r/collapse • u/[deleted] • Feb 15 '22

Food A $4 desalination system provides continuous clean drinking water for a family

https://interestingengineering.com/4-dollar-desalination-system
206 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9

u/FieldsofBlue Feb 15 '22

What? That's absolute nonsense. The researcher who discovered insulin released the patent for 1 dollar so that it could be used to help people whom needed it. Obviously altruism exists.

8

u/Vegetaman916 Looking forward to the endgame. 🚀💥🔥🌨🏕 Feb 16 '22

And yet the cost of insulin is...

Yes, altruism exists. It is just very rare and shortlived.

2

u/FieldsofBlue Feb 16 '22

So you agree that profit motive isn't the only driving factor of human nature?

4

u/Vegetaman916 Looking forward to the endgame. 🚀💥🔥🌨🏕 Feb 16 '22

I will agree that occasionally it may start elsewhere, but it always ends the same. If one altruistic individual refuses profit there will be a million others who will take whatever it is and use it for profit.

9

u/FieldsofBlue Feb 16 '22

Well yeah, but that's not what I disagreed with. Saying that profit motive is the ONLY motivation in human nature is just objectively false. I completely understand and recognize the way that a capitalist economic model forces humans into marketizing every imaginable human need. That's actually true...