Thanks Futurebot for your thoughful, spot on and readable commentary all over the place. I hadn't read this comment in particular before writing mines and I'm really happy to read a lot of the same arguments I gathered in different places over the years.

Absolutely, more safety net produces more innovation. That's also what I thought. Thanks for saying, finally someone else says it!

Some arguments for it:

- the middle class was important for progress in the west. That's a well established idea.

- the map of low vs high inequality countries points more toward high inequality --> less innovation per capita, on average. In particular at least, it's clear that some of the nordic countries can pull off the highest innovation rates per capita while being among the most socialist countries. So at worst, most of the socialist policies won't hurt. Like free school, free health care, financial regulations and less tax on the poor than on the rich. At worst, they just won't affect innovation, and at best they actively contribute to it.

- the law of accelerating returns states that, in rough terms, "computation power" is a function of "world knowledge" which in turn is also a function of "computation power". This is why it's an exponential trend. Well, until we reach a point where computers can innovate on their own, human brains are still going to matter in the equation for progress, still going to be a bottleneck for progress, still for a few decades in the future. Yes more powerful computers is mostly what's driving the exponential tech trend right now, but so is the raw number of brains at work, scientists and engineers in particular. This means that we need more bright kids in college and university.

Neo conservatives usually argue that "making way for investors" is the priority for the economy and innovation -- that it's currently the bottleneck for innovation and the economy. But it's clear for me that it's not the case. Investing might be the easiest part to solve among the "ingredients" that are often cited to generate progress: 1) inventors+computers 2) investors 3) middle class buyers.

For me it's clear that socialism would generally help 1) and 3), as well as 2) (for example with incentives for high risk investors or investors in renewable energy for example) while neo conservatism might help 2) only and be detrimental to 1) and 3) (especially with the current price of a university education and health care, 1) and 2) are affected negatively in non-socialist countries).

Important to point out that the law of accelerating returns formulated by Kurzweil doesn't really acknowledge 2) and 3), except maybe indirectly (if you count the political model, which is currently btw in the US "capitalist with some socialist measures", and say investing practices, as indirectly contributing to the "human knowledge" variable, which of course it is to some extend). In other words, it's probable the only thing that matters significantly for progress and the economy, is more scientists and engineers. 2) and 3) are just helpers and we wouldn't be near a bottleneck on those.

Interesting to point out that Kurzweil notes no significant variation in the exponential tech trend, throughout peace or war times, growth and recession periods. So either the only variable that changed significantly is the computational power available, or more likely the number of human brains at work also increased in the last century.

An interesting question is, would we still get the same rate of progress with the same number of scientists and engineers and investors and buyers that we had 100 years ago? I think not, but maybe I'm wrong.

I think more smart human brains at work, besides having better and better computers, has been the most important variable for progress in the last centuries. And I think it still is somewhat important today, until we get fully independent computer-generated scientific or tech innovation.

Any response to these ideas would be welcome. Great if you change my mind or correct me on some details. Thanks.