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Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

bbc.com

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Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#61

Post by dmix »

patall wrote: post #54
limeyy wrote: post #24

I wonder why, all these billionaires first want to make billions, and then do philanthropy. How about making their services/business/products more affordable with which they are making all this money with in the first place? For example: MS Office used to cost 4-500 euro for the average home user a few years ago. That was ridiculous. If you have a small shop and 2000 Facebook page likes, Facebook rips you off each ti…

I rather wonder why those philanthropists think they are the best to decide what to do with the money? If I understand it correnctly, neither Zuckerberg nor Gates have given up much control over their money, they just cannot use it anymore for themself.

Looking at the lasting impact of Carnagie's estate or any of the other billionaires who decided to spend their later life focusing on philanthropy, rather than just throwing cash at other peoples causes, I'd say they can and do provide a real to society by continuing to control their capital.

Just like the other commentors have pointed out, who is better qualified to launch and run a major project than those who already spent their lives building and scaling great businesses.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#64

Post by jonknee »

johansch wrote: post #63

Hubris, much? Yes, this is a commendable effort, but I don't think they have the smarts/money for this. Even at an investor/patron level.

It almost certainly won't happen, but you could have said the same thing about starting a social network that includes over a billion daily users.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#65

Post by idlewords »

Pharmacology is an interesting example where better technology and scientific understanding have made things worse than earlier, low-tech methods ("inject plant extracts into animals and see what happens").

The number of new drugs discovered per dollar of research has been dropping since 1960, and obvious explanations (like "the easy ones have already been found") turn out not to explain the phenomenon. [http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v11/n3/fig_tab/nrd3681_F1....]

This is something we should try to understand better, since it goes against the intuition that technology is an unalloyed good in scientific research.

I applaud the money they're spending, but the level of technophilia in the announcement gives me pause.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#66

Post by M_Grey »

I plan to conquer the world and all of its inhabitants... long after all of us here are dead or senescent.

I guess it is easy to make empty statements if you make them apply to a far enough future. Mars colonies from Musk (still working on getting the colonists there in one piece of course), and all disease tackled!*

*With $3Bn

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#67

Post by M_Grey »

jonknee wrote: post #64
johansch wrote: post #63

Hubris, much? Yes, this is a commendable effort, but I don't think they have the smarts/money for this. Even at an investor/patron level.

It almost certainly won't happen, but you could have said the same thing about starting a social network that includes over a billion daily users.

That's like comparing the discovery of a new fundamental force, with the discovery that mythical dragons have been living in secret among us as our lawyers. It's true that both are unlikely, but one is ridiculous and the other merely very very challenging.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#68

Post by dmix »

meira wrote: post #62

Charity with evaded money is very evil.

Public tax policy that either provides plentiful loopholes or high enough tax rates where billionaires/millionaires can (and are highly incentivized to) shift their money and use tax saving schemes are what's really evil.

If people spent time focusing on increasing government tax revenue from the rich rather than increasing tax rates on the rich - which just pushes more and more wealthy people to stash their money in tax shelters (see Ireland) rather than investing it at home - they'd actually succeed in improving the inequality situation. And most importantly boost the economy and create more middle income jobs (by keeping money as job-generating capital instead of sitting dormant in off-shore shelters).

Instead of expecting humans to stop acting out of self-interest, how about:

a) Creating incentives for businesses and the wealthy to not move money elsewhere by having competitive tax rates. The simple fact is having them pay something rather than further incentiving them to pay nothing would massively increase revenues without increasing rates.

b) Massively simplify the tax system to close the myriad of loopholes that allow these wealthy people to continue operating locally while shifting all tax liability elsewhere. Make it obvious exactly how much each person owes their governments at the end of each year.

Creating a tax policy that's grounded in the reality of human behaviour (you can call it evil if you wish) rather than idealistic fallacies of how people should act is the real solution here.... Assuming this whole thing Zuckerberg is creating is partially a form of tax sheltering in the first place.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#70

Post by hmate9 »

M_Grey wrote: post #67
jonknee wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It almost certainly won't happen, but you could have said the same thing about starting a social network that includes over a billion daily users.

That's like comparing the discovery of a new fundamental force, with the discovery that mythical dragons have been living in secret among us as our lawyers. It's true that both are unlikely, but one is ridiculous and the other merely very very challenging.

Not sure which one is the ridiculous and which one is the very very challenging...
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