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Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty sad that we have to rely on "billionaires" because the political system is not able or willing to bring even some level of sanity into this totally perverse system.

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One thing that scares me is seeing how he's putting money into swaying how the media report on things. That one billionaire is willing to do such a thing to support the public good is great. How many are doing so for less laudable ends?

All of them? The drug company ones are... About time an organisation started playing the same games these mega corporations do, if you don’t play how will you ever win?

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

In this case, I’d say the only way to win is not to let anyone else play.

I'm not sure we have to 'rely' on them. This is just a guy that made a lot of money trying to make the world a better place. I don't think there's anything to be sad about here.

I think it's very sad that the democrats system can't address issues like this. It simply shouldn't need rich guys trying to make the world a better place. I am also always skeptical of billionaire do-gooders if you consider that you rarely become a billionaire by being a nice altruistic guy.

Well no, every system requires people with power to be generally good. No system survives with only bad actors. You’re incorrectly assuming a generous billionaire isn’t a feature of capitalism / democracy.

The USA isn't democratic. And no, I don't mean it's a "Republic" either. It's a corrupt system that no longer works as originally intended.

As originally intended was a bad system, with among other things strong aristocratic tendencies—not to mention you know, legal slavery. So it’s not a bad thing that it doesn’t work as originally intended.

Even after all these years of revisionism the school systems could still do with less hagiographic depictions of the revolutionary era.

It's a difficult and complicated issue. I don't think it's been shown that our system "can't" address it. It's just taking a while to get it sorted out. I'd like it to go faster, but generally our system works pretty well, and converges slowly on good solutions to things. While i'd like it to be faster, I don't think it ought to be rushed either. Healthcare is both important and difficult to get right.

There does seem to be some progress being made:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/10/politics/drug-prices-legislat...

That would definitely be a good thing and may help discourage high prices, but let's see if it ever happens. The drug companies are already talking about taking it to court for violating their first amendment rights.

To a great extent our broken healthcare crisis is largely kept as it is by other billionaires, like the Koch’s for example.

I’m sure a few billionaires and tons of millionaires minted by this broken system.

It’s a great way to make money legally.

Our political system caused (or at the very least was complicit in causing) the problem.

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