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It's disappointing to see colossal amounts of money like this isn't used to address demonstrable human suffering happening all over the world right now. Micros
by khawkins 7y ago
It's disappointing to see colossal amounts of money like this isn't used to address demonstrable human suffering happening all over the world right now. Microsoft could take this money, set up shop in Haiti, and develop over the course of a generation a tech sector in a country whose main export is t-shirts. They might even eventually make enough return to reinvest in other areas and bring the rest of the world up to first world standards.
Instead, this money is going to pool in upper class first world green economies as they use it to buy expensive electric cars, install expensive solar panels, and fund expensive climate change activists. That their efforts might slightly reduce the number of hurricanes in a hundred years is little consolation to the thousands of lives lost every decade in that country to natural disasters and disease, otherwise be preventable if the population wasn't living in shanty towns.
- guscost 7y agoThe same can be said of all the public money going into this stuff year after year. It’s outrageous.
- mc32 7y agoIf you want to see economic progress, first you need a stable and relatively corruption light government. Economic growth will then follow if there is a semi skilled population. After the earthquake in Haiti billions poured in but much of it disappeared into corrupt hands. But, who knows, maybe corporations could run a country better than corrupt politicians —at least as it transforms.
- Zedronar 7y ago> much of it disappeared into corrupt hands Source?
- mc32 7y agoYou can search for this information. Here’s a sample which talks about Chelsea Clinton’s take: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/hillary-clinton-email-213110 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/hillary-clin...
- indiandennis 7y agoNot OP, but https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...
- ben_w 7y agoSolar isn’t expensive any more. Prices have fallen so much it’s now one of the cheapest forms of electricity — the kind of thing someone living in a shanty town might want to install to replace a sooty diesel generator or an easily broken kerosene lamp. And if nobody does anything, in a generation the main export will be refugees.
- skc 7y agoThe devil here is in the details. Solar energy (and you left out, crucially, storage) still isn't feasible for the worlds poor yet, though it is the obvious solution to the problem. My biggest issue with advancements in solar power + storage is that because so much R&D is happening out West, everyone builds for grid tie use cases. Can't help but think we'd be much further along if we assumed the current grid didn't exist at all (which might as well be true for the worlds poor)
- ben_w 7y agoBatteries are also cheap now. Heck, if you’re talking about literal shanty towns, a bag of rocks on a chain attached to a dynamo bolted to the ceiling can store enough energy to be useful.
- Maximus9000 7y agoCould you have said the same thing about going to space many decades ago? Yet, with hindsight, we can see going to space had a huge return on investment.
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- dansimau 7y agoThere is no reason philanthropy cannot be used to tackle multiple issues at once. I'm not sure there is a lot value in deriding one cause over another. We need to address both issues.
- romaaeterna 7y agoA dollar is a dollar. You can spend it on one thing or the other. If you waste it on a solar panel, you don't get to go back and spend it on cake too.
- ben_w 7y agoIf the dollar creates two dollars, it’s not wasted. A dollar spent on PV will generate enough electricity for many cakes.
- romaaeterna 7y agoI just looked up the cost for my home for solar on Google's project Sunroof. It would cost me $14,000 upfront, after the personal tax incentives (tax $$) and some ungodly amount of tax-assisted R&D ($$$), and it will save me $8,000 over 20 years. It looks more like a dollar going into a dumpster fire to me.
- the42thdoctor 7y agoNot if you have or plan to have kids though
- ben_w 7y agoYou’re in the USA? If so, your permit and installation costs are the single largest part of the whole thing. The actual panels and inverters are cheap, utility-scale PV is cheap even in the USA, and even home solar is cheap when the government isn’t getting in your way — my parents and my in-laws in the UK (the entirety of which is north of the entire contiguous USA and which is not known for lacking building regulations) have PV systems which each cost about half your quote and which generate about £1,000/year each. The cost of solar is now about half what they spent.
- chimprich 7y ago> buy expensive electric cars, install expensive solar panels, and fund expensive climate change activists Studies indicate that dealing with the effects of climate change is going to be far more expensive than averting it in the first place. This "expense" is an illusion. > little consolation to the thousands of lives lost every decade in that country to natural disasters and disease Climate change is also going to cause tremendous human misery in the form of floods, fires, increased temperatures, harvest failures, and so on. Places like Haiti are going to be the worst hit.
- matchbok 7y agoThat wouldn't work. Haiti has many other problems than the lack of Microsoft.