I don't want to get deep in the philosophical weeds around human behavior, techno-optimism, etc., but it is a bit reductive to say "why don't we just give homeless people money".
I don't want to get deep in the philosophical weeds around human behavior, techno-optimism, etc., but it is a bit reductive to say "why don't we just give homeless people money".
Is this just something you repeat without thinking? It seems to be a popular sentiment here on Hacker News, but really makes no sense if you think about it.
Products: Search, Gmail, Chrome, Android, Maps, Youtube, Workspace (Drive, Docs, Sheets, Calendar, Meet), Photos, Play Store, Chromebook, Pixel ... not to mention Cloud, Waymo, and Gemini ...
So many widely adopted products. How many other companies can say the same?
What am I missing?
I attended a presentation in the early 2000s where an IBM executive was trying to explain to us how big software-as-a-service was going to be and how IBM was investing hundreds of millions into it. IBM was right, but it just wasn't IBM's software that people ended up buying.
I have an electric cargo bike. During a kids party yesterday I ran 5 different errands with it while someone with a car managed to get stuck in traffic, not find a parking spot, and miss the whole thing.
The only reason why cars are the size and shape they are is because ICE engines couldn't be made smaller. Electric engines on the other hand are small enough that I can have the chassis of a fully functioning car be light enough to lift by one man.
I think we will see small, light weight and intrinsically pedestrian safe cars made of tubes and canvas replace the heavy monstrosities we have now.
Likewise in few generations we hopefully find a way to transfer the cost in medical bills of mental health caused by these companies to be paid by those companies in taxes, like we did with tobacco. At this point using these apps is hopefully seen to be as lame as smoking is today.
Many of the above were discovered by people explicitly rejecting profit as an outcome. Most of the above predate modern capitalism. Several were explicitly government funded.
Do you have a single example of a scientific breakthrough that saved tens of millions of lives that was done by capital owners?