If you want to help the developing world it's worth the time to take a look at what has actually worked to get countries out of poverty and what hasn't. As far as I can tell there are only two proven ways for countries to get out of poverty:<p>(1) Kill a bunch of other people and take their stuff.<p>(2) Industry.<p>Notice that aid isn't on the list. So it seems that if you actually care about a country you should spend your time helping them get better at (1) or (2). May I humbly suggest (2)? Notice that (2) is going to involve building (or investing, if you're a foreigner) in a lot of dumb stuff. China builds lots of plastic widgets for Americans. China's also bringing tens of millions of people out of poverty.<p>The problem with the big fix strategy (malaria vaccines, non-profits, etc -- basically non-dumb stuff) is that it always leaves the people in poverty dependent on others. I'm sure you, Kushal, have the highest of motives. Unfortunately not everyone does, which makes leaving the poor dependent on others a very bad strategy for them.<p>Anyway, welcome to HN!<p>P.S. Can anyone think of a country that <i>has</i> gotten out of poverty based on aid? All the modern examples I can think of (Korea, Taiwan, China, Singapore, Latvia, Lithuania, etc.) haven't.
I disagree with this. It's essentially the same argument that there should be a single societal focus on shipping all of our extra food to those who are starving. True, in sheer numbers we have the gross resources to do just that. We have the infrastructure in terms of ships, planes, and boots on the ground. But there are other reasons we don't do this.<p>Capitalism doesn't work like this. Resources are allocated via crazy, unfair market actions. 300 years ago, most of Europe resembled what we would call the Third World now. Epidemics, warfare, starvation, etc. The big driving force that changed Europe wasn't the generosity of kings, but the base-level trading and investing among the poor and emerging middle classes.<p>There were a lot of resources being misspent back in those days. Anyone remember a particular Dutch fascination with tulips? Money was spent on doomed voyages of exploration, fake medicines, flower-based stock bubbles, and any number of other "follies" that in hindsight could have been avoided.<p>But among all the mispenditure of resources over hundreds of years, hundreds of millions of people were lifted out of poverty. We went from an average lifespan of 40 years to over 80. We live in an actual age of marvels.<p>In our modern world, we have people building entire companies and fortunes around what are the silliest things. We have even more people copying the first successes and failing. In amongst that, there are the smaller numbers of people building companies that will laterally help those who's lives need improving.<p>If we lived in a society where our resources could be marshaled enmasse towards one goal or another, it wouldn't be the world we have now.<p>Telling entrepreneurs that one class of businesses is more socially correct than others isn't how the world works. People will find opportunities in many ways, and those will benefit the people in need. The poor will find edges in the market to improve their own lives. What might seem worthless to you might be valuable to someone else.<p>So if you have an idea for Bitly 4.0, do it. If you want to build cheap rockets to space, do it. If you want to build a social networking app that uses cheap cell phones to let goat herders in sub-Saharan Africa poke each other over hundreds of miles, do it. You never know how or when your product will be used, or who it will help.
It surprises me that the author holds Myrvhold to such high esteem when his company, Intellectual Ventures, is working pretty hard to stifle innovation.
There's something that rubs me the wrong way about this article, and I think it's the false dichotomy. On the one hand we have safe conveniences like "another link shortener" and "Facebook for X" which do not involve any innovation. On the other, we have risky humanitarian projects which require huge innovation.<p>So there are three differences here: safe vs. risky, easy vs. innovative, and luxury vs. necessity. I feel like the author is trying to bolster our valuations of each difference by associating them with our valuations of the others.<p>So we start out with this true but completely obvious idea that it's not the best use of our time to build safe and easy luxuries, yet the alternatives we're pushed to are risky and difficult necessities. And I suppose if you want to point to that as an <i>ideal</i>, then that's one thing.<p>But then we get to the quote about "faster aliens", and I start to wonder what universe we're talking about. Much of the research that went into making those aliens faster? Directly applicable to a ton of other fields! Is the author suggesting that we should take the engineers off of the teams that are working to build more powerful GPUs and CPUs, and instead get them working on a malaria vaccine? Should we send them back to school first, or just plop them in a bio lab and tell them to get crackin'? Or instead, we could let them just keep doing what they're good at, since faster computers will also help us find a vaccine for malaria.<p>If you want to attack something out of the safe/easy/luxury group, attack "easy". Safe luxuries have proven to be absolutely amazing for driving innovation, and then we get to use that innovation for the really important stuff.
see, here's a problem: in the time it takes to find a malaria vaccine, thousands of lives could be saved by things as simple as a mosquito net. In the time it takes to perfect cold fusion, the greatest energy savings will come from industrialized nations turning their A/C down a couple of degrees.<p>Humanity is served by both the incremental steps and the big dreamers. Let's not create a false dichotomy and end up discarding the lives of millions just because it's hip to be the next Nobel prize winner
Cached version: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.obviouslywrong.org/2012/10/21/stop-building-dumb-stuff/&hl=en&prmd=imvns&strip=1" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...</a><p>With regard to the article I agree that it is noble (and probably more profitable) to build new products and ideas rather than clones of existing ideas, just as it is noble (and doubtlessly more profitable if you are successful) to develop a new vaccine for malaria rather than just distributing mosquito nets.<p>But mosquito nets are what people need now to save lives. A promise of future vaccine doesn't save lives. Likewise people want facebook for dogs now, and other crap clones, and where the money and demand is the market follows.
The article about Doggyspace is from 2008 and their twitter account has been inactive for almost two years. So apparently they did stop building dumb stuff. It was probably the invisible hand that made them stop, not a blog post.
How can this guy get all the way through this article without mentioning that not only is Nathan Myhrvold "former CTO of Microsoft", but that as owner of Intellectual Ventures, the most powerful non- practising patent troll in existence, he is perhaps the world's biggest example of what is wrong with the patent system and why ideas, innovative or not, are almost impossible to turn into reality without the threat of litigation.<p>The fact that he would avoid mentioning this shows that anything else said in this piece can be assumed to be utter bullshit and spin.
Fighting malaria is the example, but no mention of a political campaign against DDT? According to this comfortable American, the two available options are mosquito nets and a subsidized vaccine?<p><a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ddt-use-to-combat-malaria" rel="nofollow">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ddt-use-to-...</a>
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124303288779048569.html" rel="nofollow">http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124303288779048569.html</a><p>Next!
I'm in agreement with his thesis (that there should be an increase in the funding of riskier projects by non-profits) but I dislike his examples of "useless" tech. Technology often starts off in toys and novelties until it can be made with greater reliability at a lower cost. Tech may be "useless" simply because we haven't explored it enough to find all of its applications.
That quote from the ex-Microsoftie is the classic. Most ideas will fail. Right. Let's attribute brilliance to a master of the obvious. But the one idea that succeeds, even if it's "a way to kill aliens faster", will undoubtedly hear from a patent troll, like IV. Are you "OK with that"?<p>They will go after whoever is making money. And what do they contribute? Nothing.
Nathan Myrhvold is a grossly obese man who owns a large patent portfolio, managed through thousands of shell companies under the umbrella of "Intellectual Ventures." He first made his bones as was CTO of Microsoft. However, unlike a lot of the original founders, he wasn't satisfied with what he got, so he moved into the patent trolling business. These days, he makes his money by extorting technology companies, usually behind closed doors.<p>To make himself feel better about what he does, he tries to minimize the importance of what those technology companies are doing-- they're just building "stupid stuff," after all. He also sponsors research into vaccines and technologies to help the third world. Like Bill G himself, he views this as his way of doing penance for the bad things he's done to get where he is.<p>The truth is, though, it doesn't work like that. Most of the problems in the third world are the result of bad government. Unless we want to bring back colonialism, trying to "fix" the third world with aid is just putting a band-aid on a broken leg. In the long term, there are only two final destinies for humanity-- extinction, and the singularity. People like Mr. Myrhvold make the first outcome more likely.