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America is running out of new ideas (theatlantic.com)
12 points by duke_of_newyork 1667 days ago
6 comments

So few things:

1. It is hard to come up with ideas as a young person, due to the deep knowledge require in each field. I.e. to innovate mean to know the existing ideas and than come up with a new ways. But to master existing ideas , with this amount of literature, takes time. In addition, while you mastering existing knowledge, the underlying knowledge changes by other players.

2. The innovation pipeline is vetted either by company exec, or by VC. Both of them think in financial terms.

3. US Patent system need major overall. The system approve many un original patents, such that it is up to who has more money for legal fights win.

Humans will game any system out there for their own benefit. And systems last till they are either disrupted by forces of nature, crazy individuals, or regulatory prods, or political will and change including legislation.

If we are happy with garbage in garbage out as a society that is what we will get and deserve. If we vote for those who fail upwards then we as a society will fail downwards. The prices of all those regulated industries have gone up in real terms and those least or not regulated like software have gone down.

It was government interference in the food and agricultural markets (including subsidies and FDA categorization) that led to bland tomatoes and plastic meat and industrial farming.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, minimum viable products on the other hand, have value. Makerspaces around the country are full of people actually making things, most of them personal, but some of them will eventually change the world.

America is not running out of ideas, but the cool hunters have looked everywhere, and run out of untapped low fruit.

As for why movies today suck, it's because they're written by children, according to The Critical Drinker, and I strongly agree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ92cggLMx8

The article never discusses the growth in the sheer number of scientists now doing research, and the strong tendency toward specialization.
America is become a prison to the titans of industries. When every industries leading companies can leverage their scale to extort governments to accept their rent seeking, price gouging, and anticompetitive behaviors then it is no wonder that innovation is dropping precipitously. Companies won’t invest heavily in r&d when they instead charge handsomely for marginal gains achieved by an underpaid lifer for a song year in and out.

Would be founders with groundbreaking ideas have been chilled out of the go it your own way route and instead are taking the safe routes by selling out to the soulless and psychopathic megacorps destroying humanity.

Interesting take, but there's observably less rent seeking in the USA today than there was say 70 years ago. Tariffs are much lower, global competition is fierce, and believe it or not, politics is much more transparent (though not as transparent as it ought to be)

In addition, this article is talking about

1) a global phenomena, not just an American one.

2) a shortage of originality beyond just business. In particular, he points out academic research and institutional education and government programs.

There are far more new idea than "acceptable" ideas, unfortunately.