Are you really surprised that countries with high levels of inequality (Lesotho, Botswana and Sierra Leone) aren't doing that well in innovation compared to the ones with low inequality (Slovenia, Hungary, Denmark and Czech Republic) ... ?

That map of inequality around the world is very interesting, thanks for posting, it totally confirms my point. For me the conclusion looking at it is straightforward, countries that have high inequality are overwhelmingly shitholes, sorry to say, and high innovation rates per capita are not coming out of them. On the other hand countries that have low inequality seem to me to be the ones that on average have high rates of innovation per capita.

At worst the data is inconclusive and low/high inequality doesn't have an effect on innovation (which means we can go ahead and be socialist if we want, it won't hurt!) -- and at best it indicates that low inequality and a healthy middle class generally favors innovation (which means we should be socialist to stimulate progress!). Anyone disagrees with this?

For the idea that "free capital floating around looking for high risk isn't available in low inequality countries" .... I would say, well give incentives to high-risk investors, and/or spread the risk more. This is what the state/government is good at, spreading risk on lot of people, taking on risky business, big challenges, borrowing money, etc. As you pointed out, there is already such an incentive in place in the US. Btw, isn't that technically speaking a form of "socialism" and "government interventionism"? That's good, there's nothing wrong with doing that if it works. I'm not sure this is a big problem, worth voting neo con for. I think socialism might even deal well with that problem. I'm not sure socialist countries have problems with investing in startups. More data welcome.

The idea with socialism and interventionism is to tweak the current system, capitalism, to make it work better. Capitalism was already in the first place an idea to make everyone's life better through cheaper products. It's pretty clear that there is an evolution of political systems throughout history and as someone has pointed out earlier in the comments, taxation in the 20th century was an improvement on capitalism that helped create more wealth for everyone, while keeping innovation going at an increased rate, and avoided revolts and revolutions that were common in previous centuries at the same time.

An interesting metaphor: I think it's a good metaphor to say that exponential tech progress is the result of the interaction between 1) smart people that invent and discover, 2) investors excited by profit 3) middle class buyers ... If this is correct, increasing any of these 3 things will improve the output, i.e. more innovation.

According to neo cons, the bottleneck to improve in priority is 2) investors excited by profit. Which is important indeed, but I don't think it's the bottleneck currently. It might be the least urgent of the three. It might be that the 3) middle class and 1) more smart scientists and engineers are more the bottlenecks currently.

It's possible also that no matter what we do at this point the exponential curve will continue unaffected. What controls that curve exactly? One thing Ray Kurzweil notes about all the exponential tech trends is that they are very steady, continue unaffected during periods of war or peace, growth or recession. So could it be that those 3 "ingredients" that generate "tech progress" don't matter that much? I.e. that we already have enough of the 3 and there is no bottleneck? Kurzweil states that more existing technology leads to more possible combinations, thus more possible innovations (which I think is in rough terms the "law of accelerating returns" if I'm not mistaken). It's possible that law alone is sufficient to generate the exponential curve, and that we are not even near a bottleneck on any of the three factors mentioned.

So in the end, it might be that there is a bottleneck in one or more of the 3 ingredients, or that we are not even close to a bottleneck on any of those 3 ingredients, and in that case, we do what we want. We can be socialist or not, and the tech trend might still continue unabated.

In any case, I think 1) more engineers and 2) more middle class are the things we should focus on, if there's a bottleneck. That's my impression. I think it's our best bet. Happy to hear other opinions.

I'd like to hear other people talk about exponential tech progress and see if they believe there more than 3 ingredients and how they think it can be accelerated more besides just the law of accelerating returns.

More data about tech progress would be great, to see if in some cases something can slow it down, or accelerate it more (besides just a paradigm shift).