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Poverty-Fighting Startups
11–20 of 147 posts
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#12Is it... a "startup"? Do they make money? Is Propel even a for-profit company?
I don't see why a company has to be profit-seeking to be considered a "startup". But Propel is indeed for-profit.
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#13Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…
>Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial.
Because there is a huge and complex domain of human motivation, appreciation for hard-earned things vs. taking them for granted and so on. USSR tried doing exactly that with the planned economy and trying to distribute the wealth more or less evenly and failed miserably. Mostly because people lost motivation for achievement and started blatantly faking numbers and statistics since the connection between the results of their work and their life quality was completely lost. As someone who survived that crash, I would really hope that SV can learn from others' mistakes rather than repeating them.
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#14Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…
Fundamentally, I do think that focusing on the technology end of the problem, making solving the problem cheaper, is a totally valid way to try to help, especially if you are better at technology than politics.
But I toatally agree that for-profit companies have incentives that can become problematic when their customer base doesn't have anywhere else to turn.
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#15Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…
>Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. Because there is a huge and complex domain of human motivation, appreciation for hard-earned things vs. taking them for granted and so on. USSR tried doing exa…
eh, You can have a very strong welfare state that provides minimal food, shelter, medical care and clothing to everyone who needs it without having a planned economy. They really are different issues.
there's a big difference between a welfare state and full out socialism; the difference is largely about power... Socialisim is about giving the workers control over the means of production. The welfare state is merely about seeing to it that people don't starve.
We're rich enough, in America, at least, that with tax increases, we could provide the minimum for everyone, and pay for it out of the sorts of taxes we pay now (only, of couse, somewhat more)
There was a lot of effort in that direction here and in the UK in the '70s; there was a lot of criticism that the public housing, for instance, wasn't very nice, but what really ended it was the rise of the political movement that backed Thatcher (in the UK) and Reagan (in the US)
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#16Is it... a "startup"? Do they make money? Is Propel even a for-profit company?
> Is it... a "startup"? Do they make money? Is Propel even a for-profit company?
A startup is a newly established business - that is to say, just starting up.
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#17Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…
> I read "we're here to somehow insert fees between you and your food stamp money"
You need to read the article more carefully, it says "But FreshEBT isn't a typical Silicon Valley product."
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#18Propel (and bunch of other ventures) have their genesis at the Blue Ridge Labs.
Blue Ridge Labs focuses on bringing together people who are interested in product, design and engineering to go out and apply tools of empathy and discovery to understand the problems faced by low-income and socially disadvantaged Americans.
For anyone who is at crossroads in their career, I would highly recommend reaching out to @BlueRidgeLabs. I vouch for and support the sincerity of their mission.
Have questions about Blue Ridge Labs? Reach out to @cromulus. Looking to find an engineering position in NYC reach out to @FreshEBT. I am @rksio
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#19>“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. This app has some short-term benefits, but it’s hard to see long-term benefits. What if every government aid program was super easy to sign-up for and instantly check whatever you need. What would change? Less taxes from all the gov workers we’d no longer need?
Less taxes as you point out, and more time for aid recipients to spend improving their lives instead of dealing with bureaucracy.
Re: Poverty-Fighting Startups
#20Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. >“One of my ambitions is to help our users put more food on the table,” says Jimmy Chen, the founder of Propel. His company makes a mobile app called FreshEBT t…
>Fighting poverty is a social and political problem. It is simply a question of will. We have enough wealth on earth to provide food, clothing, and housing to every single human being. Why don't we do it? That's a political question. The technology is trivial. Because there is a huge and complex domain of human motivation, appreciation for hard-earned things vs. taking them for granted and so on. USSR tried doing exa…
An additional problem is one of economic calculation. Mises argued one hundred years ago that a planned economy where the state owns the means of production and arbitrarily sets prices without an open market to determine prices by supply and demand would result in economic waste and shortages. He was largely proven right by the disastrous Soviet experience.
https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/excursion...