling Max not to take the shovel from Sarah every single day. I also think it is kindergarten-ish to look at Ebola in Congo and scream for US money (especially when the argument for that is that it make you a less serious and trustworthy actor if you don't).

We are not in kindergarten; we are, in fact, in the real world, and all nations have to face their own problems. The justification for Trump's fund slashing doesn't matter. Sure, people will suffer, but they suffered from Ebola only a year ago. Is it so difficult to tell your people not to eat monkeys and bats? These are solvable problems, and looking at Trump and thinking that he is the problem here is... kindergarten-ish.

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