Danielle Fong

> an employer from whom I could have no possible legal recourse in the event of a dispute.

That part is easily solved: the dictator can put up a bond in some trusted country. The bond is forfeited if the dictator betrays you. The contract laws of the trusted country apply.

It could be that some enterprising dictator could gain a better reputation for respect of property than the US government[1]. A reputation for respecting property rights, combined with a country, is an extremely lucrative asset, and it would be costly to lose it.

> As a business owner, I then have the choice of doing my business in a major Western democracy with an elected government

If moonchrome can offer a better regulatory environment, you might prefer to do business with him. Maybe your business is melanoma detection. HN user danifong approached YCombinator with that idea, and Graham told her[2]: “The trouble with the melanoma detection idea is that you’d spend most of your time dealing with legal and regulatory crap. That sort of work doesn’t really take advantage of your skills.”

[1] The USA has questionable regard for property rights, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

[2] http://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-business-landscape-and-a-patent-puzzle/

The infrastructure to produce food is pretty vital, but I think it's also mostly market-driven and works well.

I think the issues around power utilities are more to do with a lack of competition, and legislation that creates perverse incentives. (I don't know what the current perverse incentives are, but at least as of 2010, an energy startup founder said[1] that power companies were legislated monopolies that were "restrained to charge a price only up to a certain regulated return on their capital", which meant it was "in the utility’s interest to buy the most capital intensive equipment that the regulatory commission will allow".)

Can you legislate a monopoly and write enough careful regulations to make it do what you want without giving it perverse incentives that will cause some disasters here and there? I doubt this has been solved even in the absence of regulatory capture.

[1] https://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-business-landscape-and-a-patent-puzzle/

Dani Fong was allowed to stop going to normal school at around age 12, because she hated it to the bone and her parents listened. After that she went on to an alternative track that involved programming, horse back riding and community college and shortly after, a physics undergrad that took 5 years.

That's what I gathered from her history. I know of a bunch of people that could of been like that, but stuck to normal school and the pace that it sets with it's busy work and so on limited their potential. I think there is a lot of kids where you could just 'skip the bullshit' and put them in some sort of college degree but instead they flounder in a school system where they don't fit in and is not suited for them.

She started her own company because similarly, she really doesn't like being an employee.

http://daniellefong.com/about-the-author/

> "What are these red dots?" Also seems non-trivial to diagnose. They can be tested, or more questions can be asked of them, but this seems like an awful lot of work to be managed by a computer alone.

I don't entirely disagree with you, but I think you might be underestimating the capabilities of smart programmers, e.g., some of the stuff at the beginning of http://daniellefong.com/2010/02/11/how-law-shapes-the-business-landscape-and-a-patent-puzzle/

If algorithms discussed in that blog post were used in one system (even with pictures taken from an Android device possibly), and that system were to communicate results to Watson ... I can't think of a reason why that wouldn't work.

Other than, y'know, patents.