Google says health care is unhealthy.
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has conducted what he calls a “fireside chat” with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In one much-cited passage, Brin observes that although he is excited about making gadgets like glucose-measuring contact lenses, health care, because “so heavily regulated,” is “just a painful business to be in. It’s not necessarily how I want to spend my time. . . . [T]he regulatory burden in the U.S. is so high that I think it would dissuade a lot of entrepreneurs.” Page echoes his colleague.
A blunt, and fair, observation. But it makes one wonder why these super-entrepreneurs have not been more critical (at least so far as their search engine can tell me) of Obamacare, which multiplies mandates and prohibitions in the medical industry by an order of magnitude.
Top Google executives are known to be liberal in their politics, and presumably have been sincere. It seems, though, that reality is not cooperating with any ideological tilt they may yet harbor in favor of government paternalism.
It’s in fields with which a businessman is best acquainted that he is most likely to recognize the value of freedom — at least his own, if not always that of competitors. So perhaps we should hope that Brin, Page and other Google principals try to achieve something great in every industry there is. That way, they can come around to consistent, principled support for freeing markets.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
2 replies on “Google Mugged By Reality?”
From your lips to God’s ears.
The issue is that entrepreneurs are fabulously focused and will seek all form of opportunity, while shunning constrained, regulated or manipulated markets. It is only when the result of such has created monopoly profits, or forgotten the service which was to be provided, that they will take on the entrenched.
Entrepreneurs are not philosophers or economists, and are in fact so focused that it is commonly missed that they are also generally myopic.
I wish you could get that headline on the front page of the NY Times so they could see the hypocrisy of their politics.