Is there something wrong with making money? If we always settled for "good enough" we wouldn't have half of the nice things we have today, and the potential to make lots of money is a great way of motivating people to push beyond "good enough".

You seem to equate disruption with for-profit. One does not necessitate the other. However, a proper disruption would be really good for saving people money as the current market is ripe with crazy fees and no progress.

It is, though pointing out that obesity is a high cost problem hardly suggests that it is we on Hacker News that need to make that money.

If we help people lose weight in any way, we're going to save the country a lot of money in healthcare costs that could be spent elsewhere. Put another way, if the US finds a way to lose weight effectively, the results will have a strong positive impact on a variety of other services that the government provides that will be able to help more people with more available funding.

> Leave it to the HN crowd to see an epidemic as a money making opportunity.

The obesity epidemic has been recognized as a money making opportunity by major industries long before HN existed.