Communism

"Probably 100 fold?" You're deeply unserious, this type of irrational vibes-based analysis is peak Liberalism. Use some numbers, please.

Explain exactly why being paid by the government results in less innovation than being paid by a Capitalist. The engineers doing the innovation get paid either way.

The USSR beat the US into space. It was factually successful in innovating and did so at a more rapid pace. Multi-stage rockets were a major breakthrough. If you're going to claim that this was built off of American rocket design, you can go back further and see that American rockets were built off Chinese design. Almost all innovation is breakthrough iteration.

You do subscribe to Great Man Theory. You pretend that Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and other Billionaires contributed billions, rather than exploiting and stealing billions, and believe this justified because they did some minimal amount of initial labor. The overwhelming mountain of labor and innovation was done by the workers they employed and exploited!

You have nothing but vibes, you never made any concrete points. Typical Liberal Idealism mixed with Great Man Theory for good measure.

"the space rockets...are a US invention"

what? genuinely, what are you claiming here? any interpretation I can come up with is just patently wrong. the USSR quite famously launched the first orbiting satellite with Sputnik. The German V-2 rocket was the first man made object to break the Karman line and be "in space". Are you talking about multistage rockets with a communication satellite payload? because as the comment you're replying to said, multistage rockets are a Soviet idea. are you just talking about Goddard's liquid fuel systems? because sure, that's an American invention, but it's almost like modern rocketry can't be attributed to one single person, country, or certainly not a single economic philosophy. saying space rockets are a solely US invention is so hilariously America-centric that it almost reads as satire.

The USSR and China also pushed the envelope of modern medicine just as much as the US. The first artificial heart came from a Soviet doctor. several vaccines have been developed in other countries.

I don’t subscribe to the “great man” theory. But, it is clear that men with big ideas have impacted the world. Should they benefit from their impact. Yes!

lmao sure, you don't subscribe to the great man theory, you just subscribe to the theory that throughout history, the most major leaps and bounds are solely because of a few great men with big ideas and those great men should be rewarded with unfathomable wealth and power.

I find it funny you mention Steve Jobs and Elon Musk as "great men" who, without their ideas and inventions, the world would never have come up with smartphones or electric cars and reusable rockets. y'know two of the most famous examples of some rich, vaguely charismatic person taking the ideas of their employees and trying to convince the world they did it themselves.

Where's Wozniak's reward? did he have no incentive to create the iPod? the profit incentive does not breed innovation, it breeds exploitation of innovation. the innovation will always be there as long as there are humans, problems, and materials to try new ideas.

We have no better system

We've tried this one thing while deliberately kneecapping and destroying any other thing, and we're all out of ideas! this is truly the best system we can ever do and shouldn't try to improve it in any way!