I'm thinking 2/3, but the part you're missing is that the process will destroy US influence around the world. Which may be the real point of all this. It's hard to know where Musk's allegiances really lie.
With that said, the US has been in the dominant world position for so long, it's like they forget what it takes to be there. Soft power, by giving people food and support - like USAID does, is part of what helps keep the US in that dominant position.
I hear this argument a lot and I have two thoughts about it:
1. USA is a rich country, and that's why it can afford helping other countries. But what if you overspend? Now your economy is weak, you lag behind, and sooner or later competitors help more than you (if it's really the best thing to do to rule the world). So maybe optimizing spending is in order? And I think one strategy to optimize an overgrown system is to just burn the old, and start from scratch.
2. Does the "soft power" work if people get used to your help? Maybe it's useful to suspend the help every now and then for all the beneficiaries to realize the magnitude of the help? I wonder how much of the negative effects are read as "evil USA stopped giving us money" and how much "oh so it was USA that was helping us all this time!" Finally, if the help resumes after a new president is elected, won't people forgive USA for suspending it, as that was done by Trump, and now there's this new president that we need to be grateful to?
1. If you want to get the budget under control then we have to raise taxes in addition to spending cuts. The Trump tax cuts expire this year and they have said they want to get them extended.
2. No, if the US makes such drastic changes in policy every four years then it's much harder to forge any long term relationships. The vacuum also lets other countries like China step in. Wasn't everyone just losing their mind about a Chinese company working with the Panama Canal?
> And I think one strategy to optimize an overgrown system is to just burn the old, and start from scratch.
To avoid overspending and crashing the economy (I don't think the govt spending tax money crashes the economy but I'm no economist either), allowing competitors to help more and gaining more influence, "one strategy" is to simply destroy US influence around the world? To "start from scratch"?
No, I don't think that is a viable, even credible strategy. Like "saving human consciousness" by going to Mars: if we are under threat to destroy ourselves (and that is the real imminent threat, not asteroids), then whatever we need to learn to avoid that we can learn much better on Earth, than on a colony that.... depends on Earth. It's not even a serious proposal when it comes to benefiting humanity, maybe the idea is to live on Mars for a few decades as humanity is withers.
And in the same way, firing countless US government workers nilly-willy, even out of some vendetta (FBI agents that just did their job? hello?), immediately creates a LOT of pressure on the economy (if you don't just view it as a big number that a handful of dudes own most of, and care about the people in it). Whatever you want to "start from scratch" (all of it you could also have done without burning everything down first), you now have less resources to do that, because, well, everything is on fire. The saved money is supposed to go to tax cuts for the rich after all, right? At any rate I'm confident it's not going to be spend on more efficient social programs, but simply less or none. And people who can do these jobs well will not be keen to be re-hired by the same government that fired them, either.
If someone wants to talk you into knocking down your house so you save rent and can build a new one quicker, and has something to gain from it, at best they're insane, at worst they're playing dumber than they are, since they stand to gain from it.
> Does the "soft power" work if people get used to your help?
I'd say the longer you interact and cooperate with others the better the relationship usually gets, all else being equal.
> I wonder how much of the negative effects are read as "evil USA stopped giving us money" and how much "oh so it was USA that was helping us all this time!"
You are so very vastly underestimating the impacts these knee-jerk, unilateral activities have.
> This is horrific. Freezing clinical trials means that people with experimental medicine - participating in studies that benefit us all - may be left without access to healthcare, we won’t know their outcomes, they may even have experimental medical devices left inside of their body.
With that said, the US has been in the dominant world position for so long, it's like they forget what it takes to be there. Soft power, by giving people food and support - like USAID does, is part of what helps keep the US in that dominant position.