Well, yes, of course people do argue that PEPFAR wasn’t a good thing. (Searching for “PEPFAR” on DSL should guide you to some relevant discussion topics.) I agree that this is a very straightforward point to address (and I will add that the OP does not do well on this point, either).
But I think you dismiss the “doing vs. allowing harm” point much too readily. The key point here[1] is that the U.S. federal government (a.k.a. “USG”) is not, or at least should not be, a machine for vacuuming up taxpayer money and turning it into arbitrary, generic “good things”. If something that USG does is, in some sense, “a good thing”, that’s just not enough to justify doing it. There are many, many things which USG could do which are “good things” in some sense. It is neither feasible nor sensible to try to do them all.
On the other hand, USG should avoid doing bad things. This is quite straightforward: doing bad things is bad, etc.
And, indeed, the argument in the OP is not simply that PEPFAR was “a good thing”, and that it shouldn’t’ve been canceled, on the grounds that less good things is worse than more good things. On the contrary, the claim is made that canceling PEPFAR will “kill millions of people” (“many of them children”, “potentially tens of millions”, etc.). That’s very different from “less good things is worse than more good things”, “we’re allowed to compare who’s better or worse”, etc.! That is saying that Trump did a very bad thing.
And the “doing vs. allowing harm” objection is thus a direct rebuttal to that point, which says “nope, no bad thing was done here; the number of people who will be killed by foreign aid cuts is zero”. This completely eliminates most of the moral force of the OP’s argument in the second sesion.
Please note that I am here summarizing the views of others more so than I am expressing my own views, though I am obviously putting my own gloss on things.
DSL search isn’t accessible without login, and the site seems to disallow Google search as well. I patiently Ctrl+F’d through the very long Trump Shuts Down USAID thread, but didn’t find any good arguments why PEPFAR wasn’t good. If you know such arguments, maybe you can summarize?
the second of the two topics linked above (which boils down to “this program was ineffective given its stated goals, compared to other programs which would achieve the same goals more effectively and efficiently, and is therefore a waste of taxpayer money, which is bad”)
Well, yes, of course people do argue that PEPFAR wasn’t a good thing. (Searching for “PEPFAR” on DSL should guide you to some relevant discussion topics.) I agree that this is a very straightforward point to address (and I will add that the OP does not do well on this point, either).
But I think you dismiss the “doing vs. allowing harm” point much too readily. The key point here[1] is that the U.S. federal government (a.k.a. “USG”) is not, or at least should not be, a machine for vacuuming up taxpayer money and turning it into arbitrary, generic “good things”. If something that USG does is, in some sense, “a good thing”, that’s just not enough to justify doing it. There are many, many things which USG could do which are “good things” in some sense. It is neither feasible nor sensible to try to do them all.
On the other hand, USG should avoid doing bad things. This is quite straightforward: doing bad things is bad, etc.
And, indeed, the argument in the OP is not simply that PEPFAR was “a good thing”, and that it shouldn’t’ve been canceled, on the grounds that less good things is worse than more good things. On the contrary, the claim is made that canceling PEPFAR will “kill millions of people” (“many of them children”, “potentially tens of millions”, etc.). That’s very different from “less good things is worse than more good things”, “we’re allowed to compare who’s better or worse”, etc.! That is saying that Trump did a very bad thing.
And the “doing vs. allowing harm” objection is thus a direct rebuttal to that point, which says “nope, no bad thing was done here; the number of people who will be killed by foreign aid cuts is zero”. This completely eliminates most of the moral force of the OP’s argument in the second sesion.
Please note that I am here summarizing the views of others more so than I am expressing my own views, though I am obviously putting my own gloss on things.
DSL search isn’t accessible without login, and the site seems to disallow Google search as well. I patiently Ctrl+F’d through the very long Trump Shuts Down USAID thread, but didn’t find any good arguments why PEPFAR wasn’t good. If you know such arguments, maybe you can summarize?
Ah, right you are—very sorry! Ok, let’s see then… relevant discussions include:
discussion topic for ACX post “Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative”
“US HIV Policy”
In particular, the following posts are relevant to the “was PEPFAR actually good in any sense or any way” question:
https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,13085.msg628670.html#msg628670 (which boils down to “spending this money on foreigners instead of Americans is wrong, given the relative value thereof to me, an American”)
https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,13085.msg628677.html#msg628677 (which boils down to “collecting tax money under the pretense of spending it on Americans, but then actually spending it on charity to other countries, is fraud and deception, and therefore wrong”)
the second of the two topics linked above (which boils down to “this program was ineffective given its stated goals, compared to other programs which would achieve the same goals more effectively and efficiently, and is therefore a waste of taxpayer money, which is bad”)