
We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today - jackbaird
http://www.christophmccann.com/blog/2014/6/23/we-have-the-potential-to-solve-the-biggest-problems-of-today
======
skywhopper
Unfortunately, this line of criticism works equally well about all games, art,
haute cuisine, movies, national parks, and about 96% of our economy.

More importantly, it also works against articles that gripe about effort
wasted on apps the author doesn't care for.

~~~
adamgravitis
With the exception of games, the items you mention aren't distracting much
engineering talent from solving the big stuff. With $1.2m, Yo can directly
compete for talent that might otherwise go to graduate school or make progress
in a more serious venture.

~~~
pdabbadabba
Right. It's just distracting chefs, artists, ecologists, photographers, etc.
Clearly these people neither have engineering talent nor could contribute in
any other way to McCann's chosen causes.

~~~
collyw
He hasn't given a chosen cause. Just says that Yo is trivial crap.

------
pdabbadabba
There's a lot that I dislike about this article, but I'll start with this: it
is probably self-refuting. Someone could just have easily written: "I find it
difficult to see individuals who could focus their time and effort solving
[problems like energy, food, water, health, education], instead put their
efforts into something like a takedown of the moral priorities of the people
behind Yo on a their personal blog." A person could argue that the post has
more value than Yo (though I'm not sure this is self-evident), but it still
isn't in the same ballpark as "energy, food, water, health, education." I
mean, c'mon Christoph McCann, get your priorities straight!

Of course, I don't actually make that argument, because I reject its premise.
As the above argument hopefully illustrates, it is not reasonable to insist
that everyone spend all their time in the most socially beneficial way
possible. Should we all strive to make the world a better place? Of course.
But I don't know many people who think that we need to spend all our time
tackling the world's biggest problems.

And, by the way, who appointed Christoph McCann arbiter of what it good and
valuable in this world? Maybe an app like Yo will bring us together in a new
(albeit marginal) way. That's valuable, even if it is also silly. (See, e.g.,
the first few paragraphs of this article:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2014/06/23/goo...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2014/06/23/goodbye-
yo-or-how-the-worlds-most-fun-and-heartwarming-app-met-its-tragic-end/)) Or
maybe it provide a cautionary tale to remind us (as, perhaps, it already has)
what is really important. Value exists in subtle forms that are not so easy to
glibly list, and can be advanced in subtle and unexpected ways. While I wish
we lived in a world where more people focused on problems like energy, food,
water, health, education, I'm not sure I want to live in a world where
EVERYONE works on those problems. I want people to be free to do the
unexpected, even if the results sometimes seem frivolous.

So, if McCann's only point is that we should take a moment and reconsider our
priorities, point taken. But this looks suspiciously like something a bit more
(with respect, and apologies) totalitarian.

~~~
digz
>> And, by the way, who appointed Christoph McCann arbiter of what it good and
valuable in this world?

This is such an important point, and why free markets work best. If people
derive value out of Yo, then terrific. If they don't, it goes away. Don't need
a moral crusader to decide what is worthy.

~~~
phillmv
>This is such an important point, and why free markets work best.

Well, there's a subtlety there.

It's not that "free markets work best". It's that the efficient market
hypothesis claims that a market with perfect information dissemination
consisting of uniformly rational agents will deliver Pareto-optimal resource
allocations.

There's a lot to disagree with in that sentence; market agents collude, people
are demonstrably irrational/rely on cognitive heuristics and just because
something is Pareto efficient doesn't mean it's fair or equitable.

All three are valid critiques, and the case in point in TFA - the market
allocated money to Yo, but that doesn't mean a priori that funding Yo is a
worthy and moral choice.

So, if we have markets that routinely deliver inequitable outcomes it's
perfectly reasonable to ask - why is this happening?

~~~
digz
Having studied with the originators of the efficient market hypothesis (Fama),
I regret to inform you that what you describe is not a feature of EMH but is
rather frequently attributed to it in an attempt to discredit it. There is
nothing that rationally follows EMH that leads to Pareto-optimal outcomes in
society.

EMH means that well informed markets make sound decisions on the pricing of
assets. This means that based on the current information available, markets
are excellent at understanding the probability-weighted value of an asset. It
doesn't mean that the outcome ends up being right, it means that it's fairly
priced based on the information at hand. Nothing guaranteeing Pareto-optimal
outcomes from that.

Furthermore, an investor giving 1.2M to a company is not an efficient market
under any circumstance.

~~~
phillmv
I was critiquing "free markets are best" and not singularly EMH. I will grant
that I've used terms imprecisely.

------
cheald
Let's build apps like Yo. They're good practice. Doing silly things that amuse
oneself is a critical component of hackerdom.

Let's just not fund them.

~~~
soccerdave
Let's fund them, let's just not acquire them. That way they won't be funded in
the future :)

~~~
Justsignedup
Let's acquire them, just not for too much money. Otherwise we tell people that
anything on the internets is worth billions. :)

~~~
csbrooks
Oh what the hell, fine, let's acquire them for billions.

~~~
metaphorm
are you listening, Zuckerberg?

------
lbrandy
Unless my mom or dad recently signed up for HN, I'm not terribly interested in
any of this paternalistic (and patronizing) advice on how I should spend my
life and time.

~~~
steveklabnik

        > Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is
        > inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic,
        > flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all
        > users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something,
        > please don't also comment that you did.
    
    

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
lbrandy
I didn't do any of that. Read closer.

~~~
steveklabnik
Considering on-topic is "anything hackers find interesting," a complaint that
something is not interesting is a complaint that something isn't appropriate
for the site.

~~~
lbrandy
Again, read closer. I did not complain that it wasn't interesting. I said I
wasn't interested [in considering] such advice. The use of the same root word
is only interesting (uh oh) to those in the business of equivocation
fallacies.

~~~
steveklabnik
If you are not interested in it, then you find it not interesting. If you
found it interesting, you'd be interested in it.

This is the least interesting conversation I've ever had.

~~~
lbrandy
> If you are not interested in it, then you find it not interesting.

Equivocation fallacy. Can't say you weren't warned.

> This is the least interesting conversation I've ever had.

It's difficult to have an interesting conversation with people in so much of a
hurry to misunderstand what's being said.

~~~
steveklabnik
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy)

~~~
lbrandy
Wrong again, my friend.

At no point did I claim you were wrong simply -because- you used a fallacy. I
had other, better, reasons for that. You are bad at this and I've become
bored.

------
andrew_null
The future is tricky to predict. A lot of things look like toys, until all of
a sudden they're not.

Worth reading the counterpoint: [http://avc.com/2013/04/return-and-
ridicule/](http://avc.com/2013/04/return-and-ridicule/)

"This notion also plays into Clayton Christensen's framework for disruptive
innovation. Many of the most disruptive technologies started out as what Clay
calls "toys". The PC is a great example of that. PCs came out of the homebrew
computer movement. Geeks were building computers in their garages. And
everyone thought they were nuts. But from that came the Apple Computer and the
IBM PC and we were off to the races with personal computers."

~~~
rajbala
Precisely. Who would have predicted that Twitter would have been used to
organize people in a meaningful way during the Arab Spring?

The overthrow of tyrannical regimes is a noble cause that a startup would
almost certainly never been able to focus on as a solution to a big picture
problem.

~~~
LoganCale
…and then rejected that noble use by allowing other tyrannical regimes to
censor content so it can't be used that way again.

------
Delmania
"The problems facing us - energy, food, water, health, education - require big
solutions and we are just starting to see some of these solutions come out of
a new wave of startup businesses."

You can't engineer technological solutions to social problems. You will get so
far, but then you'll run into politics and religion.

~~~
hagbardgroup
Building a nuclear power plant solves a lot of energy problems. Getting a
permit to build one is more challenging than assembling the engineers to do
it.

Innovating on the hospital is not even legal. You don't need to ask permission
to develop an app (unless you count Apple's process as permission).

------
aashishkoirala
Your reasoning suggests that if the people who built Yo were not building Yo,
that they might be out there curing the world's diseases. See the flaw there?

~~~
logfromblammo
If the people who built Yo had been curing the world's diseases instead of
building Yo, then everyone would still be stuck with giving each other
Facebook pokes, and would therefore be too demoralized and disconnected to
complete the task.

The article simply sounds like sour grapes. If something as simple and stupid
as Yo can get funded for $X, then why hasn't my worthy and interesting project
been funded for $Y ? Obviously, the developer of Yo is to blame for finding a
big pile of money curated by fools and taking it?

It is pointless to question why Yo exists. It is far more useful to ask why
nearly everyone capable of accomplishing great things has to go beg shrewd
financiers and capricious morons (depending on whether or not they give _you_
anything) for the money required to attempt one, or languish under the
direction of someone else as an employee until finally saving enough to try.

And the answer is that life is not fair. A plutocracy is not a meritocracy. If
you don't like it, be born rich or win big at business roulette, and then
invest only in worthy things.

------
gcv
Programming skills do not translate into solutions to big problems. The amount
of education required to tackle something serious weeds out nearly all coders.
Most programmers spend their careers writing code to someone else's spec, and
a Yo app is a fantastic — and lucky — way to escape that fate. My hat is off
to the creator for doing it, getting attention, and raising money.

------
Ryel
The title should be "Let's not 'invest' in apps like Yo"

For a programmer this is only a win-win scenario. The founder gets experience,
funds, exposure, and something whimsical to hack on for awhile. The people in
return get this insane idea plastered all over the news only to hopefully
inspire a couple hundred kids to get into programming with their chance to
strike it rich.

If you hope for anything, why don't you hope that all investors in this idea
take a huge loss and do their part in stabilizing tech valuations.

------
bloat
"some of the worlds most driven, focussed, intelligent and inspiring
individuals"

It's quite possible that a company does not contain any people like this. This
article seems to assume a lot about a large group of random programmers and
business people. There are plenty of hacks out there and some of them will be
founding a start up near you.

------
mbubb
This is an interesting discussion and I a waffling on this issue like an
incumbent red state Democrat...

I am a little surprised that no one has trotted out this history lesson:

"In 1969, Ken Thompson wanted to play SpaceWar on a PDP-8 computer..."

------
jasontsui
Lets not take ourselves so seriously. Lets not let YO be representative of
what investors, entrepreneurs, developers and technologists are doing as a
whole, despite its outsize media coverage. Lets remember that quirky, weird,
seemingly useless things like YO can still put a smile on someones face, even
if it didnt solve any of society's problems. What a dry place the world would
be if we didnt have things like YO.

Variety is the spice of life. Some will make YO, some will build Tesla, and
most of us will fall somewhere in between. Not every startup needs to be a
world changer, and thats OK. Thats life.

The author insists that he's not being pretentious, but evaluating what is a
good and poor use of someone elses time and smarts seems like just that.

~~~
Justsignedup
I agree. Though Yo should not have a 1.3 million funding. However, any sane
person would quickly recognize that investors put in that 1.3 MM to fund the
founders. They don't care about Yo. It may be a situation of "give some smart
people who get the internets a bunch of money and hope it sticks". Which is a
bit of a bubble IMO.

------
exelius
We have the potential to solve the big problems. But the big problems cost a
lot more than $1 million to solve and aren't likely to get funded unless the
founder is already a Silicon Valley billionaire with VC connections.

So let's build apps like Yo because Silicon Valley deems them to be a
prerequisite to being allowed to solve the big problems.

------
imgabe
I disagree with the premise that being able to create an app that sends "yo"
to somebody implies that you should be able to solve any of the various health
crises around the world.

For one thing, this is incredibly insulting. Do you think that nobody is
working on solving these already? Do you think that the people conducting
medical research are just so unbelievably stupid that they couldn't comprehend
how to write an app that says "Yo"? Maybe these problems are a little harder
than you think.

------
VolatileVoid
Every time you talk about "Yo" an angel loses its wings or a kitten dies or...
whatever.

If you stop talking about it, it will just fade into obscurity like Doogie
Howser - only to appear years later as a successful, charming actor that can
--- wait, where was this going?

Right. Stop talking about it and it'll go away. Don't be bitter about Yo;
there's no point in it. Just let it go. Keep calm and carry on.

------
angersock
So, here's a better one:

"We have the potential to solve the big problems. Let's not _fund_ apps like
Yo."

------
odonnellryan
I think we need a good, solid list of the big problems. Then we need to break
them down into smaller problems.

~~~
tekalon
I have a plan to do this, have it kind of like a wiki with a breakdown of
problems based on location (Becuase you can't solve world hunger all at once,
each place has its own issues). Then have users submit possible solutions, and
then open people to volunteer to implement solutions (maybe add a crowd-
funding portion to it). Only issue is I'm too lazy to brush up my web
development skills.

~~~
odonnellryan
What do you do?

~~~
tekalon
I'm a business analyst that also does some basic IT work. I know some basic
HTML/CSS/JS, enough to tweak some web pages that I support, but nothing from
scratch.

~~~
odonnellryan
My email should be in my profile. If you can't view it let me know. We'd need
to get an outline.

~~~
tekalon
I cannot see the email. My email should be in my profile, if you want to
contact me.

------
cacainmycafe
Maybe, Chris, me old mucker, you meant well in this article. You wanted to
point out that there are some real, hard, difficult, real-life problems,
things that affect people in large numbers, and that it would be great if
people worked on those.

I would agree with that sentiment. A million more chat apps, a million more
web frameworks, a million more crappy-bird game clones, twatter, farcebook,
none of those solve real-life hard problems.

The difficult part then, is how to make solving those problems attractive.
Money? Fame? Something else? A good feeling in the stomach and soul, knowing
you have contributed to helping? That is the harder part. People are
complicated, their motivations often less so, but hidden away beneath
complications and layers of deceit, so as to often obscure them.

------
alttab
This signal says that people are still willing to pay for effective data
collection. An app like Yo simply proves that quality/purpose do not really
matter for making money. If it walks like a bubble, and talks like a bubble

------
vezzy-fnord
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation)

Disclaimer: I thought the aftermath of Yo was absolutely stupid, as well.

------
return0
I don't think our big/bigger/biggest problems can be solved by apps.

------
tenpoundhammer
The triviality of Yo is obvious, it's not an amazing feat of engineering, but
it is an important app. It shows that millions of people would much rather use
an app that takes two "touches" to let someone know they would like to have
their attention when they are available. It's a data point on what people are
looking for. Many tiny data points can lead to big conclusions and inform
design decisions far down that road. Finding out that users still want things
that reduce the friction of communication was worth having built Yo.

------
mxfh
Electricity was considered an intellectual gimmick for more than a thousand
years up to the 19th century. You never know where innovation comes from, and
simplicity of use certainly is a valid vector.

------
6d0debc071
Solving problems in an already crowded domain often takes non-trivial
political skill even where it's technologically feasible to do so. If politics
weren't an issue, I could walk down to the local hospital right now and save
them tens of thousands of hours of time a year - they wouldn't even be hard
problems; simple things like typing certain kinds of reports rather than using
hand-writing, making one system able to read the files of another - that sort
of thing. But, sadly, that's not the world we live in.

------
nicomoto1
I think a lot of people here take offense at the tone of this article (a tad
bit condescending and patronizing) and rightly so. However I think people are
missing the bigger point of the article which is to serve as a reminder that
there are bigger(other?) problems to solve, and it would be prudent to make a
case for the other causes the author mentions. Think of it as a pitch to the
next generation of entrepreneurs. (Yo knocked its pitch out the park with its
million dollar funding and news headlines).

I do not agree with his target audience, since the bigger problems are big
because of their difficulty. If they were problems that could be solved with
little effort/limited finances they would have been. (energy, food, water,
health, education). Apps such as Yo exist because they can obtain funding to
the tune of a million dollars. His pitch should be to investors to invest
wisely keeping in mind their social responsibility and make a case for the
importance of these other big ticket problems as opposed to apps like Yo. It
does not make sense to berate engineers/start up founders etc. for their
chosen path especially since they do not own the capital required to solve
"smaller" (acc. to the author) problem let alone a "big" world changing one.
They are almost entirely reliant on working up to their next round of funding.

------
barnabee
Let's do whatever gets us out of bed in the morning, lest we end up doing
nothing at all.

------
diminoten
What the heck is wrong with Yo?

Have any of you installed and tried to use it? It's an app designed to send
pre-fabricated messages amongst its users. Instead of typing "are you up?"
late at night while I'm driving home (hypothetically; texting while driving is
bad, kids), all I have to do is hit the "Yo" button on my screen. One, MAYBE 2
clicks later, my existence and consciousness is broadcast to my friends, en
masse, and I can continue focusing on the road instead of my phone keyboard.

It also looks like, soon, new phrases will be sendable. Stuff like an actual,
"Are you up?", "Lunch?" etc. I know in my friend circle, a button like, "Wanna
game?" would work immensely well.

What about a "Help!" button? Now we're suddenly into the, "saving lives"
territory the submission tries to say Yo has nothing to do with. "I'm
suicidal"? "I'm lost"? "I'm hurt"?

Can we solve this problem using a million other apps, in a million other ways?
Yes. Did Twitter go under because text messaging was the "exact same thing"?
No.

------
FD3SA
This argument comes up from time to time, but it's first order thinking. The
real question he should address is the following:

 _Why does the modern economy incentivize negative and /or zero sum endeavors
(e.g. trivial startups, exploitative finance,etc) instead of positive sum
endeavors (e.g. genetics research?)_

Which leads to a very interesting discussion. In short, extant economic
policies disincentivize research so strongly that it's a wonder any research
occurs at all.

I think at some point, "free-market" radicals threw the baby out with the
bathwater, and have forgotten that some activities, such as research, are
extremely risky in the short term but produce unfathomable long term benefits
(antibiotics, vaccines, etc.). At present, neither companies nor governments
want to foot the short term costs of research.

As such, we are paid six figures to brainwash people to click ads, but must
accept financial ruin to even attempt to contribute to research.

------
ianstallings
I wanted to tear this article to pieces simply because of the title. But I
can't. All of these points seem valid and well targeted. There seems to be a
rejection of any _negativity_ here on HN but that really is not doing anyone
any justice. Let's be tough on each other. If it's crap call it crap and take
it on the chin if you are the creator of said crap. For every "that a boy" we
give a weak attempt we diminish those that truly strive for excellence and
push us forward.

In fairness to the guys at Yo though, 1.2M is really not that much money.
Enough to get a few guys going and keep the lights on to see where it goes. So
let's see it play out.

------
volaski
So let's not study stuff like astrophysics, since it doesn't really help the
starving kids somewhere nor does it solve energy problem, right? And also,
let's not make art, after all, it's just some first world people enjoying
their luxury while someone somewhere in 3rd world is suffering, how about
that? As mere mortals we can never know what impact a technology can have in
the long term, no matter what it looks like right now. It's arrogant to judge
someone else's creation no matter how silly it looks, especially when it is
something that managed to get into a lot of people's mindshare.

------
davidkatz
Yo's popularity entirely rides two facts: (1) it's a silly app, (2) it got a
million dollars. We currently know nothing about user engagement and
retention. I'd be surprised if anyone uses it for more than a few weeks.

~~~
alttab
If an app that does nothing and has a half life of 3 weeks can raise $1
million, then the industry has a problem.

~~~
ganeumann
It doesn't mean the industry has a problem, it means the people who put the $1
million into the company have a problem.

~~~
paxtonab
If only I hadn't squandered my life savings on beanie-babies I could've
invested in Yo before it went public!

~~~
alttab
I don't even think the screenwriter for Idiocracy could have planned Yo! as a
stock symbol.

------
Torgo
I don't think I've got the chops to make an app that solves world hunger, but
I might be able to write a simple app like Yo and make it easier to feed my
family. That is also a problem I am concerned about solving.

------
marknutter
I think the point the OP really should be making isn't that we shouldn't be
building them, but that we shouldn't be giving them so much press. Who's to
blame here, really?

------
Luff
There are significantly bigger problems than those, but if you want to make
money you have to solve problems that rich[0] people have, which mainly seems
to be boredom.

The people with the biggest problems are the people with the least money. You
can't save them with apps, but you could help them with money made by making
apps. Not that most will though, if they ever make it big.

[0] Rich is a relative term. Got enough to eat and access to the internet?
Compared to most humans, you're relatively rich.

------
iigs
It strikes me as the company equivalent of a fart app.

If money is easy enough to come by that investors can drop $100k like you and
I can drop $0.99, _sell them what they 're buying_.

------
Spendar89
"I therefore find it difficult to see individuals who could focus their time
and effort solving these problems, instead put their efforts into something
like Yo."

Since when is this stuff zero-sum? Yo allegedly took 8 hours to build. Sure,
during those 8 hours, Moshe Hogeg wasn't out solving the "big" problems, but
in that day alone, he had 16 other hours, to do things the OP might deem
worthy of his time.

------
spacefight
Yo is a hack, over 100k Anroid downloads. They built their audience, now they
can turn it into something usable.

Oh, and they have your social graph based on cell numbers.

~~~
sharemywin
Or Arbel, cofounder and CEO of Yo, told Mashable that the app has had 110,000
downloads since Wednesday morning and 160,000 total downloads since it
launched quietly in April.

~~~
spacefight
I was just quoting the stats Google gives in the play store.

------
btbuildem
That some people built Yo is not the problem. They most likely lack the talent
to solve the hard problems facing us - given what they've built so far,
anyways. These problems get solved by a different class of people altogether.

The real problem is that someone with money and influence deemed their project
worthy of support. The motivation is not to make the world a better place, but
to get rich.

------
peterwwillis
> I am simply pointing out that another instant messaging app, however novel
> or 'hipster', isn't going to solve what really needs solved.

And here i've been wasting my life on novel hipster apps, thinking it would
solve the big problems, when in fact I was just wasting my life working on fun
things. Thank Bob i've been set straight.

------
bckrasnow
To me, there's three categories startups fall into: fun, world-changing, and
failures.

SnapChat and Facebook are fun. Google and Tesla are world changing. The
failures may be nameless, but they outnumber the rest 5 to 1.

If you're a success story, it doesn't matter to me whether or not you are fun
or world-changing. You succeeded. That's enough in itself.

~~~
exelius
5 to 1? Try 1000 to 1.

------
frostmatthew
I'm pretty sure creating Yo doesn't require a team of the most "driven,
focused, intelligent and inspiring individuals" of our society." Does the
author really feel the people behind this (or any/every startup) could easily
cure cancer or solve world hunger?

------
northisup
Through innovative social mobile single bit networked communication we are
making the world a better place.

------
robgibbons
I'm surprised by the number of comments criticizing this post. Yo really is
utterly pointless. Sure, they have every right to exist, and might even make
some money. But it's still a joke. It is a parody of the efforts being made
every day to improve the world with technology.

------
Strang
Speaking as an industry outsider, I don't agree with the assumption that
fresh-faced app programmers have the capability to solve any real world
problems.

Why ignore the possibility that writing apps, new web frameworks, and
"pivoting" is in fact the best possible use of this talent?

------
jameszol
I wonder if Yo is popular because people feel it is a funny pointless app or
because it makes a common message incredibly easy to send?

I like apps like Yo. They do exactly what they say they will do. Yo requires
fewer taps than texting "Yo" to somebody. It's refreshing!

I would venture a guess that the people who are solving for big problems can
be inspired by how minimal Yo is, and the decisions that stem from that
inspiration may be the tipping point they needed for their businesses. There
may be applicable uses for the Yo type of simplicity for any of the problems
mentioned in the blog post.

There's a good place for apps like Yo. They challenge the status quo. They
disrupt. They prove that removing mundane steps to doing something as common
as texting can be popular and worth testing as a business model.

Maybe Yo has already solved a big problem. Maybe we have yet to experience the
ripple effect.

------
0x006A
Yo, lets instead spend our time discussing how Yo is a waist of our time.

------
arasmussen
> "Some expressed anger that there own startups hadn't received funding"

Hard to take this guy seriously when he can't even grammar right in his intro
paragraph. I love yo.

~~~
buckbova
> "Hard to take this guy seriously when he can't even grammar right in his
> intro paragraph. I love yo."

Can't "grammar" right? Can "grammar" be a verb?

~~~
lmm
Yes, "grammar" can be a verb. And even if it were in some sense incorrect, the
meaning is clear. Confusing "there" and "their", OTOH, is outright misleading,
and suggests a lack of understanding.

------
AdamFernandez
Build whatever the market wants. Fund whatever the market wants.

------
rosem
How about we don't even talk about Yo?

------
budwin
Building Yo is not a hard problem.

------
grifpete
Yo.

~~~
sitkack
Sef.

------
jgrowl
How about if you want something done, do it yourself.

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benihana
Sorry, I can't agree with this argument, as the line of reasoning essentially
boils down to:

"Don't spend your money on things I don't think are important."

That is the great thing personal freedom and property rights. we all have the
choice of how we want to spend our money. If you don't like what other people
are spending their money on, spend your own money on something else.

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Dewie
> The problems facing us - energy, food, water, health, education - require
> big solutions and we are just starting to see some of these solutions come
> out of a new wave of startup businesses. For me, innovation and invention
> doesn't come from the top, but it comes from the bottom. It comes from
> disruptive startup businesses who dare to try something new, who dare to
> think a bit differently.

Do you know anyone who writes about these sorts of things? I.e. innovative
technologies that ultimately aspires to improve the world around it a little
bit (and not just in the stereotypical SC sales-pitch way ;) ), and not just
the bottom line? I would like to read about stuff like that, either people who
are doing it or just ideas.

