Elon Musk killed these people

    • sheogorath@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      22 hours ago

      And that’s the point. The capitalist system is eating itself and we’re living in the demagogue phase of anacyclosis cycle. Buckle up, strengthen your communities. We only have each other to keep on surviving the dark times ahead.

      • warbond@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 hours ago

        They gotta rile people up to justify suppressing them. Can’t wait for those “temporary emergency powers” to come into play.

  • Zexks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    24 hours ago

    Time to start massive person loss lawsuits. Just overload them with hundreds a day.

  • kitnaht@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    25
    ·
    23 hours ago

    So, I have to ask - why is America responsible for these people in the first place? Why aren’t their governments supplying oxygen for this woman?

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      9 hours ago

      It’s good of you to ask. And that’s the point, right? Trump and Musk didn’t ask. They don’t know why USAID has existed for so long, and has had massive support from people across the political spectrum. They don’t know what damage is going to be caused by shutting it down, because they don’t care if people die.

      This is how are the two of them operate. If they don’t like something, they tried to destroy it, and they never question whether it’s necessary or what new problems are going to emerge as a result of their destruction. Again, it’s because they don’t care about the people whose lives they are destroying.

      Finally, you suggested that other governments should be providing their own people with oxygen. That would be great. Except some of those governments aren’t. So what are we supposed to do? Do we scratch our backs and watch people die? I think we can’t do that, but what actions are good for short-term and medium-term and long-term stability is a very interesting global public policy question. Are you seriously willing to discuss it? If you’re not, why did you ask?

    • eatCasserole@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      52
      ·
      22 hours ago

      The point of USAID is (was?) to project soft power, it’s got nothing to do with responsibility.

      Previous administrations figured it was worthwhile to run these aid programs. Good PR, or a vehicle/cover for more nefarious activities. People came to rely on it, and it getting pulled suddenly upsets things. The article does mention Thai hospitals picking up some of the slack, but presumably they aren’t set up to take on all of the patients overnight, so inevitably the abruptness of the change leads to tragedies.

      • Soleos@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        20 hours ago

        In the narrow sense of independent individuals/states, you are correct. A country does not have a responsibility to run foreign aid programs. However, once you do, you enter into a agreement that involves some responsibility because now others are relying on you to fulfill your commitment.

        Put simply, say you want to climb up a ladder and need someone to help, say, keep their finger on a button that prevents the ladder from toppling over. I have no responsibility to help you. However, to be nice I agree to help you. I press the button down and you climb up. Now say I change my mind and I want to go do something else. I now have a responsibility to tell you so you can safely come down and find another solution. What the US is doing now is shouting up at you while you’re on the ladder and saying “hey, I changed my mind. Sorry, but I actually have no responsibility to help you out”

      • kitnaht@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        22 hours ago

        Thanks for being a reasonable person here on Lemmy. Weird that I have to thank people for just having adult discussion, but here we are.

        • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          edit-2
          22 hours ago

          You must not have been online for very long. There’s a ton of bad actors that pose these sort of questions as a challenge rather than actually asking to learn more. Its a bit less common on Lemmy than other social platforms but, you still run into them. That’s why you’ll run into downvotes and aggressive responses. Its a shame that things are like this, but until these bad actors disappear, we’ll continue to see this sort of thing. To add to eatCasserol’s answer, other peer nations to the US also provide similar forms of foreign aid for similar reasons. The US actually provides less as a percent of GDP (actual numbers are higher though, is my understanding). So this isn’t an exclusively unique US thing.

          • kitnaht@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            18 hours ago

            I’ve been online since 1995 in some way or another.

            But Lemmy is uniquely fanatical about this shit. Lemmy and other bits of the fediverse are just in that position right now – they’re on the very edge of the norm, so the people you run into are always on the edge of their respective things too. I’d say most people on the fediverse would be considered early-early adopters. We’re not even in the regular “early adopter” stage yet.

            • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              14 hours ago

              I recommend you check out reddit if you want to see “fanatical”. I put it in quotes because there’s a damn good reason: Reddit has a significant number of “conservative” bad actors. They post absolute nonsense and try to assert its true, or ask “questions” (stuff like is racism really bad or other questions to bring up controversial ideas, and try to brigade and assert extreme views are normal). I feel lemmy is still not popular enough for companies to try to swarm it with bots and influence people, but if it grows, that will become a problem.

              • kitnaht@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                10 hours ago

                Lemmy was already swarmed with bots during the election cycle. If you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t have known. Hundreds of ‘can’t vote for harris because of palestine’ bots rose up, convinced people voting for her was just as evil as being an actual nazi, and then as soon as election was over, the accounts all disappeared. I was only following like 13 of them, but all 13 vanished overnight.

                Lemmy is absolutely popular enough (and easy enough to automate) that it’s being astroturfed.

                • Habahnow@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  4 hours ago

                  I’m not saying it doesn’t happen here, but i feel the extents is hugely different compared to reddit. Trump subreddits and /r/conservative are constant trash and show up on all. Either I don’t see communities that consistently spew propaganda, and disinformation here, or its just not as bad here.

        • eatCasserole@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          21 hours ago

          And likewise thanks for actually being curious and posing the question in good faith! We need more adult discussions.

    • Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      22 hours ago

      They are not responsible per se, although you could claim rich countries have a responsibility towards poorer countries to help out. However, the way they stopped funding these projects, abruptly and without warning, means that other funders can’t step in in time and charities organizing this help have no way to find solutions before people die. It is unnecessarily harmful.

      As a sidenote, many issues charities are trying to help with are caused by climate change (for which richer countries are responsible in larger part) or past colonialism/exploitation by these richer countries, so they do have a responsibility.

      This is all general stuff and not specific to this example…

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      22 hours ago

      Been asking myself the same. However, we took it on, so we are responsible now.