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And polio is largely cured from this generation, and vaccines now exist that prevent diseases that once killed infants, and we have cheap and fast internet ever
by mgraczyk 2y ago
And polio is largely cured from this generation, and vaccines now exist that prevent diseases that once killed infants, and we have cheap and fast internet everywhere, ...
This generation of "robber barons" has very clearly done more good for society than any other group of people of the same size, and I can't imagine how anybody who works in tech can not know of the specific good things they have done or be so confused about the bad to believe they are outweighed.
- jmcgough 2y ago> This generation of "robber barons" has very clearly done more good for society than any other group of people of the same size I'd take Jonas Salk, Norman Borlaug, and Marie Curie over Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Benzos.
- mgraczyk 2y agoWell i meant "group" as in an actual group of people who are all doing roughly the same thing at the same time, like the previous generation of robber barons. But even in this case, I could make a pretty strong case that Salk was less important for the eradication of Polio than Gates, and that Curie will likely be less important in the long run than Zuckerberg on healthcare and biosciences, and a weaker but reasonable case that Borlaug will be less impactful on human survivability with increasing population than Musk.
- probablybetter 2y agono. just NO. look at maps of polio proliferation before/after Jonas Salk, the frikkin guy who DISCOVERED/CREATED the polio vaccine, and then look at maps related to Gates work, which, while admirable, bears no comparison from the night-vs-day world of pre-polio-vaccine vs post-vaccine. Wards of people in iron-lung machines staring at mirrors on the ceiling. It was before your time, but this is no excuse for spouting total nonsense.
- gooosle 2y agoYou can't make a case for any of that. But go ahead and try.
- gooosle 2y ago> This generation of "robber barons" has very clearly done more good for society than any other group of people By what metric?
- mgraczyk 2y agoAlmost any? Counterfactual human suffering if they didn't exist, number of lives saved, GDP, mean happiness, mean of bottom 5% happiness, etc
- BlackFingolfin 2y agoWhich robber baron do you consider to be responsible for curing polio?
- mgraczyk 2y agoBill Gates, who contributed around 30% of the total money spent on the world eradication effort so far
- solid_fuel 2y agoSo he didn't create the vaccine, and he didn't provide most of the money spent on eradication, but he did sit down for a nice long dinner with an administration that is now pulling funding from the WHO and other international health organizations. In the meanwhile, the technocrat administration we just got is putting the anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr up as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The progress we have made on eliminating Polio is at risk directly because of actions taken by this crop of billionaires. That is more on Musk and Zuckerberg than Gates, but these people cannot be trusted to use the power and influence they have for anything other than self-enrichment.
- mgraczyk 2y agoWhich do you think is more likely, that Bill Gates sat down with the administration to try to convince Trump to keep funding Gate's life work, or that Gates talked to Trump to end polio funding? Trump bad, has nothing to do with Gates or Zuck. If you blame them for trying to prevent Trump from doing bad things, you should look into what they will benefit from and how they spend their money
- zimpenfish 2y ago> And polio is largely cured from this generation, and vaccines now exist that prevent diseases that once killed infants Well, that depends if RFKjr and his lunatics get control of the HHS[0][1] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/13/rfk-jr-aaron-siri-polio https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/13/rfk-jr-aaron... [1] https://www.protectourcare.org/experts-say-deadly-samoan-measles-outbreak-caused-by-rfk-jr-s-disaster-visit/ https://www.protectourcare.org/experts-say-deadly-samoan-mea...
- probablybetter 2y agoWHAT??? Jonas Salk GAVE the IP for the Polio Vaccine TO THE WORLD FOR FREE! how dare you say that Billionaires gave us these things. you are telling lies.
- mgraczyk 2y agoBill Gates also gave billions of dollars to the world for free, it's just a question of which one is more praiseworthy. I could be convinced Gates was not more impactful than Salk, but he's definitely in the running for top 100 best overall human beings in terms of positive impact on the world, in stark contrast to the claim that tech billionaire have contributed nothing
- gooosle 2y agoWhere did Bill Gates get these billions that he 'gave to the world' ? Did he generate them purely from his genius and benevolence?
- mgraczyk 2y agoWhy is "gave" in scare quotes? Did he not give the money away? And yes, mostly genius and not benevolence.
- gooosle 2y ago'gave to the world' implies the world didn't have this money before gates came along. Which is obviously not true and quite literally impossible.
- mgraczyk 2y agoIn fact the world didn't have this money before. Maybe this is the first time you've encountered the idea that the economy is "positive sum" so think of it like this: Is the value of everything in the world higher or lower than it was 1000 years ago? If it's higher, how did it go up?