Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can Help

Re:Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can... by mfn on Tuesday November 12, 2013 @12:27PM (#6719199)

I think that in the long run, our biggest bottleneck is technological innovation, and not any static resource constraints. The return on new scientific breakthroughs is huge, and even if only 1% of the population can come up with and develop such ideas, the return will often be enough to increase the quality of life of the other 99% by orders of magnitude.

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Re:Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can... by duairc on Tuesday November 12, 2013 @12:48PM (#6719367)

I think that's hopelessly techno-utopian.

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Re:Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can... by InclinedPlane on Tuesday November 12, 2013 @01:28PM (#6719726)

Given that it's a very accurate description for the recent history of mankind from about the mid-19th century until the present I think it's rather tendentious to label it as "hopeless" let alone "utopian".

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Re:Bill Gates: My Plan to Improve Our World, and How You Can... by genwin on Tuesday November 12, 2013 @02:06PM (#6720076)

We're risking mass die-offs and mass migrations on that tech bet, hundreds of millions of people. Why not lessen the risk by focusing on a low-tech approach to reduce the population via birth control?

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