The Internet was invented by ARPANET, which was funded by the public. That is the point I was making, is that public works projects exist and don't benefit any one individual.. If it is impossible for workers to create something new on their own volition, then why are there open-source projects? Why is there any non-profit research... These projects are clearly possible if people agree they are necessary...
With your argument, people have no personal will to progress technology, technology wouldn't progress unless... I guess business leaders were commanding people to progress it? But many technological progressions happen without businesses all of the time, our largest domestic projects -- that have brought about the most prosperity for the average person; the internet, roads, these weren't directly created for profit...
The internet, for example, was created through public funding, driven by necessity and collective effort rather than private profit motives. The fact that corporations like AT&T later profited off of it doesn’t mean they were responsible for its invention—it just shows how capitalism swoops in to extract value from the advancements of the workers (95-percent of people). The same goes for a lot of technology: semiconductors, GPS, and even mRNA vaccine research were all backed heavily by public investment before private companies monetized them.
The idea that “labor made few of the decisions” is both misleading and self-defeating. The people actually inventing things—engineers, scientists, researchers—are workers. Capital alone doesn’t create innovation; labor does. Large corporations may have provided funding in some cases, but that’s not the same as them being the driving force behind technological progress. They often co-opt publicly funded or labor-driven advancements and then monetize them.
Not only that, but AT&T lobbied for us to build the internet with our tax dollars, and now today we pay them for internet service. Even more egregious, they have data-caps... I don't understand how us helping to bankroll the internet so a company can sell it to us is more possible than us creating the internet and not giving it to AT&T in your mind.
If anything, Bell Labs is a great example of what workers are capable of when given loose restrictions on funding and when workers are given complete creative freedom over their work. It does happen to be one of the few times that was the case.
I don't feel like saying " most things were invented under the typical capitalist pretense" (in a world where capitalism is the economy used by the vast majority of countries,) is the same as " capitalism breeding innovation" or " innovation doesn't happen under a Socialist system"... I mean, we aren't really arguing whether or not " it is impossible for democratic socialism to breed innovation," you're kind of just making the argument that " a lot of inventions have been made under capitalism," which yeah, of course... The majority of developed countries are capitalist countries by a pretty wide margin.
Also, the argument that “99% of products and services required massive capital spending” ignores the fact that many of these technologies wouldn’t have existed in the first place without public funding, government initiatives, or collaborative, non-profit-driven efforts. The internet wasn’t a corporate invention, nor was Unix, GPS, or countless other fundamental technologies. Even if a corporation " invents" something, this invention is the product of the worker who works there... Who by nature has to be paid less than their invention is worse, otherwise it won't be profitable.
... And how, exactly, is funding not possible under democratic socialism? I don't understand how you reached that conclusion. The difference would be that the public gets to choose what to fund. I don't know what ever implied that there's no " investment" under Socialism.
