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> The problem is that it's also a money-maker and that means that ...and that means that unlike highly regulated surgeries that are performed my surgery monop

• mdasen 18y ago
  Oh, it's totally true that laser eye surgery has progressed faster and cheapened in price incredibly compared to other surgeries. But it's a ton different from a web 2.0 startup. web 2.0 startups can (pretty much) handle as many customers as want their product. If a million people want to use reddit, it's better than if 100,000 people want to use reddit. On the other hand, if a million people a year want surgeries from Dr. Goodman, it isn't better for him than if, say, 100,000 people per year want surgeries from him since he can't do even that 100,000. So, in web 2.0, everyone can use the best (with variance for preference). In medicine, if we ranked doctors from best to worst, some people would end up on the lower end of the spectrum. Those doctors on the lower end of the spectrum are more desperate for customers (since they don't have a line waiting) and are (therefore) more likely to qualify patients who are ill-suited. Doctors don't scale and therefore not everyone can have the best. Just like any business, those at the bottom are more desperate for customers. In the web 2.0 world, that sometimes manifests itself as lying about features, people can try it out and then defect to a different service. Medicine doesn't provide such an easy situation. /This is why I'm a web programmer and not a doctor ;-)