DailyJim: Of course people with a transactional mindset see USAID as corrupt

Hello everyone, welcome to another DailyJim. I had a few breaks, but I'm back. A couple episodes I forgot to upload, but we're here. Today is Tuesday, February 18th. Today I want to talk about, of course, people with a transactional mindset see USAID as corrupt.

So what I want to talk about today is how Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and many people who support their endeavors believe that USAID, USAID, and their programs are highly corrupt, highly fraudulent, and maybe even the government, many things in the government are very corrupt and need to be getting rid of, need to be stopped, audited, and paused, destroyed, whatnot.

And how I realized that by watching a YouTube video about nonprofits and funding and philanthropy and charity, that, yeah, people who see the world in a more transactional mindset, a more I give you this only if you give me that, very conditional buying and selling exchange-oriented perspective on the world, probably don't believe in giving things no strings attached. Probably don't believe in the concept of it. They probably don't believe in the efficacy of it. Probably just think that it's a trick because maybe in their personal relationship, somebody has given them something and maybe they thought it was unconditional, but later found out, aha, this person gave me this thing because they had a secret motive to try to get this other thing out of me. And I think as we go more and more into a transactional exchange oriented mindset, frankly, as we close off from more and distrust other people's intentions, we get more and more into that. I'm only going to give you this thing if you give me that other thing. And so if that's the way that we see the world more and more, and I'd argue around the world, culture is shifting in that direction, probably post-pandemic, after all of this pain that we've experienced, and we're not talking about all of this division and separation from each other. So if we go more and more in that direction, why would we think that the US government would just give aid to another country? Clearly, they can't just give it. Clearly, they have a secret motive. They have a hidden intention. Clearly, they're trying to manipulate the recipient. Or clearly, they're only doing it so that they can make it look like they're good. But they're really hiding a lot of money laundering and a lot of fraud.

Or maybe that's just the perspective of someone who sees the world currently as very transactional.

Maybe it's not an objective reality. Maybe it depends on how we see human interactions.

Because if you go through the court cases and what they've found so far, they haven't identified very specific incidences where it has happened.

But again maybe it comes down to how we perceive human interactions if we perceive that if someone is giving something to somebody else they must be trying to get something immediately in return and not just the happiness or satisfaction that we've helped somebody not the emotional return on our giving or on investment but a financial return on the investment i am giving you this thing because I'm trying to financially gain from this, especially financially, but maybe it's not fan. Maybe it's some type of other power. Maybe it's, I am giving you this thing so that you can give me this other thing. So if you look at how Donald Trump tends to operate, he tends, he seems to operate in a much more transactional mindset where he says, I will do this if you do this for me. And to be frank, he worked in real estate. He worked in casinos. He worked in highly transactional industries.

You don't just give a building to somebody. You probably try to sell it at the maximum price that you possibly can. And to be frank, there's a lot of money laundering in real estate. But this idea of if you are living and breathing transactional life, whether that's the industry you're in or whether that's just the experiences you've had in your neighborhood or your community, where people, your family, where they expect you to, they don't just give you a gift because they want to give you the gift and don't want to see the joy in you receiving the gift. Maybe they give it to you because they have a thing that they want you to do for them in like a year or in a couple of days. So they're giving it to you so that you are indebted to them so that you have to do their favor in the future. You know, kind of like, doesn't the mafia work that way where they say, you know, I scratch your back because so in the future you scratch mine. So anyways, I think this idea of being in a more transactional mindset, one, is not static. We change all the time. I think we become more and less transactional. We become more communal, more giving and less giving depending on our situation, depending on our environment, depending on the skills that we have, frankly. And two, I think it plays a huge role on whether we think charity or whether we think giving with no or very few strings attached is even possible. Because if we don't think it's possible, then we probably think it's corrupt.

I can't tell you how many, you know, I've met many women over the years and just people in general, I do something very nice to them. And they're like, huh, what's your, they get pissed sometimes because they think I'm trying to screw them. I mean, even in conversations on Twitter back in the day, some guy, I was being kind to him and he thought I was making fun of him. He thought I was being kind to him because I was trying to like pull the rug out from underneath him. I was trying to build him up and then rip him down. I was like, what? And so I think often when we feel attacked, when we feel kind of this idea that people are out to get us or people are only looking out for themselves, they couldn't possibly do something nice for me just because they care about me because people don't actually care about me. If we get to the root cause that people don't actually care that much about me or people don't actually care that much about other people. So, um, yeah, so they must be doing it to further enrich themselves or empower themselves.

That's a perspective. It's not an objective truth. And actually, I wonder if we put people through a psychological study and put them and frame them into different emotional states, if we can show this, if we can show that when people are in certain emotional states, they either trust or distrust the idea of giving with no strings attached.

So anyways yeah i think when we look at the what's going on with usaid when we look at what's going on with um social security when we look at what's going on with frankly government services in general because again the government receives tax money and then gives services to other people without expecting anything in return directly which is kind of the same very similar principle to how non-profits work or how the charity industry works um when we look at what they're doing and why people are saying that they're corrupt and that they're fraudulent. Maybe it has very little to do with the activities of what they've done specifically, but the overall activity of giving something with no or very few strings attached and people who are in a more transactional mindset or space in life, assuming that that is not possible and it's just a cover up for fraud because those people just want to enrich themselves. The assumption that those people do not actually care about the people that they're giving it to, or they don't actually care about us or the people in the transactional mindset, that these people are just doing it to enrich themselves. And that's the thing I want to change in life. I want to help people get out of this hyper transactional mindset and bring people to be much more open, much more loving, much more trusting, have much more faith in themselves, other people, and believe that other people care about them. Other people care about us a hell of a lot more than we think they do. So on that note, I hope this tweaks your perspective a little bit on what's going on with the whole USAID issue and also this assumption that so much of government services is corrupt because maybe it's not. Maybe just people think it is based on where they currently are. Thanks. .