7 ms·

1. Wiping out major diseases - brings tears to my eyes knowing that GF, Carter and other foundations will permanently get rid of so many horrible diseases. 2.

• onion2k 12y ago
  * If US can grow 159 bushels of corn per acre, and African countries are currently at 29, why is the 15 year goal for African countries only 48 bushels per acre instead of somewhere close to the US?* Irrigation probably presents the biggest barrier, especially in the Northern equatorial regions of Africa. Once you're utilizing 100% of the water available you can't grow anything else.
  • colechristensen 12y ago
    Your average American farmer has hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in capital equipment, spends a sizable portion of output revenue on inputs (fertilizers, pest control, seeds, insurance, etc.) and is supported by university extension programs, government subsidies and minimum price supports, and on and on and on. The lack of industry to produce inputs and equipment comparable to what is available here will take decades to even close. Sure you could get _an_ African farmer to American level yields, but that's different than what essentially is economic reorganization for the _majority_ of workers in African economies. Also, remember this isn't an agile software project that can go through an iteration a day. You plant once a year, you harvest once a year; an entire continent doubling yields in only 15 iterations is pretty good.
    • Shivetya 12y ago
      Property rights play a big part here. Why work to improve something when there is not much guarantee it will be yours once improved? Many areas of the world where yields are low suffer not only form lack of money and technology but property rights are likely as significant.
      • thenipper 12y ago
        Property rights are key. One stat I read (that I can't remember where) said that about 70% of the people in the world don't have a formal title to the land they live on. A buddy of mine actually has a start-up that focuses on that called Suyo: http://suyo.co/ http://suyo.co/
  • marincounty 12y ago
    I heard the Gates foundation is still giving out Monsanto seed to African farmers. They can plant one season--then they can't afford to replant. Maybe things have changed? I know Warren Buffet tried to reason with Gates, but unsure if Monsanto is still involved? On another note, I hope someone developes a better condom--not just for use in Africa, but for use everywhere. We have enough people?
• rahimnathwani 12y ago
  > There is no way for me to immediately send $100 to anyone in the US without resorting to BTC or wire-transfers. Paypal? Venmo?
  • Swizec 12y ago
    Neither of those is immediate. It still takes 3 days to cash out. But apparently you can use Western Union to send actual cold hard cash anywhere immediately. I know, I was surprised too, wouldn't know if my girlfriend didn't work there.
    • k-mcgrady 12y ago
      I can withdraw from PayPal and have it in my bank account instantly at no charge.
      • marincounty 12y ago
        I waited 21 days after selling a item on Ebay. I hadn't used the account in awhile, but 21 days is hostage. I'm glad they are splitting it up.
        • k-mcgrady 12y ago
          I think they have some weird security rules. The 21 day thing happened to my brother after his first ebay sale. He phone them though and they released it immediately after verifying a few things.
    • rahimnathwani 12y ago
      There are many services of this kind. Some (like Western Union, MoneyGram and Ria) have agents all over the world. Others are specific to certain corridors, often serving a specific diaspora. There's also the hawala system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala). None of these options are free or close to free.
  • grecy 12y ago
• k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "There is no way for me to immediately send $100 to anyone in the US without resorting to BTC or wire-transfers." Not sure specifically what you mean by wire transfers but in the UK I can open my banks app (or websites), enter the sort code and account number of a person and instantly transfer them money from my account for no charge. Is this not possible in the US?
  • chime 12y ago
    Correct. There is a 2-3 day delay.
    • k-mcgrady 12y ago
      Interesting. That used to be the case here but it changed 4-5 years ago. I think there was a law brought in in Europe to require it. It may be related to this[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
      • BSousa 12y ago
        SEPA payments (for countries that are part of the Euro) should take no more than 24 hours (weekends/local holidays not withstanding). For other currencies, it can take up to 3 work days. (assuming all the transfer details are correct and requires no manual operation)
        • k-mcgrady 12y ago
          Interesting. I'm able to make instant transfers within the UK (also on weekends) and I believe throughout Europe. There is still the issue of other currencies but I believe the original discussion was about sending money to other people within the same country (the US) so our system surpasses the criteria as it works between around 30 different countries.
          • BSousa 12y ago
• DasIch 12y ago
  > 3. Mobile banking - Wish US would get on with it too. All the problems he listed apply to the poor in US too. That seems to be a problem of incompetence and politics and not of technology though. I remember a few friends in school messaging each other by making 1ct money transfers to each other with their banks mobile app.
• thejosh 12y ago
  Always feel lucky here in Australia you can transfer anyone money via bank transfer for free..
  • deanclatworthy 12y ago
    Within Australia. You probably can't do international transfers for free. The same local transfers system exists here in the Nordics too :)
    • davidw 12y ago
      Italy too, and Italy's banks are not exactly on the forefront of world banking any more. In the US, it's not so easy, at least that's my recollection.
    • muser 12y ago
      It can be a AU$24 flat fee plus potentially any conversion fees for an intl transfer.
  • markba 12y ago
    In my experience it's only near-instant if it's to the same bank. ANZ to CBA always seems to be overnight, for example.
• ryannevius 12y ago
  3. Square Cash?
• stinos 12y ago
  2. African crop yield - If US can grow 159 bushels One factor (apart from soil type/access and amounts of water/available tech) might also be this: maybe Gates is considering the environmental impact of growing those 159 bushels just isn't worth it. Without the heavy use of pesticides, fertilizers etc the yield would be lower, but the impact on nature would be much more reasonable and sustainable.
• 7952 12y ago
  2. African crop yield - If US can grow 159 bushels A lot of African farmed land is heavily populated. In a small area you can have hundreds of farmers with tiny fields that have to support numerous people. That makes agriculture and the environment more of a social issue than a technical one. It is hard to imagine this in the west where the countryside has very few people and is farmed almost exclusively by machines. In this context yield is less important as a metric compared to how the land is delivering nutrional value. If the goal is to give local people a healthy diet then western food technoloogy can be very inappropriate.
• simonebrunozzi 12y ago
  #3 will be solved by Stellar.org (at least, that's what I believe).
• speleding 12y ago
  "Wiping out major diseases" This is great, obviously, but overpopulation is a huge problem and regrettably that problem will now get worse. The predictions for the maximum population expected at mid-century have recently been adjusted upwards. Resources will be depleted ever more quickly if poor people get as rich as Bill predicts. I have no answer. Surely we cannot withhold medecine from poor people to prevent overpopulation. But two decades from now overpopulation will be the major worry on everybody's mind if this trend continues. Edit: The assumption of negative growth once countries hit a certain level of development/stability/richness has recently stopped being true [1], I probably should have mentioned that in my first comment 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growt...
  • vec 12y ago
    This[1] suggests that fighting poverty is a pretty effective way to fight overpopulation. Most rich countries are reproducing well below replacement rates, and as poor countries become rich their average fertility reliably plummets. There are number of theories as to why, but one of the more compelling ones is that peoples' relationship to their children changes when they can be reasonably certain that all of those children will survive to adulthood. If that's correct, then public health initiatives may provide an even more direct impact on wide-scale population control. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox
  • henrikschroder 12y ago
    It turns out that most countries go into negative growth once they hit a certain level of development/stability/richness. The solution to the problem is therefore, obviously, to ensure that all countries reach this level. I remain a perpetual technological optimist, we'll solve this problem as well. Btw, it's very hard not to read your comment like "wouldn't it be better for everyone if all these poor people just died off...?"
    • speleding 12y ago
      I really do not want to come across as a proponent of genocide, but I do not know how to phrase it any better (not my first language sorry)
• zb 12y ago
  > If US can grow 159 bushels of corn per acre, and African countries are currently at 29, why is the 15 year goal for African countries only 48 bushels per acre instead of somewhere close to the US? And getting yields to that point has come at the cost of an environmental and social catastrophe in the US. It's also uneconomically expensive - though it's easy not to notice because the government pays junk food companies to buy the excess and feed it to us at ultra-low prices. Why on earth would you want to inflict that on Africa too?
  • stainednapkin 12y ago
    GF doesn't care. Their main goal is to ensure the endowment performs as expected.
    • stainednapkin 12y ago
      Is this criticism facile? In what ways is it false? http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critique http://techrights.org/wiki/index.php/Gates_Foundation_Critiq...
• clu3 12y ago
  #4:"global education" I agree with you completely that KA is far from a "global" player. It's interesting you mentioned Vietnam there because I have actually been building a kind of KA clone here in Vietnam for the last ~2 years or so. And here's my analysis when I started it. - A very large percentage of Vietnamese students wouldn't be able to understand KA's videos because of their English proficiency. - Even if the content was translated & subtitled, the videos' topics were in a way "foreign" to most of the students, especially the K1-K12's videos - Other players like Udacity, Coursera ,... mainly focused on specific topics and that will be more relevant to Vietnamese students/workers, say software developers. But again, it's only relevant to those students with pretty good understanding of their field's terminologies in English. Those students are the minority. - Say, if I were to start a trello's clone, I would have little chance against trello because most of Vietnamese would be able to use trello with out any problems, so yeah, they might prefer trello. So starting a KA clone would be "safer". And on top of that, I've always been passionate about software & education & English language, so I started it. I started with English courses, which I thought were what the Vietnamese students would need most in their career later in life. So in case anyone thinking of making a KA clone like me, please read on. It's not an easy journey at all, especially when your resources are limited. Building the platform AND the content at the same time is real tough. It's not easy to convince good (English) teachers to go online and give lessons. Giving lessons offline is still fairly lucrative for good English teachers. Or they are shy acting in front of the camera and going to be seen by "everyone". Or they are not passionate enough a teacher. Or they simply didn't believe in us. I haven't been successful yet, still struggling but the journey's been great and I'm really proud of what we've built: a stable platform (has most of the features from KA or udacity), found 2 young passionate English teachers and together we've built a few English courses. So yes, that's my startup journey so far. The final results? 2015 will tell, right now we're running a little short of cash but I'm hopeful. Sometimes I just wish I was Salman Khan and met "that" investor, Bill Gates. Gates' note on online education is exactly what I've been thinking as well: It is still at an early stage and improvising for maybe 10 years to come.