This is analogous to arguing against exploring the Americas because Europe had poverty.
It seems to me that over a couple hundred year time horizon the new land, resources, technologies and economies of scale added by the new world were clearly a net benefit to europeans as a whole and paid back the initial investment many times over.
If Europe had ended poverty before enslaving the rest of the world, it would be a much better world now.
How could anyone argue against that?
A people that were interested in raising others around them out of poverty, before setting off to devastate and enslave other continents, would probably have treated the people they found on those continents much more humanly.
If the european colonial diaspora had set out to advance other places, as opposed to exploiting them, we probably wouldn't have global poverty today.
The "return on investment" of colonizing north america was made by exporting tobacco to europe, clear cutting the north american continent, near extincting major mega-fauna and replacing them with invasive species, and shipping africans to the americas for slave labor.
Considering that a net positive is a dubious conclusion. But of course we have to ask: net positive for whom?
And of course, misses the point of the original comment: that there are no resources to be exploited 40 light years from earth! It's a one way trip...
try a broad History of Slavery before asserting that the Age of Exploration was just one big slave-fest, please. Its a bigoted statement to meld them together without the actions of other civilizations taken into account.
This is such a silly take. Europe enslaved the world? Sorry, but slavery was an institution long before some Europeans took part in it (emphasis on "took part" as it was cooperative, involving African, Arab, etc. slave traders), and continues to be practiced long after those European empires abolished it within their own empires. The abolitionist movement was also European, and certainly Western. And how can you know if the world would have been better? That's a counterfactual you either cannot know, or one that fails to account for all the good that was also transmitted through colonialism, or absorbed by the colonial powers. It wasn't black and white. And even where the bad is concerned, while there is not argument for chattel slavery, good can come out of bad things. Furthermore, you are reducing European influence to one aspect of one aspect, not even just colonialism, which is not even uniquely European, but slavery per se. This is ridiculous.
Your argument w.r.t. poverty is also the same boring reductive fallacy that people who argue against beautiful architecture and art make ("You could have fed so many people with that money!"). Guess what: you can do both. You don't "solve poverty" by spending a sum of money on food over art. Those people will be hungry soon. That's one. Two, Man does not live by bread alone. Beauty matters. We don't live to eat. We eat to live. And yes, we can both care for the starving and invest in things other than helping the poor.
The idea that Europe is responsible for global poverty is also obtuse, historically illiterate, and devoid of common sense. There was plenty of poverty in the world before the evil European showed up. If anything, Western commerce, whatever its flaws, has lifted many out of poverty. Yes, capitalism, whatever its flaws, has lifted many, especially the West, out of poverty and into a good deal of material comfort. Look at the 20th century alone. It's better to be poor today than poor a century or a few centuries ago. The average man today is far better off today materially than he has ever been, than even the materially better off in previous centuries were.
Our ancestors weren't perfect, and we should not repeat their errors, but it takes a certain kind of ingratitude and blindness to fail to appreciate the cumulative good they did leave us, an ingratitude and blindness seemingly particular to snarky, ideologically infected oikophobes in the West. Believe me: Africans aren't generally seething with hatred at the good of the West the way people in the West do. If anything, they are more likely to despise the malaise and decadence they see in the West today, that the West is trying to force down the throats of everyone else. They are looking to replicate what is actually good in the West in their own countries.
I feel like if you look at the amount of equipment and staff here it obviously costs a huge amount to deliver this care. Regardless of who pays the $100k+ cost remains.
Generally socialized healthcare is also cheaper because you have a single payer negotiating. You also don’t have all the middlemen that are spending time figuring out whether or not your insurance covers X Y or Z. So while it costs $140k out of pocket in addition to all the same background costs, in a socialized system it costs a heck of a lot less in addition to being free out of pocket. The trade off is that healthcare can be difficult to obtain as you have to navigate a very complicated system and there’s limited resources because it’s more accessible - if you’re upper middle class you can have similar struggles to find care as those who are poorer. The rich are oblivious to this because they can just pay for private care or travel to where private care exists.
The full process is the better part of a decade in the best case (e.g. expensive lawyers, STEM degree, immigrating from an easy country like Canada). If you're from a country like China or India where lots of other people are also applying for those slots - or if anything else is less than optimal - you're looking at between a decade+ and never.
Yes, US citizens can sponsor foreign nationals both within and outside the USA for green cards through marriage. The process itself (current status or no status) to green card easily takes 2 years. Once that person arrives, they can get citizenship (not residency) within 3 years.
The sentence structure though seems to imply marrying solely for status, which is fraud, and reflects very poorly on both applicant and petitioner. This kind of thing definitely happens which is why it takes 2 years for the honest applicants to get though, as the immigration system doesn't do a sufficient job filtering out fraud at the beginning stages of the petition and leaves too much of that work at the end of the petition stage (interview) which is where the biggest bottleneck is.
This is not constructive advice. It is a heck of a lot more complicated than this is making it out to be. You wouldn't leave your loved one with a broken leg until the "found their own way" to the doctor.
Sure, you'd take them to the doctor for a broken leg, and help them as they get better. I'd leave someone that didn't do this.
But if the person refused to go to the doctor, what do you do then? How do you assess if they are bad enough to try to force them into hospitalisation if they aren't obviously a danger to anyone? What if the broken leg winds up causing abusive behavior (on repeated occasions) - do you stay? If their leg doesn't heal correctly and you have to care for them, can you handle the stress? What happens if you find out you aren't a good caregiver and it makes you hate your life?
I know these examples seem extreme, but it is closer to what folks sometimes deal with when their loved one has a mental illness.
I was actually about to use the term "meta-evolution" while writing that post, since that's what it seemed like, though I wasn't sure if meta-evolution was already considered just a subset of overall evolution.
Your whitepaper definitely makes a lot of sense to me. Has there been a lot of other research done on this?
@aacook this is awesome! I just showed it to my sister and we're going to sign up for my Grandma's birthday next month. One request:
Snapchat is our native photo sharing app (and I assume that's true for many other millennials) any chance there's a way to send from snapchat in the works?
Thank you! I've explored other platforms. One of the reasons I've been hesitant to rely too heavily on social tools is NanaGram is often used for photos that never make their way to social. That said, Whatsapp has an API but it's invite-only and I've had no luck getting in. It's too bad because it would be a perfect medium. Hopefully in time.
Snapchat would be a great fit. I looked it about a year ago and it wasn't feasible. I'll take a look again!
In the meantime, we do support email by giving you a unique NanaGram email address.
Thanks! I had a step in the initial onboarding to let folks add their NanaGram recipient as a contact via a contact.vcf file. I user tested with 5-6 people and couldn't quite nail it. Had other priorities at the time and decided to back burner it. The concept of downloading a vcf file, opening it, etc is foreign to many people. Another challenge to nail was the copy around adding a contact record for the recipient, as many people were confused (I already have a contact for my Nana!) This kind of address book integration seems easier to do in a native app. Soon, I hope!
No charity expected, being very founder friendly is sufficient. I must have missed this bit - “Series A program is free”.
In any case, what I wanted to say is an independent Series A program (that allows direct entry in addition to Seed Program graduates), parallel (and similar) to the seed program, sounds like a good idea. Maybe that’s what this experiment might morph into eventually.
It seems to me that over a couple hundred year time horizon the new land, resources, technologies and economies of scale added by the new world were clearly a net benefit to europeans as a whole and paid back the initial investment many times over.