4,015 karma · joined August 6, 2014
We could make enough insulin to give it away to people for free. Instead people ration with negative consequences. We grow more than enough food but we throw a huge amount of it away. We have everything we need to house people, clothe them, feed them, and provide the basics of medical care. But we wont because theres too much money to be made otherwise.
Instead of progressive enhancement it can be progressive evolution.
We arent innovating in other areas that might soften the blow. We dont have good support systems, social security, healthcare, or even demands in other areas. How many engineers are going to be plumbers and construction workers?
Additionally, depending how deep down you go, theres state stored somewhere to calculate against. Vues are stored in some kind of register and theyre passed into operations with a target register as an additional argument.
The challenge is that solving this is easier but only if people are willing to get vaccinated.
Illegal things are already illegal. Safety and security mechanisms already exist. We dont need additional, punitive, and opaque laws that can be abused.
As soon as something is done a few times, the barrier of entry goes up. We get the ability to measure and evaluate consequences. We have regulations based on safety or environmental isues. We have additional groups of people with specific concerns that must be consulted. Other nations may participate and we coerce then into increasing or decreasing their involvement. Its a wild big dynamic system.
To me this doesnt mean we shouldnt be able to move quickly. Just that the innovation requires tools that can navigate between these other constraints - or - that we only innovate in areas that have never been done before and we do so at a blistering pace.
Another part is the data / justification for this behaviour. From 1999 to 2010 at least, it seems that motor vehicle accidents are the number one cause of teenagers dying. Then it's homicide and suicide. Homicides are mostly committed by people the person knows. I don't have a full complete data set here but ~85% of homicides against youth are committed by family members or people that know the family. Not strangers. It's not to say you should't protect your kids from strangers, just that... walking to the store isn't that.
It shouldn't be surprising that anyone would play with all of the levers and dials they have at their disposal and they're wealthy enough to play the "don't like the rules: change them" game. All that being said, the piece is sort of tone deaf and just written poorly, but I cannot say I can argue with a VC firm going to bat for its portfolio companies, little tech or otherwise.