[xvilka]

> Can you imagine human potential if it was somehow applied to crop harvesting efficiency, new medicines, etc?

If these sectors offered competitive salaries - sure, talent would flock to them. As a former chemist, I struggled to find a job that didn't pay scraps, no matter the industry - from big pharma to advanced materials. Eventually, I just gave up and went into the IT, which is 3x-10x better paid (at the very least).

[thiagoharry]

We let the market dictate how society's resources are allocated. And we see, as a result, how the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society.

[vladms]

I always wonder if people do not look for external reasons to avoid doing work or taking decisions themselves.

Most of the people I know do not spend their free time doing research into the satisfaction of society, and do not donate (even what they could!) to great causes. It is not the "market dictates" is "most of people dictate".

And still. I am writing this in an open-source browser, on an open-source operating system. The existence of this tools helps society no matter how you put it. So in fact, if you think of it, there are many people that do not "obey" the market. And this is only one way, there are others.

So maybe rather than "blame the market" be positive and tell us what way did you find to make a difference.

[js8]

"The market" here is just a convenient substitute for "people weighted by the disposable income", which today roughly approximates to "rich people".

[somenameforme]

There was a huge inflection point in basically everything around 1971. [1] That was US pulled out of Bretton Woods and the USD became completely unbacked by anything, enabling the government to 'print' infinite money. How can market forces be the one deciding anything when literally trillions of imaginary dollars keeps being dumped into it, in a highly prejudiced fashion, by the government and their preferred institutions?

At that point the historical correlations between money and basically everything, which had sustained for centuries - even though the industrial revolution, began completely breaking down, and infinitely began skyrocketing to levels never seen before, in the US at least.

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

[logicchains]

>the market is actually not at all interested in the satisfaction and well-being of the people in society.

The biochem industry is extremely bad at creating things that increase the satisfaction and well-being of society; the vast majority of products are failures with few users. The reason tech companies make money is because they make things people actually want to use.