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Comment by lucamark | Hacker News Reader

> risk-takers who are badly needed

But at what point does marginal private incentive stop helping innovation and start damaging democracy? For sure risk-taking deserves reward but the size of the reward matters

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But when they fail, they fail upwards. These risks are always on the backs of everyone else.

For example, they take risks by using chemicals (that they know) can kill people, by the time people get cancer they are retired, there are no claw-backs.

More recently you commit actual fraud, get convicted but then get a pardon and somehow end up with money again running the next "scam".

These people never take real risks.

DOGE resulted in the death of over 100k people [1] and will result in many people dying of Ebola. It was a huge failure yet the "risk" Elon took is not his.

[1] https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-human-cost-one-year-afte...

100% see this times article about how musk only hit 19% of his targets on time:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/02/technology/el...

Only the death of a lot of gravy trains and slush funds enabled by USAID and similar.

At the best, it’d be a stretch to claim that USAID was the sole or primary thing that kept people alive or disease free.

Ebola is a bad example as the easiest way to prevent it is to ban bushmeat markets (or at least some types of bushmeat), but for some reason that's never discussed.

> Wild meat, also known as “bushmeat,” refers to the meat of wildlife species hunted or collected for human consumption. USAID staff developed the Wild Meat Learning Agenda to generate and share evidence to inform efforts to improve wild meat programming and to understand those connections to food security, health, and conservation. The Learning Agenda defines learning questions and associated activities to address those questions.

https://www.wildmeat.org/toolkit/

In other words, USAID was helping with the bushmeat situation and therefore ebola, but Trump killed USAID.

Totally. Those conversations often also overlook the fact that some people are just driven and curious and risk taking by personality (especially after they’ve made it to adulthood and have entrenched work habits that may have been partly the result of economic incentives along the way). Even if you start having diminishing (personal financial) returns on added effort at some point, or even hit a ceiling, there are plenty of people who will keep pushing just because it’s all they know how to/want to do. Or because they get a thrill out of knowing that they’re on top of a still growing product (how much bigger can I make this?). Or because they are vying for non-financial social status.

Exactly. Many people - e.g., founders, scientists and artists - keep pushing because of curiosity and mission.

Money matters, especially early, but after some extreme level it is hard to believe that the next $50B - just to say a number - is what causes the useful work to happen.

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