Standard liberal guilt. If you're a programmer and you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber, you should make a shit-ton of money and give it to Bill Gates. Without the teen angst.
In the future, if you want to make this kind of point on HN, please do so more thoughtfully. Slinging insults provokes flamewars and makes the site worse.
I'm sorry, but that strikes me as a pretty privileged sentiment. Would you say that everyone who feels a calling to work in the nonprofit/humanitarian sphere is merely doing so to assuage their "teen angst"?
If someone else feels compelled to work more directly to help those in need, and he or she is perfectly respectful of others' work (as OP clearly is), why do you feel compelled to reduce their desire to "standard liberal guilt" or "teen angst"?
How does any of the prior statement sound "privileged"? Or was that just a hamfisted attempt at using a dog whistle?
Um, this, for one. I see no possible reality in which a disease that kills almost one child every minute[1] could possibly take a backseat to you not being able to get a taxi when you call for one. The above could be put in the dictionary next to "first world problem".
I would love to hear your reasoning if you have some opinion to the contrary.
Actually, that is a pretty neutral position. Your position sounds much more "privileged", as you appear to be attempting to tell people not only what they should do, but how they should feel. I'm going to assume that you didn't imply that anybody holding a contrary opinion on the best use of their time is somehow cheering on malaria :)
And it's one that'll be solved if enough of us start/sell businesses at a level of profit that'll move the needle on the amount of money Bill has.