That is a really poor argument and can be debunked with some simple thought modeling. Imagine a system where returns on capital are higher than labor, and there are a relatively small number of people with large amounts of capital and no 'socialist' policies in place to attempt to interrupt the capital flow. After a period of time, assuming everyone is working and investing if they have capital to spare, would the income be more or less evenly distributed? This result would occur outside of socialist policies so it's very doubtful they are the cause.

It seems strange to me that someone who doesn't have the risk appetite to start a business would think they are well suited to running one still in its early stages.

The companies they are buying aren't in the early stages; they are established companies. They are companies that have been around a while, that have owners who want to exit, with the typical reason for an exit being an age.

So you are arguing that in general one would want a ceo that makes riskier decisions? That seems pretty irrational.

Growth is about risk. Calculated risk is core to making money.

It's actually in larger companies best interests to pay patent trolls. Like internet fast lanes it creates barriers to entry that effect smaller competitors much more.

I think this could work well for people who are 'time rich' where talking is by far the better way to convey more information. For the rest of us drones though we have less choice about when / how long / how loud we can talk so texting or messaging is an attractive alternative.

We run 45 server instances and handle ~20 requests per second on AppEngine. Like many others we run Jenkins to handle our build and deployment. Appengine is not perfect but we spend the majority of our time focused on delivering business logic software rather than backend / infrastructure / scaling solutions. This allows us to keep our team small and increases our revenue per employee. Our experience has been that many of the idiosyncrasies you deal when first starting with AppEngine make scaling far simpler down the track.

Only 20 requests/second with 45 instances? That's horrible performance.

I think the culture of blaming the poor for being that way shows a tremendous lack of understanding about the complex social issues around it. It's more than statistically likely you would not break the generational cycle of poverty if you started life in similar circumstances.

Furthermore, it's a pretty serious judgment to make, which I'd say requires a lot of supporting evidence.

It is not practical to investigate every instance of someone doing something 'unusual' (even if you can define it well enough). Even if you could investigate every instance of it you still shouldn't because a police state where everything 'unusual' is questioned is a terrible place to live. If you know that you're going to have to answer questions every time you take a photo, you'll stop taking photos.

There is a disconnect between voting and policy that will need to be addressed before you are able to call it a democracy again.

You're kidding yourself if you don't think that is a private data leak.

I'd love to see them take an altruistic approach and shift the focus to countries like Africa where health projects would provide a lot more utility and have a lot less regulatory burden. Once a product is visibly working in one country it's more difficult to make cases against it elsewhere.

I've heard Bill Gates state this as one of his philanthropic goals; to fund things with a cost/benefit analysis that doesn't make sense in the developed world but does elsewhere.

I've worked with people involved in HIV vaccine trials overseas and, in fact, things really don't change as much as you might think.

The basic tenant "first do no harm" is ingrained at an many different ethical, institutional and legal levels that it isn't like you can, say, justify a more risky vaccine in an area with a higher risk for HIV or whatever.

In fact trials have been cut short and research into entire vectors (ie the cold virus used as a transport for the HIV related material) cut off when trials in Africa started to appear (statistically) to be slightly harmful in any way.

I feel this is a good thing. Scientists and medical people holding themselves to this high standard is the reason the anti-vaccine crowd really doesn't have a leg to stand on.

> to fund things with a cost/benefit analysis that doesn't make sense in the developed world but does elsewhere.

While it seems to go against "do no harm" ,in reality many low cost products can start at low quality, but with time and experience improve while still offering much lower costs. So the logic can make sense.

Not sure it works for vaccines thought.

Also i wonder: what were the benefits of the vaccine you described ? were they weighted against the slight harm ?

Also because the history of unethical research is long and storied enough already. It's pretty well appreciated where that path leads.

You could say research is well researched.

Unfortunately, the same doesn't apply to unethical treatment. More and more patients get certain treatments or recommendations by doctors or hospitals not because they need them but because they're profitable for the doctors or hospitals.

This is the insurance/financial product salesman's spirit at work, and it needs to be stopped. Right now.

I think part of the problem is the "insurance" mentality - if you don't pay for the treatment yourself, but the insurance just pays for everything, you aren't interested in an economical solution (and maybe the minimally-invasive treatment), but you take what's recommended. If you have to pay for treatment yourself, you begin asking questions. (Disclaimer: I live in Germany, a country with "free" health insurance, which I pay for with an effective 15% tax on my income.)