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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   26297 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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I suppose if you place zero or negative value on the lives saved by PEPFAR, then yeah, obviously. End it yesterday.

Not sure I'd agree with that proposition, however. I'm not much of a Christian, but I do think George W. Bush had his heart in a charitable place when he got the program going.

I mean, the market puts little to no value on their lives. I am simply pointing out that there is nothing different about keeping people alive for the sake of keeping them alive in PEPFAR than any other boring charity like food stamps or Medicaid. I suppose these people kept alive can also threaten to immigrate, which is a bad thing. So yeah. Why is this "effective?"

Congress allocating funds? Is all foreign aid unconstitutional by definition? Generally, the constitution is far more free-wheeling on doing things for foreign policy than it is for domestic policy.

Foreign aid is arguably unconstitutional, but the inception of PEPFAR was not approved by Congress. They may arguably have adopted it later on, but the inception was just GWB going rogue.

And being able to build houses would also be bad? Like what on earth do you think you're arguing by comparison here?

No the point of the comparison is that my house building program IS actually good and effective, so long as you keep it small in scope. You scout 10 potentially talented homebuilders and spend time, money, and resources training them. Then they go out and make their world better by building homes. PEPFAR does nothing of the sort. It just lets anyone who contracted a deadly STD keep on living with no scrutiny as to whether they can or will make the world better by their continued existence, and past performance indicates not so.

You can argue that PEPFAR is not just ineffective, but bad for reasons of sexual deviancy or whatever else without talking about African housebuilding, I think.

I was posing a hypothetical charitable educational program that had the potential for being effective, not just a self licking ice cream cone.

I mean, the market puts little to no value on their lives. I am simply pointing out that there is nothing different about keeping people alive for the sake of keeping them alive in PEPFAR than any other boring charity like food stamps or Medicaid. I suppose these people kept alive can also threaten to immigrate, which is a bad thing. So yeah. Why is this "effective?"

If you don't accept the philosophical foundations of universalisms wrt human life then, yeah, sure. No argument from me. Using markets to determine the value of a human life comes with a lot of caveats in the best of times.

Foreign aid is arguably unconstitutional, but the inception of PEPFAR was not approved by Congress. They may arguably have adopted it later on, but the inception was just GWB going rogue.

Sure, I don't know enough to debate its whole origin story. And had I been president I would not used taxpayer dollars in such a fashion. I'm actually not aware of detailed constitutional arguments/cases for/against foreign aid as a whole category. It seems if a national defense argument can be made, then it's going to be allowable by default.

PEPFAR does nothing of the sort. It just lets anyone who contracted a deadly STD keep on living with no scrutiny as to whether they can or will make the world better by their continued existence, and past performance indicates not so.

I don't think I disagree with you here, overall. I'd just say that we could have compromised/hedged and ended U.S. involvement as a handoff, not as a near-immediate shutdown.

I do accept the value inherent to human life, I just dont see how it translates into the moral argument for charity. PEPFAR in particular I dont see the argument for the extreme reaction to its removal when it obviously re-counts its "lives saved" every year. There is probably someone who did some math regarding something like QALs/$ or something similar and pitched PEPFAR as super effective or something (I am guessing this is where they are laundering in "effective"?), but if you aren't heavily discounting the "quality" in those QALs for an African PERPAR recipient as opposed to the children of a fallen US Veteran your brain is a bit bamboozled.

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