Mark Zuckerberg: belief

Transcript context

…No, look, I think these issues on exploding costs and why the systems aren’t working the way that they’re supposed to for people is probably one of the most pressing questions. And when I think about our work over the next decade, it’s like what are we going do that’s will fundamentally make people’s lives better? There’s a lot that we can do. But if these problems continue at the rate that they’re going at, it’s actually quite hard for me to imagine how we could do enough good to overcome the increase in costs that people are incurring at things that are so fundamental. So we’re working on them in somewhat different ways. But I think healthcare is difficult because it is so inherently political because it touches on moral values. If you wanna have a difference in approach of how we treat the last six months of people’s lives, that’s something that’s more of a democratic question than a technocratic one, I think. People need to be able to support that. So I don’t personally feel like that’s an area that I’m gonna have a huge impact. A lot of people are focused on that. But the area that I do think we can make a big impact is on long-term science research. So if you can just make it more efficient to cure, prevent, or manage diseases, then that over the long-term should really be the answer for bringing healthcare costs in line, not in the next ten years, but maybe in over the next 50 years. I’d like to see a solution before that, so I’d love to see more studying of the healthcare part of this. But on the science side, I’m quite optimistic about that. On housing, I don’t know. There’s always the question of which forces in technology — which trends — end up being stronger? So on the one hand you have this giant mismatch of opportunity where people feel compelled to move to cities because that’s where a lot of the jobs are. But then there’s not enough building of supply of housing, so rent just increases. And then that means that even though people are going and doing higher-value things, their lives actually aren’t benefiting as much from that because so much of their costs are just of the value that they’re generating is just going to housing because rent is getting so high. So historically, what have people done? We invented cars and freeways. That way people could live further out. Maybe something like the Hyperloop could extend suburbs like five times as far, so that could make it so someone could live quite further away. And that would be good, right, if you can increase the effective radius of a city — that’s one way to alleviate constraints, political constraints or concerns about people building things, so that way you can get more supply, bring the cost down. I happen to think a different thing is probably the right solution. In 2019, it’s a lot easier to move bits around than it is atoms. g things, so that way you can get more supply, bring the cost down. I happen to think a different thing is probably the right solution. In 2019, it’s a lot easier to move bits around than it is atoms. So rather than people inventing a new Hyperloop or cars, I tend to think the set of technologies — whether it’s augmented reality or virtual reality or video presence that just lets people be where they wanna be physically and feel present with other people wherever they need to be to do their job, to connect with the people they care about — that feels to me the better long-term solution. Don’t make everyone move to cities. Make it so people can choose where they wanna be and can get access to all the opportunities they want. It’s hard for me to imagine more important problems over the next decade. I think over the longer term potentially climate change is more of an existential issue. But in terms of people’s lives today, I think the exploding costs from these areas is such a profound issue, and the trend is so out of control. Three three quick points on that. One is, I think these questions are often a little bit — like the cost of disease question, I think one of the reasons it’s difficult to study is because you have to take this very macroscopic and potentially this very microscopic view. And so say, for example in science, if it were the case that the administrative burden on scientists had increased by say two-thirds over the last 40 years. I’m not saying it has and not saying that even if it has that is, in fact, the cause of any kind of slowdown. But if it had, that might be quite difficult to observe because it can come in the form of, well, it takes twice as long on average for things to be approved and the forms are longer and you’re interrupted more. And so actually specifically diagnosing that causal pathways can really be quite tricky, and I think that generalizes a lot of the fields. Secondly, to your point about technology solving the agglomeration imperative of cities, I think that could be true, although, you know, here we are in person.…

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