>>11982189>Or did a visionary, be it 1000 or 10 years ago, had to come in and bring the conditions for that job to exist?There is a very good argument that resources need to be allocated to innovation.
The problem is that innovation isn't a market incentive for billionaires (or billion dollar networth corporations). Bill gates famously made his money STIFLING innovation. As did most other industries (AT&T breakup, monsanto, warren buffet talking about moats like he's not talking about digging graves for competitors, rockerfeller/standard oil, the list goes on). We're not putting resources into the people that innovate, we're putting resources into the people that have every incentive in the world to NOT innovate. Hell, just look at tesla - a billion dollar modern success story. You know their main competition? BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATIONS IN THE FORM OF THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY, WHO HAVE AT EVERY TURN TRIED TO ABORT THEM.
The guys that were screaming for electric cars for years? They didn't have the billions of dollar that Musk had from his dot com days to start the business. Banks didn't give a shit so long as they could have their finger in the pie. Musk was at least as much a venture capitalist as he is an innovator - and you can't be an innovator unless you have a venture capitalist. Isn't that the fucked up part?
Lastly, the worst part about all this isn't that billion dollar companies are allowed to shift their weight precisely to kill competitors, it's that successful innovators inevitably turn into billion dollar companies that have a vested interest in killing competition. What stopped the microsoft stranglehold on practically everything wasn't some change of heart, it was a monopoly inquiry. Regulations. Do we need more? Not really. Actual enforcement would be a nice start, though no amount of enforcement gets rid of this perverse corporate economic structure where competition is a zero sum game. Innovation is the anti zero-sum.
