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When people criticize 'Silicon-Valley-Types' for only being able to think of technical solutions to social problems, it's exactly this kind of thing they have i

When people criticize 'Silicon-Valley-Types' for only being able to think of technical solutions to social problems, it's exactly this kind of thing they have in mind. Just read this thread - the way medical care is paid for in the US is batshit-insane, injured people not wanting to call an ambulance incase they lose their house - and reads like a history book about european medieval history. The solution is not more apps, it's a proper healthcare system like almost every other developed country.

vemv 9y ago
An alternative ambulance service wouldn't be just an 'app', but an actual entrerprise with various logistical, legal and medical operations and probably hundreds of employees. The US would be a better place with that hypothetical startup. If Obama couldn't successfully reform healthcare long-term (as Trump will repeal it sooner or later), what can regular people do? Let them make that app.
logfromblammo 9y ago
We fix the largest problems that we are permitted to touch. We cannot propose a solution to the ultimate cause, because that would require the representative democracy to elect more scientists, technicians, engineers, and mathematicians to the legislature in lieu of the usual professional politicians, lawyers, corporations managers, and educators. So we work on what we can reach. We cannot create a proper healthcare system from the top down, but we can issue bugfix patches and hope they get adopted upstream. That keeps the system limping along, but never getting quite bad enough for anyone to demand the complete overhaul that it needs. It only looks crazy because the biggest problem any motivated individual can solve is limited either by the amount of investment capital they can attract with their solution, or by the amount of campaign funding they can attract with their solution. So any proposals that threaten profit margins cannot be considered.

vemv 9y ago

An alternative ambulance service wouldn't be just an 'app', but an actual entrerprise with various logistical, legal and medical operations and probably hundreds of employees. The US would be a better place with that hypothetical startup. If Obama couldn't successfully reform healthcare long-term (as Trump will repeal it sooner or later), what can regular people do? Let them make that app.

logfromblammo 9y ago

We fix the largest problems that we are permitted to touch. We cannot propose a solution to the ultimate cause, because that would require the representative democracy to elect more scientists, technicians, engineers, and mathematicians to the legislature in lieu of the usual professional politicians, lawyers, corporations managers, and educators. So we work on what we can reach. We cannot create a proper healthcare system from the top down, but we can issue bugfix patches and hope they get adopted upstream. That keeps the system limping along, but never getting quite bad enough for anyone to demand the complete overhaul that it needs. It only looks crazy because the biggest problem any motivated individual can solve is limited either by the amount of investment capital they can attract with their solution, or by the amount of campaign funding they can attract with their solution. So any proposals that threaten profit margins cannot be considered.