Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

WhompingWindows wrote: post #194

majani wrote: post #110

As an African, I can't help but think that all this charity to Africa might be contributing to us lagging behind in the world. With charities helping out so much, will the local government ever get their act together and provide these functions of public sanitation like they are supposed to? Or will they keep stealing public health funds in the knowledge that charity will always swoop down to save the day? Charities…

Many politicians the world around would characterize government handouts the same way, government enabling morbid obesity. And yet, is there some fundamental objection you have to educating women or providing mosquito nets? Dying to malaria does not seem a good rock-bottom to let people hit, if we can provide them cheap nets.

Post by 55555 » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #208

majani wrote: post #110

As an African, I can't help but think that all this charity to Africa might be contributing to us lagging behind in the world. With charities helping out so much, will the local government ever get their act together and provide these functions of public sanitation like they are supposed to? Or will they keep stealing public health funds in the knowledge that charity will always swoop down to save the day? Charities…

Your argument is that criminals will stop being criminals if they notice their victims suffering a bit more?

Post by arnau » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 3:54 PM UTC

docbrown wrote: post #40

mindfulplay wrote: post #18

This reminds me of software developer who favor deep, technical, architectural work instead of attractive, "sounds cool on paper" sort of work. To an outsider, the animations look cool but the engine that drives the animation is cooler to software engineers. Point being, this is not something a normal philanthropist would imagine being cool and awesome. This takes someone who actually cares about shit (in this case l…

One thing I always thought fascinating about Gates was his candid relationship with feces. mindfuplay’s comment reminded me of the famous glass of shit water Gates drank from his Omniprocessor project [0]. But within that 2015 article, Gates mentions a long term plan for seweage and shit[1]: >If we can develop safe, affordable ways to get rid of human waste, we can prevent many of those deaths and help more children…

Post by cobbzilla » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

derangedHorse wrote: post #175

majani wrote: post #110

As an African, I can't help but think that all this charity to Africa might be contributing to us lagging behind in the world. With charities helping out so much, will the local government ever get their act together and provide these functions of public sanitation like they are supposed to? Or will they keep stealing public health funds in the knowledge that charity will always swoop down to save the day? Charities…

We don't know if these systems will get better without external interference either. Another post on this page talks about fixing systematic corruption within African countries as being more helpful, but that's a hard problem also. One solution I could think of is a foreign investor investing a lot of money into the campaign of a candidate who isn't corrupt. The caveat of that solution is the perspective that it woul…

Post by kerbalspacepro » Wed, Nov 07, 2018, 4:04 PM UTC

xfactor973 wrote: post #214

Lol it’s called a compost toilet Bill. The technology is already here, it costs almost nothing to construct and use and creates a safe fertilizer at the end of the process. The amount of basic knowledge humanity has forgotten just blows my mind.