Amazing Ted Talk by a young scientist

This Ted Talk sounds like something out of a Disney movie: a bored kid sees family member die of illness, becomes inspired, decides to try to do something about it, ends up with a major medical breakthrough.  But this is not Disney, it is real life:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9yuAhusVts&feature=youtu.be 

My takeaways from this video (many of which I already knew):

·         Without a profit motive to improve, technology does not improve.  So if government subsidizes the same ole’ same ole’ then guess what?  Improvements will be slow because improvements mean you have to work harder to get paid the same.  When government is picking winners and losers with its subsidies, etc. it is really picking those who will get to coast and still earn an outsized living while everyone else works harder to make up for it (or simply lives without).

o   This "kid" turned an $800 test (which made it accessible only the very wealthy) into a 3 cent test.  He did it pretty much by himself in a year.  HE’S FIFTEEN!  Shame on academia for letting him show them up so badly!  Good on him for just doing it!

 o   Deflation is the engine of change!!  When deflation hits it means the easy money that supports the status quo dries up and people begin to innovate in order to close the gap.  Repeat after me: inflation is a friend of the government while being a knife in the back of the people.  I wonder how many people die each year needlessly because inflationary government policies incentivize corporations to stand in the way of progress while conning the people that all this is being done for our benefit.  We are as livestock to them, nothing more.  We are only of value to the degree that something can be extracted from us.  They "keep us around" because they need to parasitically profit from our labor.  People need to wake up to the math associated with this economic reality.

·         College is overrated today.  It is overpriced for sure, leaving kids whose parents are not rich with many tens of thousands of debt.  College used to be the gateway to knowledge.  You simply had no access to the good stuff if you couldn’t pony up the tuition.  Those days are long gone now that you can attend Stanford lectures for free over the Internet as well as review tons of technical documentation online. 

·         Products/productivity starts with a vision and then requires execution expertise (which can require a significant background in science to be effective at).  Academia often excels in the latter while being nearly devoid of the former.  In my professional career I have found that a good combination is to get ideas from free thinking people who are not bound by years of college rigor and systemic indoctrination and then use classically trained subject matter experts (college grads) to execute on the vision.  In case no subject matter experts are available, expertise can be developed if you have a bright, interested person who is willing to put in the time and focus.  The kid in the video is literally the poster boy for this. 

 The young man finishes his talk with an upbeat message: we CAN do great things if we understand how empowered we really are.  But look at how this guy had to show a ridiculous, almost inhuman amount of tenacity in order to overcome the roadblocks of an  incestuous academic system: 199 of 200 government controlled dens of academia turned him away.  Government is not helping progress, it is inhibiting any progress that government cannot tax or somehow be in control of.  A big part of future empowerment of the people HAS to be to put government back into its rightful place as a servant of the people instead its current position as master over the people. If America can do this without a bloody revolution it will probably be viewed one day as the greatest contribution to world history ever achieved.