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Comment by virgildotcodes | Hacker News Reader

The America First MAGA people fail so hard to understand that these expenditures on things like foreign bases and US Aid resulted in far greater returns for us. It's never been about altruism or the greater good.

I say this as an anti-empirical leftist with no great sympathy for the effort, but for those proclaiming to put America's interests above all else it's just such an obvious and idiotic short-sighted self-own.

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US Aid has probably been the biggest ace the US ever had in its hand.

US farmers growing otherwise unprofitable crops with no buyer? Check. US exporters being able to export crops? Check. US Aid workers being able to give food to starving people in countries that have huge deposits of rare earth materials? Check. US intelligence apparatus having advanced knowledge of developing situations in strategically important countries? Check. US Aid workers being able deliver tremendous goodwill to countries that China or Russia would love to have their tentacles in? Check.

Everyone's happy, everyone makes money, everyone eats.

Yet Donald Trump and Elon Musk don't like it, so away it goes. And there's no adult in the room to say "no, you're not cutting it, here's why".

Musk claimed that USAID was a CIA front as part of his rationale to gut it. A very strange thing for a defense contractor to say out loud.

I know, this makes me crazy. The response should have been "... and?! You mean the intelligence community has a worldwide network for raking local information that also accrues goodwill to the US, and you want to end that?"

And not only accrues goodwill, it keeps American farmers growing crops that are otherwise unprofitable. US Farmers are too stubborn to keep up with the times, insist on growing crops that there's no domestic demand for (and are heavily subsidized), yet vote in jackasses that are going to take away the only market there is for their crops.

USAID somehow managed to get everyone paid and kept everyone happy. Who gives a shit if it was a CIA front?

Investing in domestic infrastructure would generate even greater returns. Yes, through some financial hand waving, we may funnel money spent on bombs back to US military contractors, but imagine if that same money was spent on a high speed rail system. It would unlock greater efficiency and logistics with the same money staying with US contractors. That's a purely financial take and not even touching on humanitarian or ecological costs of imperialism.

I’m very much for infrastructure spending in the US. The point of our international geopolitical scheming is to give us greater wealth and power in the end to then apply to whatever ends we’d like.

The dollar being the world’s reserve currency gives us the ability to print dollars for infrastructure projects with relatively little consequence.

This is now being threatened by our best attempts to get everyone in the world to hate us and see us as hostile, unstable idiots and unreliable partners.

I’ll also note that the America First MAGA crowd seem to also be against funding public infrastructure projects, especially the radically socialist notion of high speed rail.

Greater returns for whom, and what would we gain geopolitically?

I don't disagree that money should be spent here. But instead of billions spent on military contractors, using some of that money in developing countries through USAID gets us some incredible returns...such as our work in the Congo securing our rights to the largest Cobalt deposit on the planet. Or our work in Namibia giving us access to the 4th largest deposit of Uranium on the planet. The top 3 countries for Uranium exports are either under the Sino-Russian sphere of influence (Kazakhstan) or are nations that could get there due to the fact that they fucking hate the US due to the genius words of Donald Trump (Canada and Australia).

You want America's sources of Cobalt and Uranium cozying up to China and giving the US the finger?

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