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Comment by capex | Hacker News Reader

From the business point of view, 'wifi everywhere' is a lot more desirable than say, clean water everywhere.

Clean water is often harder to provide. People that lack clean water usually don't have any use for wifi; if they had enough money for a wifi-enabled gadget, they'd probably spend it on clean water provisioning or other life-support needs. So they are a bad market for wifi deployments.

From business point of view, "well-off people everywhere" is very desirable, since poor people are poor customers. Unfortunately, this problem is not readily solved by pouring in some modest money.

Imagine donating to North Korea; probably the money will mostly end up in military programs, even if some of the money will actually feed the undernourished. But political influence is usually a big no-no.

the first thing I thought about is paying my taxes in the US:

most of my money will end up in military programs [0], but I do have the option to opt a percentage of my money out of those military programs by donating to charity -- a tax break.

I agree, clean water should be a top priority, whether it's cleaning oil spills, rain water, pollution, or drinking water, whatever...

another controversial point of philanthropy: is it better to fund a program to solve an existing problem using money, or to instead invest that money instead into education? I just don't know...

[0] looking up military spending, I found multiple results. some sites claiming as low as 19% of income tax goes to military spending, and others claiming much higher numbers.. ~45% (https://www.warresisters.org/content/how-pie-chart-figures-w...) -- without a doubt though, and according to wikipedia, the USA definitely tops the charts by a long shot. it also appears (acc to wikipedia) that south korea spends more than it's northern counterpart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...) on military programs

The difference in the quoted percentages is usually due to whether or not social security and medicare taxes and spending are included. If you include them, it is about 19 percent. If not, 45 percent sounds about right.

Either way, it is a lot of money.

> People that lack clean water usually don't have any use for wifi; if they had enough money for a wifi-enabled gadget, they'd probably spend it on clean water provisioning or other life-support needs.

This is just empirically false. Esther Duflo teaches in her edx.org course on poverty, in one of the very first classes:

"The first surprising finding: television is more important than food."

Across geographies and cultures, poor people choose time and again to spend money on communication (as in tv and telephones) over nutrition. President of Bolivia Evo Morales, in an interview with Democracy Now, said in no uncertain terms: "Communication is a human right."[1]

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/18/an_hour_with_bolivian...

From the business point of view, 'wifi everywhere' is a lot more desirable than say, clean water everywhere.

Precisely the problem with capitalism.

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