i hope there's still room in this world for reasonable people to seek a reasonable middle ground. those of us who recognize we have to make some money to live but who have desires that are more important than profit, like doing something we enjoy that doesn't make the world a worse place.
Oh Geez.
You know one is not exclusive from the other. The idea that only "altruistic" motivations are the only ones that are "pure" is absolute bunk.
I'll give you an example. Everyone here seems to absolutely
bleed for the down trodden and poor around the world. Famine and disease are of course a bane to humanity and a scourge to some nations around the world.
So the first thing everyone does is
demand that the government, usually the United States government, do something!!!
And we do, as a nation the U.S. itself has contributed hundreds of billions in food aid in the last 50 years. And yet famine around the world still occurs on a regular basis.
So guess what folks ...altruism doesn't work, because the easy thing to do for everyone is to demand that governments give money and individuals give to charities and go to "relief concerts" and there ya go....we fixed the problem.
Ha
The solution to this problem goes way deeper than slogans and U2 concerts.
Economist Blames Aid for Africa FamineAs a matter of fact all these "feel good" remedies actually do more damage than good
and makes the world a worse place. By creating dependent societies on foreign aid. There is also the corruption of local governments, little or no infrastructure to move supplies, civil wars and warlords seizing then hording supplies for their private armies.
No one wants to address these problems, so the food is there but never gets to the starving.
Altruism in this case is a dismal failure.
Even economists of the affected countries see the folly of excessive foreign aid as detrimental to their countries.
The real solution to the problems in these countries is, instead of reacting to each "crisis" as it comes along, slow and steady investment in the infrastructure and economies of the affected nations and encouraging political stability. That would save more lives in the long run. But these are profit driven goals and basically frowned upon. So millions continue to die.
There is a limit to "touchy feely" solutions to problems in the world. Like it or not profit is the leading innovation for just about anything. Computers wouldn't exist if it were not for the search for profit.
Software is no different, companies
employ people, not out of the goodness of their hearts but in search of profit. Employees work for said company to receive a paycheck to support their families and buy goods from other companies and around it goes.
It's easy to sit in a air conditioned home drinking a latte, with the TV on CNN and gripe about the cost of software on a computer hooked up to a high speed connection.
Yeah, we can afford all that and yet begrudge someone a fair profit for their product.
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