
Bill Gates: Capitalism means male baldness gets more funding than malaria - dsego
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-03/14/bill-gates-capitalism
======
api
Yes, and a casino is more profitable than a hospital, and "The best minds of
my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads, that sucks."
(Jeff Hammerbacher, Facebook.)

Communism is dead, socialism is dead, fascism is dead, god is dead, and now
market fundamentalist capitalism is dying.

Of course all these things still have their True Believers, but as time goes
on the ranks of those true believers dwindle and it becomes increasingly
difficult to find serious and widely educated thinkers among them.

This is interesting. Ideology with a capital I is a big part of how human
beings model and conceptualize the world. I think what we're seeing is that
our cognitive modeling capabilities have limits. Our models break down. It
honestly reminds me of the trends that sweep through the computer programming
world: object oriented, aspect oriented, functional, MVC, late binding, strong
typing, weak typing, multiparadigm, templates, and so on... all work well for
a while and then show their weaknesses.

P.S. The big thing that killed market fundamentalism for me was doing a stint
in business consulting and seeing what the average rich person actually is: a
glorified street hustler. I was once a bit of a Randian... it was a real "the
emperor has no clothes" moment. (I can think of a few rich folks who remind me
of Rand heroes... a very, very, very few. I don't think I would run out of
fingers. Elon Musk would be at the top of the list. Oh, but wait, his
enterprises are quasi-philanthropic ventures...)

~~~
smokeyj
I feel that Gate's comment about curing baldness is a testament to the
efficacy of the marketplace. Markets only represent what the people want, and
I guarantee you that more people want to cure baldness than malaria. Bill is
noticing a problem with _people_ , and the markets reflect that.

The nice part about markets is they can adapt very quickly. If we were to
convince enough people malaria was worth curing, we could do it! There's no
rule to a marketplace that says you can't.

I see two roads you can go down in solving this problem. We can _convince_ the
public that a cause is worth investing in, or we can _force_ the public to
support a cause (by means of a State actor or other monopoly on violence).
Personally, I think historical evidence proves forcing people to do anything
is unsustainable and counterproductive. Just one guys opinion.

~~~
brazzy
> I guarantee you that more people want to cure baldness than malaria.

You are so very, very wrong. More _rich_ people want to cure baldness than
malaria, because pretty much all rich countries are in climates where malaria
can't thrive.

How many people do you think care more about their thinning hair than an
illness that can kill their children?

~~~
rdouble
The USA has ideal conditions for malaria. Washington DC was a giant malarial
swamp at one point.

~~~
illuminate
Florida has an abundance of skeeters, but they do not test positive for
malaria.

~~~
rdouble
Yes but that was not always the case. Malaria was endemic to North America and
existed from Florida all the way up through Minnesota. The CDC was formed as
the center for malaria control. I was responding to the point that "pretty
much all rich countries" are in areas with climates not conducive to malaria.
There are at least a half dozen rich countries that once were endemic to
malaria. USA, Hong Kong, Australia, Italy, Singapore, etc.

------
jerf
It's not "capitalism", it's humanity. Governments do not magically make
perfectly rational allocations of funds either. For instance, see
[http://www.csulb.edu/~acarter3/pdfs/carter-nguyen-
BMCPublicH...](http://www.csulb.edu/~acarter3/pdfs/carter-nguyen-
BMCPublicHealth2012=cancer-funding-analysis.pdf) for a staggeringly complete
overview of the government cancer money allocation, including measurement by
multiple different possible metrics. (My compliments to the chefs on that
paper.)

~~~
jbooth
Of course they don't, but then nobody argues that.

You can find a _ton_ of people who will argue that capitalism quote 'magically
makes perfectly rational allocations of funds'.

~~~
jerf
I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone claim that capitalism guarantees "perfectly
rational" allocation of _charity_. More _efficient_ charity I've seen argued,
but not rationally allocated charity.

If no system in use anywhere is making rational allocations, it's misleading
to try to name one as the problem. (And it's the sort of misleading that leads
people to solve the wrong problem, so it's not harmless, either.)

~~~
damoncali
_If no system in use anywhere is making rational allocations..._

I would go further and say that no system _can_ make rational allocations
because definitions of 'rational' vary quite radically.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I would go so far as to say that people who worry about the dangers of
unfriendly superoptimizer intelligences need to look at the massively
distributed unfriendly superoptimizer running on the abstracted meatware of
human relationships and conveniently labeled "capitalism".

~~~
jeremyjh
Well you can say that about many problems that we actually have today. That
does not necessarily mean that UFAI is not the greatest long-term existential
threat. I am not saying it is, but the SIAI sees it that way while recognizing
that a lot of money and energy should go into solving problems we actually
have today. But does that mean absolutely no energy or money should be spent
on unlikely existential threats?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Quite to the contrary. I'm pointing out that while a bunch of people choose to
worry about potential threats in the future, the exact kind of threat they
worry about is _already here, and actively destroying the world and ruining
lives._ The prophecies are all true, you could say, they're just coming true
_right now_ in a way that the worrying prophets don't recognize because _they
themselves_ , insofar as they favor capitalism, are participating in the
damage.

When I first realized this, the irony kind of threw me for a giggling fit.

------
scotch_drinker
And breast cancer gets more funding than pancreatic cancer even though
pancreatic cancer kills about everyone who gets it because, you know, the
boobies.

As far as malaria is concerned, DDT turns out to be real effective at killing
mosquitoes, the major problem in the developing world of LOTS of infectious
diseases. But those of us in the developed world got more concerned with the
eagles and stuff and essentially go out of our way to keep DDT from being used
even though it's use in the developing world would literally save tens of
thousands of human lives. The governments of the developed world did that, not
capitalism.

It's a grey world out there and while it's much easier to get clicks with
"male baldness gets more funding than malaria so capitalism doesn't work",
it's not really very helpful in actually fixing things.

~~~
speeder
Also I would like to note that prostate cancer exist in the same amounts as
breast cancer, and has much less research funding...

And there are some nasty politics related to that, including prostate cancer
researchers being labelled "misogynists" or "patriarchalists" just because
they called our that breast cancer has more funding.

~~~
objclxt
It's a little more nuanced than that. 1.47% of women aged 40 will develop
breast cancer within ten years, but only 0.34% of men aged 40 will develop
prostate cancer over a similar time period (according to the CDC risk
statistics).

0.01% of 30 year old men will develop prostate cancer within ten years, as
opposed to 0.44% for women/breast cancer. That's a _huge_ difference.

One of the reasons there is more funding for breast cancer is that it often
manifests itself earlier, meaning the benefits of treating it in terms of
years saved is much greater.

------
speeder
I know it might sound evil.

But the market still does not reflect what people want?

Most people don't have malaria, they don't care about malaria, and they will
only care if it affects them.

It is not that capitalism is evil regarding that, but why a person living in
Japan for example will care if someone half planet away that have zero
interaction with him will die?

Now suppose that farmers that make your food are plagued with some disease...
This would make your food expensive, and this would make you want to heal
them, so they make your food cheap again.

What happens today, is that the news about the world are faster than the
economic interactions, you feel pity for people in blasted places, but you
don't need them, most people don't need them, so most people won't care for
them. Now tell me, if someone had asked for donations to do more research on
the cancer that killed Steve Jobs, I am sure lots of people would help, not
because they like Steve Jobs or because it is noble to do so, but because they
like what he did.

Face it, even collectivist humans are still thinking about themselves, humans
either think about themselves only (the ultimate individualism) or about their
immediate community.

Few people care about a person with no genetic relation to you, that live half
planet away, and have no economic interaction with you, either as buyer or
seller.

~~~
api
The market does excel at giving people what they want. That's not a feature.
It's a bug.

"If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse." -
Henry Ford (possibly apocryphal, but probably true)

Markets pander. They do not _elevate_. I do not want what I want. I want
things that are so much better than what I want that I have not imagined them
yet.

Think about when you see a movie or read a book. Isn't it boring if someone's
already told you the plot? You want to be surprised, and you're usually
disappointed if things turned out the way you expected them to.

Of course, markets do have virtues. They excel at solving multi-dimensional
resource allocation problems in the short term, and they excel at taking new
things and delivering them to customers. Big science bureaucracies and such
are good at discovering and inventing, but they suck at _shipping_. The
"pirates of Silicon Valley" invented little, but they shipped.

~~~
1123581321
Markets excel at giving people what they want in the long term, too. For
example, the Henry Ford you quoted built a car company that became one of the
most successful in the world. There is nothing about markets that prevent
entrepreneurs from selling innovative products and it happens all the time.
Entrepreneurs creating new things and then selling them is so common that on
Hacker News, people like Steve Blank and Eric Ries have made names for
themselves encouraging entrepreneurs to listen to the market even just a
little bit.

------
venus
These two issues are nigh incomparable. One is a simple medical cure for rich
first world country people. Well, not simple, but simple to sell if you've got
the answer.

Malaria, on the other hand, is not a product or an answer to a research
problem. It's a symptom of - basically - bad government in certain parts of
the world. We're not looking for a cure because there is no cure, or we're not
interested in using the only cure we do know of - recolonialisation. That's
the only cure which might work within 10 years.

All of these issues that come under the umbrella term of "poor people
problems" are of this category. They're actually bad society/government
problems, and they're a devil to fix, and simply throwing money at the problem
arguably just makes it worse.

So we do what we can - slowly, slowly, carefully try to help them build a
better society and a better class of living for their citizens. And it does
seem to work, kind of, slowly.

~~~
Ygg2
What!? Recolonisation? What a stupid thing to say. That's like solving
someone's money problem by giving them cheap credits they can never return. Or
solving thirst by drinking sea water. Colonisation leads to conflict, which
leads to Decolonisation, which returns them back where they started only they
wasted both just time and sometimes people's lives.

Want to help them? Look at their native populace and find outliers (people
that have least amount of malaria), then analyze what these people do that
reduces their contact with malaria, and spread those methods to other people.
If those methods are successful spread them, if not go back to start of
paragraph. Rinse, repeat.

~~~
venus
Since you speak English, you were almost certainly born in a colonised
country. Yes, it can indeed go badly. And if you had thought for 10 seconds
before typing your outraged reply, you can probably think of a few cases where
it has gone well.

Ironically, your "solution" requires either being, or having the cooperation
of, the government in the affected territory, so you're actually agreeing with
me.

~~~
Ygg2
You seem to be using a different definition of colonization of state than what
I considered nominal i.e. maintaining power structures that are closely
aligned to the colonizing force or transferring people to create such power
structures. Of the top my head, I can't name a single one, I can however name
several botched attempts at colonization.

My "solution" doesn't require much cooperation, other than having a NGO and
government tolerance of such NGO. IF NGO count as colonization than
colonization is pretty meaningless.

~~~
chii
Australia was a colony before it became a country. it turned out pretty well.

------
tezza
This is straight out of "Idiocracy" !

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/quotes>

Narrator: The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate.
Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in
evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on
conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.

~~~
arrrg
Idiocracy is such a stupid movie. Worst: People take it seriously. As in: As
if it actually had some sort of meaningful or true message (even in satirical
form). That’s just sad.

~~~
danielweber
Before someone posts "releveant XKCD,"[2] I'd like to head it off by asking
what XKCD thinks is wrong about Idiocracy. Are people with higher IQ really
having more kids, unlike the movie says, or is the Flynn Effect[1] pushing IQs
up _despite_ people with higher IQ having less kids?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect>

[2] <http://xkcd.com/603/>

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Having kids or not having kids is mostly an issue of:

* Money/class * Laws and social status * Time-to-adulthood for your culture

Educated, middle-class people in Western countries have stopped having kids
_en masse_ largely because the first and last factors on that last have risen,
_massively_. It now takes large amounts of time and money for educated,
middle-class parents to raise a child to their own level (ie: an educated,
middle-class adult), and the process has extremely many points of potential
failure. It's often not even likely enough to succeed; for instance, if you
live somewhere with bad schools or need your entire 20s to establish your own
career before you can afford to feed a child.

~~~
xyzzy123
Aww it's pretty cheap to feed a child, but raising them in a socially
acceptable way for your cohort might be expensive.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Minimally feed one? Yes. Feed, clothe and care for them "properly", so that
measures of their total health (like for example, their height) wind up in
strong greater-than-or-equal correlation with parents who are already
decently-off? Takes a bunch of effort.

~~~
xyzzy123
I think we're saying the same thing except that you believe it's more
expensive to make sure kids have shoes and aren't stunted than I do.

> Takes a bunch of effort.

100% with you on that one.

------
jlank
It also means that some people (like Gates), that greatly succeed in a
capitalist society, who has never been personally affected by Malaria (that I
know of), can allocate money, awareness, and research towards a solution.

~~~
freyr
Gates has never been personally affected by male baldness either (that I know
of). I wonder if he'd make the comparison if he was one of the millions of
sufferers of m.b. We need to find a cure, now.

~~~
arrrg
Hey, fellow “sufferer” here. (And a young one: visibly started when I was
23/24, now I’m 25 and it’s totally obvious.)

No, we do not need to find a cure. Sure, it would be nice if there were one,
but that surely ranks far below curing Malaria. Baldness is a minor
inconvenience. It doesn’t kill people, it doesn’t make people sick,
unproductive or reduces their lifespan.

Personal note: whiney bald people who act as if baldness were some sort of
serious ailment are the worst.

(I’m not sure whether you are serious or just joking. I have read bald people
write like you, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you were serious.)

------
scythe
I guess I get to be the guy to defend hair research. The reason this gets so
much attention is that androgenic alopecia is linked to metabolic syndrome.
This also means it is linked to, for example, polycystic ovary syndrome and...
heart disease and diabetes.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgenic_alopecia#Male_homolo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgenic_alopecia#Male_homologue_to_PCOS)

Yes, really. The fact that it's [alopecia] linked to some of the leading
causes of death in the developed world _might_ help to explain some of the
research money.

Of course that doesn't mean he isn't still essentially _right_ that malaria
deserves to get more money. This still, of course, reflects an implicit
difference of focus between rich people and poor people. Rich people have
money and they spend it on themselves, not others -- but it [the research
funding] isn't just an outgrowth of simple vanity.

Also, the reason we have treatments rather than cures is that the cure is
horrifying. AA is caused by -- on a simple chemical level -- androgens. Read:
testosterone. Finasteride et al. inhibit them. You want a cure: cut your balls
off, that's the cure.

~~~
drpgq
I wonder how much baldness research actually does go on, since the two main
drugs weren't discovered by researchers working on baldness?

------
bjhoops1
The fact is that the Private Sector solves problems exclusively for people who
can pay for them.

In other words, how useful the Private Sector is to you is a direct function
of your income. The Public Sector may be inefficient and costly, but if you
don't have money, it's the only Sector that gives a shit about you.

Which is why it infuriates me to see invariably affluent, educated
professionals preaching the Gospel of Free Markets and Small Government to the
shiftless masses, with their petty concerns like Health Insurance. Why can't
they just _buy_ anything they need?

Conservative/Libertarian types like to pontificate about how the 47% will
always vote for policies which take from the Randian Supermen (which they
fancy themselves) to distribute to the Moochers, yet they fail to recognize
how easy it is for someone with an income in the top 10% to dismiss the Social
Welfare programs which they will never themselves be in need of as "wasteful
spending". The Hypocrisy!

In Software Development, we like to say that to a man with a hammer,
everything looks like a nail. The experienced developer knows that different
tools have different uses, and does not get caught up in holy wars advocating
for her favorite design pattern or algorithm. I wish that people would look at
the public/private sector debate with that kind of maturity - the Public and
Private sectors are well suited for some issues, and poorly suited for others.
The question is to determine which is the better fit for a given scenario. To
reflexively advocate for either Private or Public solutions in every scenario
is foolish, like the undergraduate Comp Sci student who just discovered
recursion and wants to solve every problem that way.

Let's try to move past Ideology and on to Problem Solving.

~~~
crusso
_Which is why it infuriates me to see invariably affluent, educated
professionals preaching the Gospel of Free Markets and Small Government to the
shiftless masses, with their petty concerns like Health Insurance. Why can't
they just buy anything they need?_

Your understanding of their motivations is deficient. You seem intelligent,
maybe you could spend some time understanding their argument. If you do
understand their argument, why misstate it?

It's not so much they think, "Why can't they just buy anything they need?".
It's that they (we) think, "These masterminds who lie by telling voters that
they can set up this magical one-size-fits-all healthcare system and work it
efficiently are just trying to grab power and votes for themselves. It's a
horrible idea to set up yet another governmental dependency that is doomed to
fail like all the others. Already, the system will cost triple what we were
told. We have seen that 'You can keep your own insurance' was a lie. It
contains numerous hidden taxes and costs. When will we ever learn?"

~~~
bjhoops1
I'll admit to setting up a bit of a straw man here. I am probably to quick to
do so because for most of my own life I was a conservative/libertarian type. I
know that many of the points, arguments and concerns of this group are valid
(like your concerns above). For instance, the cycle of dependence on
government is a very real, sad problem (as noted here -
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-
pro...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-
from-a-childs-illiteracy.html)).

My first point is that there is a definite tendency, especially in the more
extreme right, to 1) make a knee-jerk reaction any time a solution involving
government is proposed, 2) hold up private sector solutions as inherently
superior to anything the public sector does.

Second, I wish to point out the plank in the eyes of the affluent who seek to
destroy programs that cater to the disadvantaged, while simultaneously
accusing those who vote for social programs of mooching off of their heroic
economic efforts.

It's fine that you have the Left and Right starting with different default
answers to problems, but both need to recognize that their "pet" solution
(public/private) is not always the best one in a given situation. In a perfect
world, the two sides would engage in a civil debate, considering data or even
precedent in other nations facing similar issues, and come to a reasonable
conclusion. Maybe some day. :)

~~~
crusso
Well said. I don't see much consensus happening soon with all the vitriol
being thrown about and a lack of even being able to agree on simple things
like whether or not a national debt the size of our GDP is a bad thing.

But we can hope.

------
hugh4life
As someone who has just started balding, I have to cry bullshit on this.

The only two medical treatments for male pattern baldness were found by
accident... Minoxidil was created to treat blood pressure issues and
Finasteride was created for prostate issues.

~~~
sauravc
I'm sorry for your loss, but how does it make you an expert on how much
funding is given to malaria vs male pattern balding research?

~~~
prodigal_erik
When billg says "if you are working on male baldness or other things you get
an order of magnitude more research funding" is he only counting the
unfruitful research into baldness, or is he also counting the blood pressure
and prostate research that _accidentally_ led to baldness treatments?

------
grantismo
It seems like the value of a human life should be greater (than solving male
baldness) in financial terms in addition to humanist terms over the long time
period. Wouldn't it make more sense for Gates to make a capitalist argument
for why investing in malaria research should be more profitable than investing
in male baldness?

~~~
CodeCube
But that's the problem ... it's not, or at least is very difficult to convince
the average person of it. If you're a middle aged dentist in Wyoming making
$127k ([http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Dentist-Salary-Details-
Ca...](http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Dentist-Salary-Details-Casper-
WY.aspx)), what are you more likely to spend your money on ... large donations
to malaria research, or a monthly payment to the hair club for men so you can
look better and try to have an affair with the hot dental assistant?

That may be a very jaded view of what the average person would do, but tell me
it's wrong.

~~~
guard-of-terra
You can't compare that. You can't compare a person spending on themself versus
a person donating to a cause.

Or else you'll make a suggestion that we all move to slums because it's not
fair that we get to live in an actual house when not everyone can afford that.

------
JumpCrisscross
Male baldness occurs late in life - high value individuals have had a chance
to accumulate wealth. Malaria hits early, before potential earnings have
accumulated. Though it hits poor people, the potential lifetime excess incomes
of malaria victims should rival that of males willing to spend on baldness.
Thus, we have an issue of time horizons - finance knows how to solve this!

A coalition of African governments could create an X Prize for a malaria cure,
committing to a certain level of expenditure, e.g. 30% of the population
within 10 years, for a cure or vaccine that meets certain efficacy and cost
hurdles. Theoretically, taxes on the salvaged incomes would pay for the safety
net - this presupposes a reasonable level of productivity. A coalition willing
to levy a conditional tax on its population for when a cure meeting certain
efficacy and cost hurdles becomes available should also qualify for some sort
of multilateral backstop, thus increasing the probability of the "prize" being
paid.

Adam Smith in _The Wealth of Nations_ did not speak about the economy alone,
but of the political economy. Talking about capitalism absent the institutions
that frame the market is vacuous. Philanthropy is a good balm, but I reject
that malaria is immune to the vectors which are fighting male baldness.

------
Shivetya
It also means there are more chances for individuals to have the wherewithal
to step in and correct the deficiencies they perceive in their life and the
lives of those around them.

------
cryptonector
He's wrong. The lack of capitalism where malaria abounds is the reason that
malaria gets little funding (assuming that's even so; I've not checked).

If you want to improve the lot of people, give them capitalism.

Bill Gates is a great example of the aphorism "trust capitalism, not
capitalists". He's a capitalist, but he himself does not believe in
capitalism. It's like the quip about Karl Popper's Open Society and its
Enemies: "by one of its enemies". Gates lacks the authority on this subject
that his success would appear to lend him. Beware!

------
zosima
Yes, this is an interesting effect of capitalism: locally significant but
globally quite irrelevant issues gets more resources allocated to them than
globally significant but not locally sensible investments.

That's of course bad. The immediate alternative: government allocates funds to
locally insignificant and because of prestige, buy-in and general politics,
eventually globally worthless investments, is also not very attractive.

Actually, one may see Bill Gates as an example of why capitalism is
advantageous. Being allowed to amass a significant portion of wealth, _he_ can
now choose to spend it on efforts _he_ considers good. As long as his interest
is to use _his_ money for purposes he considers the greater good, the money
will certainly have a greater effect than government's spending of the same
resources would.

Think what you will of the Malaria problem. But I think that giving larger
amounts of resources to certain individuals (just kings) is one of the most
efficient ways of allocating resources. Now, the main problem with modern
capitalism is this: Why do so few just kings arise from the very wealthy? Most
very rich seem incapable of creating or living by any sentiment or value-
system that goes beyond their own self-indulgence. Why is that? And how to
make a system where the people that rise create value and values?

~~~
chii
perhaps having a sense of morals and ethics means you end up not being as
ruthless and thus less likely to earn the big bucks.

------
eli_gottlieb
Well yeah. That's why you're never supposed to have pure, unalloyed
capitalism, any more than you want pure and unalloyed _anything_.

Monoculture always leads to death.

------
matterhorn
Capitalism also means DDT, which kills mosquitoes that are vectors for
malaria. However, statist intervention bans DDT and allows mosquito
populations to thrive, thus killing large numbers of people in places like
Gambia where...wait a minute! Places like Gambia where malaria rates are in
free-fall! And why? Because of the use of insecticide treated netting...(kinda
makes you wonder what kind of drop in malaria rates could be achieved through
DDT, huh?)

See:
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081030203243.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081030203243.htm)

So, socialism and enviro-wacko statist intervention gets people killed by
malaria through bans on insecticides, which turn out to be the most effective
counters to malaria.

------
fghh45sdfhr3
What I find interesting is that malaria gets less funding because the
countries with malaria are so poor. And they are poor because of their
governments are bad.

And if a country with malaria suddenly started to grow quickly, it itself
would also quickly solve its malaria problem.

So what do charities do? They fund malaria cures, not government reform. They
fund the treatment of symptoms, not the root cause.

And why don't we fund the root cause? It turns out it may well be much harder
than curing malaria. How do you un-corrupt a thoroughly corrupt government?

And Europe has a horrific colonial history with the developing world,
especially Africa. First worlders attempting to dictate what and how 3rd world
leaders should do would be embarrassingly reminiscent of colonialism. And here
embarrassing means leader might lose the perceived power which keeps them in
office.

And lastly donor countries tend to have laws against corruption which would
punish charities for paying off foreign leaders. Even if they are paying them
off to reduce poverty or something good like that.

So here is a totally crazy idea. Make an exception to foreign corruption laws
if the cause is worth it.

Then offer secret payment to developing world leaders if they meet certain
metrics. And also offer them advice on what to do to meet the metrics. And do
it all in secret.

Imagine Kim Jong Un one day suddenly starts slowl and steady market reforms.
Imagine 10 years later North Korea is growing quite fast, and Kim Jong Un is a
dedicated fighter of corruption. Imagine Kim Jong Un himself starts to
encourage direct democracy, first at village level and then higher. Imagine a
few years later Kim Jong Un gives an emotional speech about the two Koreas
being one, liberty and democracy in the North, and then resigns leaving a
Swiss like democratically chosen group of people in charge, and a North Korean
government structure looking quite similar to that of Switzerland. Then Kim
Jong Un moves to southern California with a mysterious fortune of several
billion dollars, a universal pardon from the US president, and protection from
foreign prosecution in the states.

~~~
chii
why would kim so all of that when he can already live it up like a King right
now? having a few bil in money isnt enough to replace what he has right now,
which I'd essentially evwrything in NK...

------
melling
That's because consumers will allocate money to pay for baldness. That's where
the money is. We all understand that, now please quit complaining and figure
out how to get consumers to pay for other advances.

For example, we pay for Moore's law by buying new computers and iPhones every
few years. We will start paying for huge advances in robotics once they can do
more of the house chores and yard work. We need to get to the tipping point.

As for advances in biology and the cures for diseases, I'm not sure how to
approach that. However, if we could funnel billions more from the consumer
sector, we'll cure cancer, the common cold, etc. years sooner.

~~~
tjr
When I go to Pet Smart to buy dog food, the credit card reader asks me if I
want to donate $1, $5, $10, etc., to help homeless animals. I imagine that if
I was at Walgreen's buying NyQuil and the credit card reader asked me if I
wanted to donate $1, $5, $10, toward medical research so that people just like
me can get over a cold faster in the future, I'd probably say yes.

~~~
melling
You'll spend $200 for a new smartphone every few years.

Samsung and Apple are fighting a war to make the better phone. Billions are
spent. Likewise, Intel and ARM are competing for the future of the CPU.
Someday soon, someone like iRobot will be competing with another company to
automate the home. The "Apple II" of home robotics isn't too far off? The race
starts then.

Now find a way to commercialize companies that will also do more medical
research. We do have big pharma but that research takes many years.

~~~
tjr
I don't think that people _want_ to spend money on medicine like they _want_
to spend money on phones. Even when they are ill, it comes across as more of a
necessity than something inherently desirable, though at least when feeling
ill they might give more thought to how much nicer things would be if
medicines worked better than they do now.

But to expect folks to cash their paychecks, run out to the store and buy some
new cough syrup just because it's so cool?... that's what happens with phones,
but it seems unlikely to happen with medicine.

And in fact that'd be ridiculous. If one isn't even feeling ill, why should
they go out and buy medicine? Unless they are buying it for someone else, but
this sort of gets us into the realm of charity and donations.

I don't know; what do you think? What sort of situation can you imagine in
which a consumer treats funding medical research the same way they treat
buying a new phone?

~~~
melling
People don't fund semiconductor research directly either. Hundreds of millions
of people pay Apple.

------
cryptonector
Capitalism isn't an idea, like, say, socialism. Capitalism is something that
arises organically in societies that allow their citizens/residents _freedom_.

The alternative to capitalism isn't a different economic organization. The
alternative to capitalism is not-freedom. Those who say (like @api in the
first post) that capitalism is dying and imply (or state) that we need an
alternative, either mean to take freedom away from us, or don't know that
that's what they mean.

------
joshuahedlund
Recently, when hearing about Gates's health initiatives along with the US
discussions about tax rates, I thought that if the government had taken
significantly more of Bill Gates's wealth through taxes, they probably would
not have globally reduced diseases like malaria with those few billions of
dollars as much as Bill Gates will with his own allocation. Not saying that's
an argument against any higher tax rates, etc, but it's an interesting
thought.

~~~
hereonbusiness
Interesting thought, in 2009 the US government spent $139 billion on health
research. <http://www.researchamerica.org/uploads/healthdollar09.pdf>

What if most rich people do not give a damn, and just keep all their money for
themselves, where would medical research be then ?

------
isleyaardvark
>Ideally you create a business model that lets you get your margin from the
rich countries and the middle income countries, or through tiering customers
in developing countries." He cited eye clinics in India that offer free lens
replacement and other treatments to the poor but charges those who can afford
it as a good example of a tiered system.

It seems like pharmaceutical companies come under a lot of fire for that kind
of approach.

------
voxfrege
This is a very narrow view. What the article should be saying is that with
_every_ dollar you do not spend for fight against deadly diseases, well,
you're effectively let people die.

That means, you (not capitalism), as the owner of a computer or an iPhone,
value watching cat videos higher than helping people not to die.

This, of course, is such a heavy moral burden that you're happy someone comes
along and blames it on "capitalism".

~~~
chii
there is no moral burden on you for not using you available wealth to help the
poor. selfishness is a natural state of things. i respect and admirer people
who go Wismar against their natural state to give allergically altrustically,
but i will never judge someone for not wanting to donate.

------
duaneb
Nitpick, title implies people are funding malaria.

~~~
pyre
It also means that male baldness is being funded.

~~~
dsego
The original was too long, so I removed 'research'.

------
lifeisstillgood
Capitalism used to include having to provision a private army to protect your
home, and keep the caravans safe from marauders along the trade routes.

Now it does not. In the future it will be more profitable to cure malaria than
male pattern baldness.

How do we get there? I am not sure, but having one of the most respected
business figures in the world holler about it will help.

------
davidf18
Read Andy Kessler's WSJ article from today. It provides an answer: Want to
Change the World? How About a Billion-Dollar Prize

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732362880457834...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323628804578348002211277908.html)

You can google for the story to get beyond the paywall if you need to.

------
joonix
Yet it's capitalism that ends up financing the malaria vaccine. It just had to
go through Gates first.

------
jskonhovd
Capitalism is not the problem. It's our culture. We need to find a way to
funnel more people into STEM jobs. The west has failed. India and China have
drastically different governments but they both have been able to do one
thing. Produce Engineers.

------
robmcm
Easy for a man with a full head of hair to say. Or is this just a swipe at
Balmer?

------
mgkimsal
It's in capitalism's interest to keep more of these people alive to sell them
more stuff. Someone dying of malaria at age 7 doesn't get a chance to go bald
in the first place, hence fewer sales of baldness cures.

~~~
mertd
The bald guy in the first world makes more money in a year than the malaria
kid would make in his/her lifetime.

------
jevinskie
A related story from TIME Magazine in 2008:
<http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1828417,00.html>

------
natmaster
But it also means malaria gets more funding than it would otherwise.

------
protomyth
Well, yeah. Humans are pretty poor at basic risk assessment and very tuned
into their own needs. The economic system doesn't matter much, its basic human
nature.

------
frogpelt
Capitalism is what created the billions of dollars that Bill Gates has in his
Gates Foundation to spend on things like curing malaria.

Double-edged sword.

------
znowi
I really respect this guy. At the time when Apple et al stockpile their gold,
he puts his money up for a noble cause.

------
mikebludd
This guy sucks the joy out of being successful. Him and the oppressor of Omaha
are my least favourite bourgeios.

------
known
I thought Gates made fortune due to Capitalism

