Ask HN: Software with biggest potential for positive impact in 5 years?
One thing we see over and over again leading to social injustice is the externalization of costs.<p>Examples:<p>* burning fossil fuels externalizes the cost of dealing with climate change<p>* during the housing market crash of 2007, lots of risks were ultimately externalized to the state<p>* plastic waste ending up in the ocean means somebody[tm] externalized the cost of not properly disposing of / recycling their waste<p>... and so on, once you think in these terms, you find that pattern nearly everywhere.<p>If we had some kind of software solution to track externalized costs, that would be a huge step towards reducing it.<p>I know, this is <i>very</i> abstract, and I don't even know what a software solution for that would look like, but if somebody comes up with a really good of tracking that, it could have a huge impact on society in the long run.<p>Try to think of a society where nobody could quietly externalize a cost, and we had an effective way of tracking who externalizes how much, and go after the big offenders in a very data-driven way. There could even be general laws that make certain externalizations illegal, in a much broader way than current regulations do.