HN Discuss: Why so few Hi-Tech companies address real issues? | Hacker News Reader

HN Discuss: Why so few Hi-Tech companies address real issues?

40 pointsshlosky32 comments

So many companies, so much venture capital, and still so few actually try to disrupt the real problems that real people have:

1. Housing. It's a global problem, there has got to be a solution...

2. Health. There are first world health issues, and third world health issues. None of them is currently addressed in an effective way

3. Inequality. The gaps in income and opportunity are just unacceptable.

4. Unkindness. There is just too much crime, lying, and being assholes to each others.

5. Bullshit jobs. We spend way too much time doing nothing of real value.

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Most of these issues are not technological problems.

Housing is not really a problem outside of certain big cities, and in those cities it's a problem due to corruption. If you can come up with a technology to defeat corruption and make society perfect, you might as well change your name to God.

I'm not sure where you see health as lacking, but it seems to be on the rise everywhere if you ignore the ongoing but temporary distortion caused by covid. Technology certainly can play a big role in making healthcare more accessible and available, but tech will not, for example, get universal healthcare for US citizens.

Income and opportunity inequality is mostly a social/legal issue, and tech has tended to exacerbate inequality rather than reduce it. Like healthcare, tech can improve access for some, but global variation in infrastructure, economy, population, etc. will always leave some people with less resources or opportunity than others.

People being mean, committing crimes, lying, will never be stopped by technology. Technology is an enabler, if you want to stop things you need to reach for social pressure.

Bullshit jobs will only be gone when the expectation that every individual slave away 8*5*350*55 or be worthless scum of society is gone. That's a social issue, not a technological one.

> 1. Housing.

Housing is working as expected really. Our policies have made it an investment vehicle that can't lose any value for political reasons.

> 2. Health.

You are looking at an over-regulated hellscape that's extremely gate-keeped all over the world (this is by design). In America it's effectively regional monopolies (the AMA decides who gets in, and lookup Certificate of Need). Foreign countries with a single payer system might look attractive as a starting point but then keep in mind your only customer will be... the Government. Single payer means a single buyer and that's never good for business.

> 3 & 4

Too vague.

> 5. Bullshit jobs.

This one has a tremendous potential. Automation-tech is very real. Remember this by Google back in 2018[0]. Seriously, it's like programming for human organizations and there's a lot of potential growth. Offshoring these tasks ended up being a disaster; now is the perfect opportunity to simply automate.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvbHu_bVa_g

Better transportation tech would be needed to live outside those cities with the same convenience. Better green tech would be needed to make it as energy efficient as the city. Tech can definitely help.

I see a distinct lack of cheap mass spectrometry. With a billion dollars and a contract to sell millions of them... they seem to be able to mass produce almost anything.

At the very least, why can our phones not detect fevers?

These aren't very good target's for tech companies to tackle - they mostly already have well known solutions that aren't being applied for political or economic reasons, not technology ones.

1. Build dramatically more housing. In places where they do this, like Tokyo, there is no housing shortage. They reasons this doesn't happen in, for example SF, is more or less just protectionism for housing as investment assets.

2. We know the solutions to global health problems - investment in highly efficient single-payer public healthcare. The reasons this doesn't happen are a mixture of political and economic.

3. Progressive taxation is the solution, doesn't happen for political reasons.

4. This is partly media driven perception, partly the results of not fixing the above issues - but either way, a nebulous and ill defined people problem.

5. This one seems less obvious to me, but is definitely a people and economics issue, not a technology one.

The categories you are discussing are probably too broad to say "nobody is working on solving this.

Let's go through each of the areas you list

1. Housing - how about lowering the cost of building? https://all3dp.com/2/3d-printed-house-cost/ What will 3D printed housing do for building communities? Does it move laborers into finishing (less time framing and bricking) and increase their average wage?

2. Health - so many health start-ups, but you have to pick one thing. We work in sleep-tech, it affects so much of your life. But I used to work in telehealth, how about all the genomics, cancer...how on earth did health make your list? VCs are plowing money into health. If you're in the US, and you are complaining about your healthcare system, that's maybe a different issue. I'm not US based.

3. Inequality - I'm not a fan of this label as the issue, I think targeting quality of life is more valuable. If I have a great quality of life, should I care how much somebody else has? Can we look at improvements in cost and delivery of education as creating value here?

4. Unkindness - Well...look at all the mindfulness stuff that's out there? There have always been, and probably always will be assholes. I'm not sure what technologies role here is.

5. Bllsht jobs - Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing in their jobs, and focus on yourself. I ran a metaverse company from 2017 - you would probably call that a BS job, and I'll admit, I didn't meet a lot of people through that experience that made me feel we were having a big impact on the world. Now that I'm in healthtech with a very clear focus, I find I'm meeting amazing people who are also doing world changing things.

Rather than wondering "why is nobody doing anything to solve these problems", I suggest you pick a problem you are particularly passionate about and figure out what you can do to help. Once you're in those communities, you'll probably see just how much people are doing, and be inspired by the people that are doing it.

All of the above is not to say there aren't a TON of people who are wasting their lives building another dating app, or an app that measures your clothes for you, etc etc. But we have a huge population on the planet, don't worry about what they're doing. You do you.

A common complaint about tech is that they do get rid of #5. It's a classic tech thing to remove a bullshit job and siphon off part of the surplus to the tech company and part of it to the employer of the bullshit job. Only the bullshittiest of jobs survives.

As for the rest:

1. Housing - tech does help with this, via enabling remote work for a larger class of people, micro housing, and easier purchases/sales for homes outside of big areas. See here: Zoom, OpenDoor, Haus.me

2. Health - so many, but goes all the way from Benchling to Robin. Actual health stuff but also ancillary industries.

3. Inequality - I don't consider this a problem

4. Unkindness - Citizen for crime, a bunch of law tech startups for law

5. Addressed above.

1,2,3 are political problems. 4 is harder than terraforming Mars, and 5 is so vague I wouldn't know where to start.

In fact, all of them are too vague to provoke a real conversation. Perhaps you could ask a more focused question with a concrete problem that you see being neglected?

Even you must admit that

> There are first world health issues, and third world health issues.

is not much to work with. If you actually dive into a concrete issue, there may be parts that a tech company may be able to work on, and (imo) good odds that there actually is a company working on it.

i think Hi-Tech _does_ address real issues -- just not issues that most people care about, or would agree with.

e.g., when the US government funds bio/tech research, often through the Pentagon System, but also via agencies like the FBI/CIA/DOE/etc., are they interested in having pizza delivered by drone? Or are they trying to make sure that the American 1% stays in control of the Chinese 1%, the Indian 1%, the EU 1%, etc., and making sure that all that US spending doesn't rile up the poors in America (democracy?!), or anywhere else?

The Pentagon System, by Noam Chomsky

https://sites.google.com/view/the-pentagon-system/the_pentag...

so, imo, if you help solve real issues (that the rich care about), then you're probably going to be rewarded very well.

whether you help do that by directly controlling or distracting people, either through the prison industrial complex, social media/surveillance, or tv/sports/netflix/hollywood/advertising/propaganda, great -- the money is going to flow into your coffers.

but, if you decide you want to do something that is potentially good for regular people, the money is going to dry up real quick, but usually it will never have been there in the first place.

so, imo, even companies that start out aiming to do generally good-ish things for regular people, the investors of those companies are not investing unless they can see the prize hanging there -- the big cash-out, the new way to control the domestic population, the better way to turn the US into a third world/developing economy, a new lever of power to control other rising powers or even 'just' private power rivals in the US (think GOP Party -- manufacturing, vs. Dem Party -- finance).

Rather than try to refute or explain any of these (as everyone else is doing), I just want to say I think some of these are quite good questions (the last two intrigue me in particular).

People in the comments making all sorts of excuses.

Tech has massive opportunities to organize and align data to make things more efficient in all these areas and it is.

Concerning profits - if the model focuses on sustainability - doing something that exists currently that is better for people and planet, and at lower cost - then there should be plenty of profit.

I agree, thanks for calling me out (not sure if you were referring specifically to me). I amended my comment.

Corporations exist to make money.

1. People who can’t afford housing can’t pay corporations.

2. I’m not sure what you mean.

3. Inequality makes the billionaires who own high-tech companies even wealthier. I think inequality is very acceptable to them.

4. I’m not sure what you mean.

5. Bullshit jobs make corporations a lot of money.

Because the solutions to these problems is not pure tech. For the most part, these problems require contentious or difficult policy and cultural changes.

4 and 5 are partly solvable with tech. But a lot of companies are working to solve them (better content filtering / moderation, job automation)

Venture capital = profit driven. Figure out to make money off it. Or, get rich enough yourself and do some non-profit or charity or something.

Edit starting here-- After reading some of the comments, especially circleit, I'll add that my original reply seems like I took a pretty shallow or literal reading of OP. I read them as mission statement of a hypothetical company.

Further I agree/disagree with OP and others in that: 1) Tech has so much to do here. 2) Tech is already doing a lot here. If OP post gets traction, and I hope it does, I hope one outcome is a nice list of examples. 2.a) I think "income inequality" as a problem statement should probably be broken down. 2.b) I know there are techy startups in the government transparency scene, for example. 2.c) Contrary to point 1) and agreeing with others, maybe not so much tech itself but in line with many within tech, something like UBI? (Political) Also concerns OP point 5.

The first three are literally in YC's request for startups: https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs

Inequality is also something that VCs work on directly, just in another form. VCs believe that wealth is created by makers, and that the wealth should be taxed and distributed as a form of UBI. UBI still helps the bottom line of VCs the most because it turns the whole government into seed investors. It helps social mobility, but doesn't help those who can't make but are still essential (e.g. nurses).

I think the core question here is "Why don't private organizations with lots of money and power change the world?" And the answer is that, like all startup things, it's not something that you can throw money at the problem. It has to be solved by people dedicating months of focus to a specific problem.

I agree. To the people saying it’s not tech: It’s not as if AirBnB or DoorDash created new technology. There definitely are start-ups in the areas listed above, but I’d like to see more household names.

Investors invested $25 billion into Uber to make it into some kind of success. I recently heard a billionaire VC say that their fund will bring about the future we all want, and someone replied, “The future who wants?” and the investor replied something to the effect of, customers vote with their wallet. I found this very misguided. It matters what we, as a society, invest in, and what kinds of money-making machines we build, bid sky-high, and blindly keep throwing money at.

I don’t necessarily think that’s true for all tech companies but it is true that a lot of tech companies may be working on problems that generate money instead of social good. We work on conservation technology for wildlife and environment and there are so many areas that can benefit from tech. However it’s a vastly underpopulated industry because there’s so little money involved. Conservation doesn’t usually generate an ROI so a lot of the money comes from grants and donations. Hence it might be more true to say that the “real” issues don’t have enough perceived monetary value to be addressed by many tech companies.

5 and 4 are the result of 3 which is the result of 2 & 1. Both housing and healthcare are heavily regulated which makes it difficult to apply the tech growth model to them. I wholeheartedly believe the "Tesla of health insurance" could blow every existing healthcare company out of the water, but the industry is so over-complicated that executing such a feat is nearly impossible. Housing is even worse because zoning is a matter of local government, so apart from staging a coup to take over the government there is nothing any company can do, which is why the issue has been so consistent over the last few decades.

I suspect the problem with a "Tesla of health care" is that it's so decentralized that there's no way to bring a coherent new product in a market economy.

You could potentially build a small self-contained ecosystem-- say, in a metro area or small state-- but it starts to fall apart if your package can't provide any coverage the moment you're out of town and have an emergency.

Realistically, only entities the size of a nation state can really provide something meaningful there, because they can have the tools to get buy in.

With the partial exception of health, none of these issues have much to do with tech.

I'd say that technology has had a deep and profound impact on all of them.

If tech could address these issues as construed, SF wouldn't be a shithole.

But the current "tech" cohort in San Francisco has (1) the most expensive housing in the U.S., (2) overdoses on the street and fecal matter everywhere, (3) the highest inequality in the U.S., (4) a hugely cutthroat and disingenuous culture, and (5) more bullshit jobs in marketing than you can imagine.

Do you really want the people that have made San Francisco into what it is trying to solve social problems for other people?

Apple is making some plays into Health. You need to be a soft-hardware company in order to do that, or a medtech company.

Inequality: IMO, there needs to be a VAT tax (e.g. 1%) that directly goes into the bank accounts of all people. Sort of like a basic income, except that it isn’t guaranteed that it meets any standard of living.

Everyone of us lives in a bubble. Our bubble - and the problems that exist inside it - always seems larger and more relevant than often are, so we try to tackle them, after all it's the problems we know. Down the road, we acknowledge that our relevant problems are often micro-problems that only happen inside our bubble.

Because they have found niche's which they exploit for gain. If there is no way to cheaply extract rent, they want nothing to do with it.

Those are political issues and not many companies can deal with them. The last two points IMHO don't really mean much.

I'm the last person to defend powerhungry tech companies, but

1. They enable remote work which is the biggest game changer wrt housing. No other sector , banking or real estate, has done much to help in this direction. The middle class needs to embrace it and demand flexible work hours. 8 hour work were made for the era of factories. OTOH tech capitalists have no incentive to reduce housing costs, since most of them are invested in it.

2. If you include biotech companies in this, they do. But they need to lobby more for faster and cheaper development of drugs/treatments. Certainly tech has not been aggressive here, my phone should have a lot more sensors than just an oxygen meter.

3. Inequality, tech can only supercharge it. Only outsiders of the system like bitcoin can debase the overconcentrated currency.

4. Unkindness ... tech enables individuals to "bowl alone" even more, so what you re gonna see is more and more people "de-socializing" as gig workers reduce human interactions to almost zero. Sad as it is, that kind of distancing will also reduce the friction

5. I guess they exacerbate bullshit jobs by micromanaging and concentrating creative work to a very few engineers. There is a lot of missed potential here and it's a tough one to crack. You 'd need a system to define ambitious goals and allocate valuable work to the right people that is proven to work and bring results. You also need a way to know what people need. Work feels a lot more meaningful when it meets the needs of others.

Many commenters have concisely addressed the main contentions I have with your claims. So I will illustrate other dimensions that haven't been considered.

1. In the US at least, I wouldn't say there's a housing problem. Just an unwillingness to move out to the boonies. The urban monopoly on well-paying jobs has contributed to this reluctance. However, COVID and remote work showed that workers are more inclined to live in cheaper, farther-out areas so long as they can make approximately the same income and have access to a fast internet connection.

For the rest of the world, housing being a global problem does not imply a globally accepted solution. Building houses en masse requires resources, interest, and sanction by communal mores. Those are not distributed in an equally advantageous supply across the world. There's also the issue of regulations (both written and unwritten) that prevent one from building out housing even on one's personally owned land. When individuals are politically and economically disenfranchised from building out their own property, how do you expect companies to sell housing?

2. I would say that health issues of all kinds have been better addressed in this century than they have at any point in history. Last I checked, vaccines are a much more effective alternative to bloodletting. You'll have be specific as to what first- and third-world issues haven't been acknowledged, but suffice it to say, people have been living longer and healthier today than in centuries past.

3. Why is income inequality unacceptable? How do you think differences in opportunity should be remedied? You are probably aware people give different values to different kinds of work. Thus not all work is this the same in payment. The best rewarded work is the one that's done quickly, efficiently, and at large scales. Only a few industries accomplish this.

There is a way to achieve equality of the kind you want to pursue. But historically, it's involved bombs or mass disenfranshisment.

4. There are startups that focus on crime (e.g. Citizen), but the lying and "being assholes" bit is a matter of personal freedoms and expectations. You can't legislate or sell kindness. It must be chosen for the right reasons.

5. Like other commenters have mentioned, tech has gotten rid of bullshit jobs. No other industry has automated away so much unneeded labor. So much so, that it's likely contributing to complaint #3.

They don’t make money

awesome question.

Some additional specificity to add to the conversation (not entirely my own work in compiling this list):

Terrorism.

Dental disease.

Lead paint & lead exposure.

Potential asteroid strikes.

Deaths from "extreme" sports.

Missed child support payments.

Defamatory online smears.

Unintentional ingestion of poison.

Death from malpractice.

Suffering from untreated disease.

Structural fires.

Wildfires.

Rat infestations.

Light pollution.

Muggings.

Accidental drowning.

Injury from trips and falls.

Sexism.

Racism.

Xenophobia.

Sports-related brain injury

Animal attack.

Earthquake.

Flood.

Slavery.

Venomous bite.

Tsunami.

Gangs and gang violence.

Food-borne illness.

Joint disease.

Loss of animal habitat.

Theft and fraud.

Cultural snobbery.

Non-fatal STDs.

Police brutality.

Animal cruelty.

Lightning strike.

Violent weather.

Bullies.

Too much sitting.

Bureaucratic delays.

Alzheimer's.

Chemical waste.

Aging infrastructure.

Drought.

Dependance on travel and automobiles.

Organ transplant supply.

Carbon-based energy.

Lack of nutritious food.

Lack of nutrition awareness.

Electrocution.

Bicycle accidents.

Drug addiction.

Alcoholism.

AIDS.

Campaign finance reform.

Biased criminal justice.

Air pollution.

Water pollution.

Student debt.

Retirement funding.

Socioeconomic mobility.

Infectious disease control.

Under employment.

Diabetes.

Bad regulation of financial markets.

Fraud.

Extortion.

Tax evasion.

War casualties.

Lack of support for veterans of foreign wars.

Homelessness.

Mental illness.

Blood transfusions supply.

Early disease detection.

Human waste (all types)

Sexual abuse (all forms).

Religion competition.

Gun safety.

Obesity.

Auto accidents and fatalities.

Drug abuse & drug control.

Mass extinction of nonhuman species.

Loneliness.

Stroke.

Cancer.

Heart disease.

Global warming.

Poverty

Misguided use of technology.

..and the lack of awareness about social ills and inability to focus attention on important problems requiring solutions.

Please feel free to add items or suggest corrections.

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