Re:Ask HN: What problems don't have a profitable business so...
by alasdair_ on Tuesday December 12, 2017 @06:35PM
(#15910573)
Almost anything that involves people NOT doing something.
For example: let's say you dislike the idea of people clubbing baby seals to death for their skins and want to reduce or eliminate the practice. If you start a business buying up seal habitats and selling them to ecological investors that derive utility from there being fewer seal deaths, all that happens is the price of seal skins spikes and (eventually) more and more people get involved in the business, bringing things down to equilibrium again.
It's the same reason that buying all the slaves in the world won't get rid of slavery - it will just encourage MORE of it.
For example: let's say you dislike the idea of people clubbing baby seals to death for their skins and want to reduce or eliminate the practice. If you start a business buying up seal habitats and selling them to ecological investors that derive utility from there being fewer seal deaths, all that happens is the price of seal skins spikes and (eventually) more and more people get involved in the business, bringing things down to equilibrium again.
It's the same reason that buying all the slaves in the world won't get rid of slavery - it will just encourage MORE of it.