Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "Capitalism's 'Innovation' Is Really Embarrassing" video.

Man this was a bad video Ben. Your pharmaceutical argument was so poorly thought out. Yes, IN CERTAIN FIELDS capitalism breeds imitation, but it's infinitely preferable to have a monopoly on a market than to share it.
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But your new car will be more economical, less pollution, safer, and easier to drive. Yes, repairability is one factor, but that benefit can often be counterbalanced by positives.
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Utter nonsense. Was Amazon sure fire? Was Paypal? Facebook? Netflix? All the 100 million failed games and movies? The Hyperlink? I could name hundreds of high cost failures.
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@gsmith6595 Grandiose? What does that have to do with anything? The person who invented condoms may not have come up with something unique or grandiose (men have been using protective barriers to cause a similar effect for millennia), but I am happy that it exists (and it's one that depends upon the invention of latex, and mass, precision manufacturing). Almost all inventions stand on the shoulders of previous inventions. Any product that uses electricity depends upon that invention. Any product that uses plastic or alloys depend upon those creations. It's how you ITERATE upon past creations that matters. Who would say that Star Trek or Star Wars created something completely original? Space stories had existed for decades in literature. Sci fi the same, even in cinema There was NOTHING unique about the story themes - space soap opera in one case, and grandiose morality tales in the other. Yet it is indisputable that both are major additions to the cultural repository of mankind. Like Ben, I think that you are looking at this issue through a very narrow and warped lens.
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@gsmith6595 @G Smith No, not at all. I'll very willingly concede the very many flaws of UNREGULATED capitalism, but stifling innovation is definitely not one of them in general. You restricted the terms so specifically as to be nonsensical.
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@gsmith6595 Not quite sure what you're trying to say. Capitalism exists. Yes. And? It doesn't take a genius to come up with a framework of proscriptions for things that haven't yet happened. The constitution might be one such example.
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@nvcomics Better for the company with the monopoly.
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@nvcomics Completely irrelevant. That is not what this video is about. Ben and this guy he quoted both suggested that capitalism stifles innovation. That is patent nonsense. The first company to come up with a cure for cancer, covid, alzheimers, flu, and many other conditions would make trillions. That's good for society AND the inventors. I am illustrating that a system in which companies are rewarded for their creations, benefit MORE if their creations are NOT competing with others. Thus, whilst in movies or video games, it's risky to do something innovative, in FAR more situations, it's better to be original while satisfying a market need. Bringing in the workers is an irrelevant side track. Whether they are talken care of or not is an issue of worker rights. Only in craphole nations like America, and other 3rd world nations, is that such an issue. In the rest of the western world, there are rules about minimum wages, sick pay, holiday pay, etc. I am not arguing in FAVOUR of monopolies, although I am 100% in favour of patent protection for a short term. Humanity has NO right to a choice of suppliers for any product, but creators have a right to reasonable recompense for their work and investment. Gamestop does not disprove anything. Not only does Gamestop not REMOTELY have a monoply unless you narrow the definition of what they do, down to exclude online retail, but even if they WERE a monopoly (and they're not - they have thousands of high -street competitors), the failure of a single poorly managed company, operating in a manner that the consumer no longer cares for, proves only that Gamestop, like Blockbuster video and Fred's Horse and Cart Emporium, that THAT business failed to adapt.
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@gsmith6595 I'm not arguing FOR monopolies.
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@nvcomics For a start, you are talking corruption and naked greed, not capitalism. The rest of the world IS making massive advances in renewable energy. Those people working in fossil fuels do what they do, but trillions of dollars is being poured into research of alternate energy sources by people with the foresight to recognise that fossil fuels are finite, and the cost to the planet is too great. When they can offer non CO2 solutions cheaper, it is capitalism that will drive customers in their direction. But again, even if I completely concede that this IS an example of negative capitalism, it is just another example, to which I can point to counter examples. 10 cases, 1000, a million do not make a rule. You say that these are exceptions, but when there are enough exceptions, you surely have to concede that things are not as black and white as you perceive it to be.
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@nvcomics I don't need to weasel out of anything because I comprehend a nuanced argument with examples on both sides. "when TikTok came around" And Tik Tok was copy of Vine before it. So much of what mankind does is iterative. You're complaining about a lack of innovation, but what if 3 camera phones minimal design, maps, or whatever are simply the natural and inevitable direction for thos products? Capitalism has driven companies to want to make better products. Yes, there is DEFINITELY lots of trend following, but that is not because that is safe - it's because that's the logical course for those products. Look at consoles - Playstation came out with super fast storage on its latest model which is game changing, but Microsoft and hardware manufacturers were already developing direct storage because that is the logical direction forwards. I don't know who you think is trying to brainwash us into believing that there is more innovation than there actually is. I see innovation everywhere I look. If you look at the graph of human advancement, it's been near vertical for the past 100 years, achieving more in a century than the entirety of the rest of human history. It seems to me that you have justifiable issues about Patent infringement and outright copying. I share yuor sentiments on that but only because I hate coprate theft. It's a literal business model for Chinese companies - why go to the cost of innovation when you can simply steal? But that's a problem with international patent protections and the utter disregard of China. The west should simply ban any such products, but of course $$$$$. The modern world THRIVES off innovation. Innovators are the ones driving retail, but I guess you only see what you focus on. Some products don't NEED improvement, while others have small, logical improvements. Personally, I think phones are massively OVER designed. But a certain market wants phones that do everything. And when new products are TOO different from what people are used to, they get angry and that costs sales.
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@nvcomics I'm not missing the point. The point is incorrect. If two companies make numbers, and they both reelease 1, 2 and 3 - then 4 is the inevitable next product. That's not copying, that's inevitable evolution.
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@nvcomics I think you have a very narrow definition of the term "innovation, and an equally unreasonable view of industry. Millions of new products innovate every year. They may not be completely original products but many include innovating components. Notwithstanding Chinese manufacturing, no western company can get away with simply copying as you seem to suggest. In your world view, iteration is not innovation because it is not an entirely new and original product. You seem to to think that only completely original, unique products unlike anything that has ever gone before is worthy of being considered "innovative." That is not a perspective that many informed people would agree with I don't think. And on that note, I'm going to leave it while we are still being polite.
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@nvcomics I suggest you look upthe term "straw man" because that's exactly what you're doing - creating a fictitious version of my argument that is easy to knock down, then attacking that. I am not, nor ever have suggested that simply creating a different coloured copy of a product is innovative. In fact, I have repeatedly acknowledged that copying is NOT innovation - it's simply stealing. Just to clarify, the discussion is whether capitalism stifles innovation. You are arguing that capitalism DOES stifle capitalism because most products are basically copies. I am arguing that there is an incentive to come up with useful and innovative NEW products. Even IF most products are copies or iterative improvements, that does not mean that it wouldn't be better to come up with something new. And now you are quibbling over precisely HOW much counts as an innovation. If it was a one millimetre change in position of a thumb stick on a controller, or the inclusion of a rumble pad, or a haptic insertion, or a better material surface, that COULD be considered innovative, and COULD completely transform and improve your use of the product. You clearly don't understand the intellectual property laws if you think that all you need to do to to circumvent them is to change the colour of a product!
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