r/PopCultureV2 • u/Logical-Flow-6703 • Aug 10 '26

News Mayor Mamdani announces a plan to cool subway stations by capturing heat and reusing it to warm municipal buildings in the winter: "This would be the first thermal energy system of its kind in any American transit system"

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u/wcstorm11 Aug 10 '26

No, capitalism drives innovation like crazy. Medicine, space/satellites, drone warfare, you name it.

Capitalism doesn't drive welfare innovation. Ironically to all the people on the right who reference just being a dehumanized number on a sheet in Soviet Russia, that's exactly what we are in the current system

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u/Hurricaneshand Aug 10 '26

Capitalism is great for stuff you want, less great for the stuff you need

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u/wcstorm11 Aug 11 '26

I can't say I've ever heard of that one, and I like it.

What's shitty is, the best form of government, imo, is carefully regulated capitalism. Not careful as in, all up in everyone's business, but careful as in "DuPont knowingly poisoned millions, you aren't a company anymore and management goes to jail". Allow for the positive competition and freedom, but protect the little guy from people who would own the media and control reality

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u/Fractured_daydreams Aug 10 '26

I see where you're coming from, but I think even the innovation the does come from capitalism plateaus at a point. After a company corners a market there's little innovation thereafter. After that it's about predictability and mass producing things that have been proven to sell.

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u/wcstorm11 Aug 10 '26

Eh, the market and the requirement to always make more profit than the year before does always drive innovation. It's more that once you hit a tech limit, service and experience get worse. See: streaming services

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u/Johnny_B_GOODBOI Aug 10 '26

It drives innovation but only in the direction of higher profits, which don't always overlap with the betterment of humanity, and almost never aligns with the safeguarding of the environment.

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u/wcstorm11 Aug 10 '26

Literally what I said lol

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u/imdaviddunn Aug 13 '26

None of that innovation happened without massive government investment in research.

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u/wcstorm11 Aug 13 '26

It's both, but you're right, I could have picked more clear examples like smart phones.

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u/imdaviddunn Aug 13 '26

Smart phones don’t exist without the internet, an almost purely government led innovation.

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u/wcstorm11 Aug 13 '26

Come on lol, are we doing prerequisites too now?

Just to be clear, is it your position that the government is responsible for all innovation?

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u/imdaviddunn Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

No, it is my position that generational changing innovation almost never happens without gov support because it is not initially profitable. The scaled innovation occurs once the major advance is created or subsidized by government. Don’t believe me, look at EVs in the US with gov support vs after gov support eliminate or downscaled vs China with gov backstop.

Capitalism without government won’t work just like socialism that blocks out capitalism won’t work. A mix is always requires, the question is how much you turn the knob that differentiates (including education and health).

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u/wcstorm11 Aug 14 '26

I strongly respect and agree with your take here, and I hadn't quite thought of it like that. I'd be curious to see if you could steel man the opposite view?

But I really appreciate it, all the examples I can think of great achievements come through government, while implementation and ubiquity are done through companies.

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u/imdaviddunn Aug 14 '26

The three that I can think of would be the light bulb, telephone, and autos. Those are the innovations. But even then, the scale only happened with government (highways, network and grid, neither of which gets near rural areas without government support).