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Comment by jstummbillig | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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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