I’ve been observing the comments at News.YC and here and I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to draw the line between making money or saving the world. My point is that we’ve been conditioned somewhat to think that the only way to build profitable businesses is as an advertising platform. It’s less a question of revenue models and more a questioning of the types of applications we build and a challenge to expand our horizons.

B,

Thanks - I learned a new word (synecdoche).

I’ve read recently about the “brain drain occurring at google. The situation is basically, “We’ve hired too many smart people and they’re too ambitious to just sit there and fix adwords forever.” They’ve fallen from being a dream company where 20/80 time meant you could focus on your own creative idea, regardless of whether it was able to be monetized. I’ve also read that that privilege has eroded to only “approved” projects.

As a developer, I’d love to just sit around and tinker with ways to make the world a better place through software, but I gotta pay the rent. Google is no longer my dream job, from what I’ve read it’s become just like every other large corporation in this country, a bloated bureaucracy.

Solution: work at startups forever…

Every day my opinion changes about it, but for now I think what matters is money. My bills come, and no one cares, so I have to.

Thanks for reading the post and your comments.

You ask reasonable questions. I wasn’t born in Africa, nor do I have a family there. I’ve never been there. And you’re right - there is probably no logical reason for me to care more about the people there than the people in other parts of the world (or the universe ).

I didn’t mean to single out Africa as the sole victim of oppression in the world today but it is an example of a reality that we shouldn’t ignore in the developed world. There is a history of systematic exploitation of less developed nations that strips away their chances to profit on their own resources and pretty much every developed nation is guilty of it in one fashion or another. I don’t mean to get political but I do think that there is an opportunity for people who want to make the world a better place to find a way for rich and poor economies to work together in a way that provides symmetric benefits.

Why does this bother you(if it is true)? Odds are very likely that there are thousands of planets out there harboring continents full of people that are being mistreated. Do you worry about these too?

Or are they just too far away? Africa is pretty far away too. Were you born there? Do you have family there?

I just am trying to understand why you “care very much” about Africa.

There are certainly plenty of people near me who are in dire need of help. I am more concerned about helping them than helping people on a continent that I know NOTHING about beyond what I read in textbooks and see on television.