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My friend and I built TargetMobi, http://www.targetmobi.com along a similar vein. In Africa, SMS is everywhere and our goal was to help companies and organizations connect with their users via SMS.
Unfortunately, we found zero Angel/VC interest in this and have since pivoted a few times.
I think the overall approach still has potential though.
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Correction: zero tolerance for a system they've spent their entire lives within that never taught them the right way to think about their position in society.
Maybe. This is a tough point. The 'system' obviously sucks but I don't want to skirt personal responsibility. It's the upper-middle class straight white cisgendered male's fault if he doesn't take the time to learn about his privilege. He has the resources, but chooses to ignore it. (Note: I'm not saying the person from the article necessarily fits this description; I'm speaking more generally)
Terms like "champagne socialist" or "bleeding heart liberal" are invoked.
Perhaps it is seen as patronising to the poor because it makes the implication that the poor need the help of upper middle class white people to help them out of their problems?
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At the extreme risk of starting a flame war, why do you seem to posit that he should do that as a moral obligation? (I'm reading that you posit that, perhaps I misinterpreted) If I read that correctly, under what strictures do you interpret reading about the idea of privilege (noting that this word in and of itself has contested and differing meanings) as a moral obligation?
> "why do you seem to posit that he should do that as a moral obligation?" Because otherwise they become tyrants. We're talking about the most powerful, most influential demographic in a particular place, whether that's Western European in the US or Han-Chinese in China. There is a dominant group that gets a tremendous amount of decision-making power, and those in power have the moral obligation of having perspective…
> There is absolutely a moral obligation to seek perspective (cast another, understand one's own privilege), and this goes double if your race/religion/etc grants you power over others.
Again, I ask why[1]. What precisely gives that moral imperative? My readings in history do not suggest to me that this ethical stricture has been a constant throughout history.
[1] 5 Whys, Question Everything, etc. Don't take it personally please.
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Note that its not about getting rich, but about not being broke . A very distinctive difference. Not being broke allows for a good life style. And that's what most of all want.
Unfortunately the economic/political system as we know it isn't good at providing "not being broke" without "being rich".
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At the extreme risk of starting a flame war, why do you seem to posit that he should do that as a moral obligation? (I'm reading that you posit that, perhaps I misinterpreted) If I read that correctly, under what strictures do you interpret reading about the idea of privilege (noting that this word in and of itself has contested and differing meanings) as a moral obligation?
Very good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer. I haven't though about it in terms of it being a moral obligation. My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought. I'm not sure this actually addresses the question you asked though.
If you want to follow up in depth later on (rather than HN threads), my email is in my profile.
My favorite resource about software innovation is David A. Wheeler's list of the most important software innovations.[1] Most of the items on the list are from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and 90s; just one is from the past ten years (Wheeler was at first ambivalent about even adding it). He also makes the point that it is okay not to be innovative, and quotes Linus Torvalds: "People want to hear about the one big idea tha…
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prisoners are kept in jail That's cool, but if you are in the US, given the fairly dumb laws on a lot of things (drugs, mainly), how do you feel about helping to oppress the population? Are you only helping with really violent offenders? insurance claims are processed properly Isn't this just propping up an awful system? Wouldn't it be better to actually try and fix the base system? ~ As for the rest, good work!
...what? I'm not even going to respond to that troll bait first point of yours, but as for the second, please give some insight as to how a programmer in charge of writing insurance claims processing applications can "fix the base system."
Poster said, "I've contributed to keeping prisoners in prison."
This is in no way an inherently good thing--especially given the well-documented clusterfuck that is the judicial system in the US. Have you ever been through the wringer?
I don't think that kudos for helping that system is in order, unless it was specifically something like "I wrote software to help schedule inmate times so that violent offenders and trouble inmates were not put in the same areas at the same time as nonviolent or well-behaved inmates."
As for the second point--look, it's insurance claims. Depending on what the poster did, this ranges from "I helped people get the best claims service from their provider" to "I helped the provider service the bare minimum number of claims." Without more information on what was done, that topic has a lot of room for bad.
"Fix the base system" would be something like "I made a simpler marketplace so that care providers (doctors) can directly bill patients, cheaply and transparently."