This was too deep for me. Pretend we have a system that works differently than intended. I could say it does not meet its purpose. This quote means something else. Am I wrong?

You say, “The system does not meet its purpose.” They respond, “The purpose of the system is what it does.”

In other words, there’s no point in arguing about the purpose. If you want the system to do something else, you have to change the system.

Ignore what anyone says the intent or purpose is/was. Is anyone motivated to change the system?

For a more traditional phrasing: "actions speak louder than words."

It's "revealed preference". The people at the controls don't want to change the dysfunctional system because it serves them personally.

Don’t think of it as a tautology, think of it as a heuristic

This is also very similar to the AI alignment problematic right?

Let me give it a try. Is the purpose of USAID to promote the liberal world view and fund its political allies? From what we’ve learned, that’s what the system does.

Consider vaccines, crops, and disaster recovery and their Soviet alternatives, Comecon and GKES. I feel both sides saw an advantage in offering that through a bureaucracy rather than transactionally. The development shortfalls didn’t go away with the Soviet collapse, so whether that’s liberal I don’t know. But any such bureaucracy threatens uncovering the endemic corruption among transactional operators.

I see your point about it being a way to disperse carrots for political leverage. But it also looks a a lot like a Cold War version of teaching Afghans about the American constitution.

But the projects that are being funded today don’t resemble the ones in the 60s-80s. And thats not to suggest it previously was unbiased and now is politicized, but the parties and their values have changed. So that old bureaucratic organization has a new mission

Giving out crops promoted the idea that market capitalism brought prosperity. That isn’t enough for liberalism which has moved up Maslows hierarchy to meaning and purpose. Physical aid is merely a means for bringing the true goods - social justice, equity, inclusion, education, etc.

That’s a good point and I don’t know how “The purpose of a system is what it does“ reacts to change in a system.

Or what to call the side-effects of a system going away.

One of the statistics I read was that the average American judges foreign aid at 31% of the Federal budget instead of the true 1%. In one way, that’s remarkable efficiency: 31x perception. In another way, it gives bad actors in the government an advantage: by cutting a measly 1%, you can rely on uninformed Americans to give you credit for 31x cuts.

Out of curiosity, have you checked out these other works?

Design for Prevention (2010) ISBN 978-0-937063-05-7

Friends in High Places (1990) ISBN 937063-06-1

Have Fun at Work (1988) ISBN 0-937063-05-3

The New Plague (1986) ISBN 0-937063-03-7

POSIWID is mentioned in the first three works; engineer William L. Livingston authored the latter three.