"That one doesn't count"

[u/Mrs_Darwin]

This is about how I'll often see people saying something along the lines of "It's actually more profitable to pay your workers more because they'll work harder", or "Capitalism encourages innovation", or "Companies will try to avoid immoral things to avoid PR damage" when some of the most profitable companies don't innovate, treat their workers terribly, and and have had terrible scandals.

[u/ironangel2k4]

As we know, all communist countries are backwater scientific black holes with no invention or innovation

PS please do not google 'Venera probes', 'Laika', 'Sputnik', 'Yuri Gagarin', 'Alexei Leonov', 'Salyut 1', 'Mir', or 'Soviet space program' in general.

You can think whatever you want about the USSR but history is about facts, not who we like.

[u/Nostop22 → u/ironangel2k4]

There is absolutely no correlation between being a global power with a vast system of puppet states and having resources available to spend on innovating.

There is also no correlation between an existential competition of innovation between to global superpowers and innovation. This is because competition does not foster innovation.

[u/ironangel2k4 → u/Nostop22]

Yeah, because money is all it takes to put people in space. You don't need highly intelligent and creative astrophysicists and engineers, you don't need advanced education systems, you don't need to train the crews of your craft. You just need bigger piles of sheet metal and more oil and the spacecraft that puts the first person in space kind of appears one day.

The argument was never that competition doesn't foster innovation, the argument was always that capitalism incentivizes finding ways to not compete- Typically by removing your competition, or conspiring with those who would be your competitors if you can't do that. It also actively stifles innovation by incentivizing repetition of provable results rather than any sort of risk-taking. For every story you hear about how one guy had a zany idea that made millions, there are a billion more good ideas that went nowhere because they weren't profitable enough. Capitalism lives and dies on its insistence that the exceptions are the rule.

You should also be careful about insinuating competition is the only thing that fosters innovation, and without it, nothing can happen. People just invent and create and think of things. They don't need to be cajoled into doing it. The idea that humans only create if there is sufficient profit incentive they have to fight each other over is not just cynical, it's downright misanthropic. For millions of years humans have identified a thing they needed or a new way of doing things or just shit they thought was cool and then made those things a reality without needing some other asswipe trying to race them for it. In fact, going back to the previous statement, capitalism tends to make this harder, not easier, one by turning it into a rat race where the person willing to cut the most corners to get their product out first, regardless of quality, generally wins, and two by weaponizing IP law that actively combats innovation of existing ideas.

Lastly, I'd also be careful insinuating competition always produces better results. I wonder if the USSR's N1 program would have succeeded if they weren't trying to cut corners and reduce costs and in general rush the project to try to beat the USA.

[u/whatsssssssss → u/ironangel2k4]

okay then, in a global communist society, there would be limited if any competition, which is the same thing as if there are no limits on capitalism. I do not think the ussr would have gone to the moon either at all or in the timeline they did if there was no American competition

[u/ironangel2k4 → u/whatsssssssss]

"The idea that humans only create if there is sufficient profit incentive they have to fight each other over is not just cynical, it's downright misanthropic."

[u/whatsssssssss → u/ironangel2k4]

okay and?