[coldtea]

>I think this is a great thing, and is why America is where most of the innovation, cultural, and political power is.

No, that's just a byproduct of being wealthy -- which is a byproduct of starting with looting a huge plot of land, not being left devastated by 2 world wars (420K Americans died in WWII, for contrast millions of people died in European countries each with 1/5 to 1/20th the population of the US), not having any serious enemies within near borders, succeeding a couple of declining (due to national uprisings) colonial powers and so on.

When the US was not as wealthy, but still as much if not more individualistic, most innovations were coming from Europe (Watt, Volta, Faraday, Maxwell, Bell, Marconi, Siemens, Lumiere, Kelvin, and so on).

And a heck of a lot of innovations today (and increasingly more in the future) come from the hardly individualistic China, which, -like the hardly individualistic- Japan in the 70s and US in the 20th century, has gone over it's "copy cat" stage -- take DJI leading in drones, to Huawei P30 Pro leading in low light mobile photography as examples).

[pelemele]

...most innovations were coming from Europe...

Not too many people know about Operation Paperclip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip) and what it meant for NASA and space race (Wernher von Braun was chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, the key instrument in getting man to the moon)

[Frost1x]

Much of the modern business models I've seen basically try to minimize research and innovative work because it's costly and risky. It's far easier to wait for other venture to succeed and either buy the strategies early while they're cheap (even though they may not be well marketsble) or simply copy the successful models to become competitors, trying best to avoid infringement lawsuits but writing them off as a cost of business. These approaches are more cost effective and help maximize ROI then the innovation process.

US business is becoming increasingly efficient at accumulating and concentrating capital while producing less innovation for society at large by utilizing a variety of tactics that break much of the picturesque model of capitalism.