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Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

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Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#41
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can but them here already. Just no one does

Where and can you also buy them in Europe? I looked when remodelling my bathroom and couldn't find anything.

https://www.amazon.com/MS920CEMFG

Not sure if that link works but just go on amazon and search “Toto washlet”

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#42
post #4

Has anyone tried to make an SV startup-style company sell Japanese-type toilets in America? I think a lot of people would like them

I have a couple of Toto toilets in my house. They have washlets that fit most of their products. I have one.

I don't mean to overstate this, but it is life-changing. I can't imagine going back to a time when I used only paper and considered that sufficient.

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#43
post #27
post #4

Has anyone tried to make an SV startup-style company sell Japanese-type toilets in America? I think a lot of people would like them

Most bathrooms aren't wired for electricity near the toilet. That aside, you can buy Toto toilets in the US. The fancy ones are north of 4k, but they are available. Cold water sprays are readily available, $60 and a 10 minute installation later.

I have somewhat inexpensive mass-market Toto toilets in my house. I've added a washlet for $400. There's wiring nearby. The warm water is really nice.

Until I die, I won't ever not have a washlet at home.

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#44
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can but them here already. Just no one does

Where and can you also buy them in Europe? I looked when remodelling my bathroom and couldn't find anything.

There were quite a few bathroom companies offering them when we did our bathroom (UK), they're available on eBay too from £40 junk to £1,000+

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#45
post #4

Has anyone tried to make an SV startup-style company sell Japanese-type toilets in America? I think a lot of people would like them

I have a couple of Toto toilets in my house. They have washlets that fit most of their products. I have one. I don't mean to overstate this, but it is life-changing. I can't imagine going back to a time when I used only paper and considered that sufficient.

A friend of mine brought a toilet back from Japan with him when he moved back and I was always in envy. I'm looking at a Toto Neorest 700H right now, it's about $5000. Is that the kind of system you'd recommend or what are you using?

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a couple of Toto toilets in my house. They have washlets that fit most of their products. I have one. I don't mean to overstate this, but it is life-changing. I can't imagine going back to a time when I used only paper and considered that sufficient.

A friend of mine brought a toilet back from Japan with him when he moved back and I was always in envy. I'm looking at a Toto Neorest 700H right now, it's about $5000. Is that the kind of system you'd recommend or what are you using?

A Toto s550e is under $1000 and pretty much has all the feature you ever need, minus auto flushing.

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#47
post #4

Has anyone tried to make an SV startup-style company sell Japanese-type toilets in America? I think a lot of people would like them

I have a couple of Toto toilets in my house. They have washlets that fit most of their products. I have one. I don't mean to overstate this, but it is life-changing. I can't imagine going back to a time when I used only paper and considered that sufficient.

I wanted to get one after visiting Japan, but I realized that it was something that would have to wait until I moved into a place with more than one bathroom, so I could leave a normal toilet in the one guests would use. I just didn’t want to have a conversation about it with every person who visited my home.

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#48

Gates does wonderful things with his philanthropy. I notice that he doesn't invest in any social issues or in politics, even when the politics is directly related (e.g., does he lobby the politicians or try to move the public regarding education funding?). Why not? Is it a policy? Prior generations of philanthropists invested heavily in peace and justice, for example, including the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie En…

Politics is extremely divisive and, even more importantly, is perhaps no longer a major vessel to enact meaningful longterm change. There is of course the issue of one decade's change being overwritten by the next decade's party. But there's something more fundamental. In times past government was able to enact huge changes, because government enacted and enforced policies that directly harmed society. Slavery is the most obvious one. Government worked as an enforcer for slavery and was equally able to end it with little more than a vote and stroke of a pen. But in today's era I think we've started to reach an era of sharply diminishing returns for governmental action because the issues are ones that are less systemic and, in any case, cannot be directly solved by government in any completely clear way.

For instance you mention education. If you poll most people on our state of education in the US the results would have little to nothing to do with reality. And that reality is that we already spend an immense amount on it - more than nearly anywhere in the world. This isn't a proxy for population size, I am referring to cost per student of course. And this also isn't just a proxy for ridiculous university costs. If you look at only education costs outside of university, we are the 5th biggest spender in the world. And similarly this isn't a proxy for private spending with wealthier folks sending their kids to private institutions. If you compare just our public spending on this same group of education, we end up 7th in the world - comparing just our public spending to everywhere else's public + private spending. And as an aside, those costs are all normalized to account for the fact that a dollar goes a lot further in many places than the US - meaning we are indeed comparing apples to apples, by multiplying other nations' nominal spending.

All numbers mentioned here from the OECD data [1]. They list the private/public spending in GDP relative ratios which does silly things like put South Africa and Costa Rica as the world leaders in education, but you can convert those figures into something useful. For instance in the US our GDP relative share of public spending on education outside of university is 3.207. Our GDP relative share of private spending on education outside of university is 0.307. Therefore of all our spending on non-university education, 3.207/(3.207+0.307) = 91.3% is public. You can now take this and apply it to our gross spend on non-university education ($12,424.3 dollars per student) to see that we publicly spend 12423.3 * .913 = $11,342 per student per year on education outside of university - which leads to our public spending being higher than every other nation's, excepting 6, public+private spending

The point of this is that most people think that we just need to spend more money on education and everything would be dandy. No, our problems are more fundamental and require solutions that are in no way obvious. Bill Gates, though I do not particularly agree with his direction, is working towards trying to create these very sort of solutions. And these solutions, should he be correct, are what actually have the possibility of enacting real longterm change.

[1] - https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#49

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…

Western toilets seem to work reasonably well with septic tanks in rural areas. Those don't involve sewer lines or treatment plants.

Re: Gates Foundation spent $200M funding toilet research

#50

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…

> because they require a massive infrastructure of sewer lines and treatment plants

How do you think economies grow? Job creation at this scale has to be funded out of tax receipts and bonds. The problem is managing the corruption (note: one must assume there are corrupt actors. The trick is managing them).

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