Think about it. Capitalism is awesome if you’re the one who started it. 30-50 years later, its fuck everyone else.
All the great tech innovations happened early on and peaked many years ago. Anything innovative now doesn’t pay, so its onto the grift and theft of data, wages, etc.
In the last ~10 years humanity has developed:
- electric cars
- mRNA vaccines
- cars that can (more or less drive themselves)
- convincing human language text/speech synthesis
- reusable space rockets
- precise gene editing
- prosthetics that directly connect to the nervous system
- robots that can walk across inconsistent terrain
- commercial quantum computing and quantum cryptography
- cultured meat
- biometrics
- computer vision
- virtual reality
- optical computing
- wireless charging
- stem cell treatments
- neural computer interfaces
- drones
- maglev trains
New technologies tend to have long lulls while being developed, followed by a rapid series of developments when those technologies become viable and in turn provide the base for new technologies.
Yeah, there’s always grifters and technologies that turn out to not be useful, but there’s also always tons of people working really hard to create new advances for the benefit of mankind. Capitalism is definitely flawed (understatement) but relative to say, feudalism, continues to be a very efficient way to allocate resources when used in a well managed economy.
how many have had government funding?
You’re spot on here. The list there was heavily subsidized by government funding. NIH, DARPA, NSF, NASA, etc made those be discovered and initially refined. Many are still heavily subsidized by government funding.
There’s an initial investment stage that takes risk, but after that, it’s mostly about refinement and efficiency. Capitalism tries to exploit those government funds then spread the risk followed by retreading old ideas for new dollars. Capitalism invents few things because it’s risky. It’s really good at monopolizing existing things and eventually driving the efficiency of exploitation to the umpteenth degree.
Cool, managed to create all that and yet hasnt solved hunger, medical care, homelessness, or anything or substantive value. Any system where your priorities dont lie in improving peoples lives is a flawed system.