Most people don't want to live in 3rd world countries.
Why do people expect programmers to be Jesus?
When doctors, plumbers, daycare workers, and bus drivers start targeting the 3rd world market I will too.
I'm getting really sick of all these bloggers telling other people to do something meaningful. Take your own advice before telling me to donate my life to charity.
"Emerging market" is a euphemism for "developing country" which is a euphemism for "third world"
Brazil is technically part of the 3rd world.
I enjoy visiting poor countries as much as the next guy. But I don't want to raise my kids there or work there for very long. (Maybe as an adventure in my early 20s)
Like every other normal human, including Brazilians, I want to have a good life. As a highly educated, highly intelligent person born and raised in the 1st world, why should I sacrifice all the comforts and enjoyments of civilization that my ancestors worked so hard for to please some bored blogger?
Would Brazilians sacrifice for me? No. They don't give a fuck about me, and neither does this blogger lady. So I am unconvinced by all the appeals that I go work some unprofitable job in some shithole country because Silicon Valley isn't "exciting" enough.
"Emerging market" is a euphemism for "developing country" which is a euphemism for "third world"
Yes, but "is a euphemism for" isn't the same as just plain "is." For example, not everything that's a "convenience" is a toilet. That's a huge logical fallacy there. You use the exact same fallacy twice in an example of fallacious overreaching to an extent which is fortunately rare here.
As a highly educated, highly intelligent person born and raised in the 1st world, why should I sacrifice all the comforts and enjoyments of civilization that my ancestors worked so hard for to please some bored blogger?
You definitely shouldn't do it to please some bored blogger. Are you implying that's the only reason why anyone, ever would want to do it? You're probably not the one to go. No one's going to argue that. It would be pointless to argue that. In fact, I don't see a point to staking out the position in the first place.
It's also quite clear that there are people out there in the 1st world who would want to go.
I'm responding to the moral outrage of the original post about how SV is too concerned with making money and running businesses, and not concerned enough about the author's pet charities.
I'm not against charity work -- I'm against other people telling me to do charity work.
I agree to a certain extent, but labeling Brazil as a third-world country and a "poor country" seems really off. How does one determine the "third world" label anyway? It is subjective.
People expect more of programmers (well, startups, really) because they can be extremely amazing at problem-solving -- when they bother to research a problem rather than assuming that they already know how to solve it, anyway.
The drive, intelligence, and creative ingenuity of startup founders, applied to Big World Problems, would be amazing.
If plumbers went around talking about "disrupting" water systems all the time, I'm pretty sure people would start asking them why they didn't do that in the countries that needed it most.
> When doctors, plumbers, daycare workers, and bus drivers start targeting the 3rd world market I will too.
Doctors already do: WHO, Medicins sans frontiers etc. How do you think smallpox and polio were eliminated world-wide ? Now that is "changing the world".
Why do people expect programmers to be Jesus?
When doctors, plumbers, daycare workers, and bus drivers start targeting the 3rd world market I will too.
I'm getting really sick of all these bloggers telling other people to do something meaningful. Take your own advice before telling me to donate my life to charity.