Yeah, but people being is debt is great for the part of the financial services industry that they owe money to, often with ridiculous and crippling interest rates (compare to the interest rates these players get from the government when they borrow, which is essentially 0% -- which is nice, for them). This is especially true when it comes to student debt, which can't ever be discharged. And these companies have a ton of political power (money begets power begets money).
Which all is to say I agree with frandroid. The root problem here is our political system is almost completely broken due to lobbying and lack of meaningful campaign finance laws and the best way to actually fix some of the issues listed here is fixing those core government/policy problems, but those problems aren't technical in nature and won't be fixed with a Ruby on Rails app.
Software may be eating the world, but if your only options for government leadership are (to put it in South Park terms) a "turd" or a "douche", both of which are controlled by big money whose interests are at odds with the overall populace then there are a lot of core problems that there will never be a software fix for (short of the call for better AI going really well and having a benevolent SkyNet take over).
I came here to say exactly that. The new projects YC wants to see are great and are defiantly problems worthy of effort, but the more pressing problems seem structural at the moment.
I also agree with your final conclusion ("skynet") and think it is inevitable given time. Remove human corruptibility from governance. Efficiency... it is selected for.
Yeah, but people being is debt is great for the part of the financial services industry that they owe money to, often with ridiculous and crippling interest rates (compare to the interest rates these players get from the government when they borrow, which is essentially 0% -- which is nice, for them). This is especially true when it comes to student debt, which can't ever be discharged. And these companies have a ton of political power (money begets power begets money).
Which all is to say I agree with frandroid. The root problem here is our political system is almost completely broken due to lobbying and lack of meaningful campaign finance laws and the best way to actually fix some of the issues listed here is fixing those core government/policy problems, but those problems aren't technical in nature and won't be fixed with a Ruby on Rails app.
Software may be eating the world, but if your only options for government leadership are (to put it in South Park terms) a "turd" or a "douche", both of which are controlled by big money whose interests are at odds with the overall populace then there are a lot of core problems that there will never be a software fix for (short of the call for better AI going really well and having a benevolent SkyNet take over).