Tha’ts more of a goal than a plan.

We should do this regardless

I mean, what’s your alternative competent plan for dealing with the cartels?

Lmao. So how many “breakthroughs” happened in the US last year and how many “breakthroughs” happened in the UK?

And how are you measuring their relative significance and scale?

In case youre not aware, the overall point im making us that you have literally no idea how to measure innovation in a reliable or meaningful way.

So again, I would point you to overall outcomes, rather than chasing shiny buzz words. At the end of World War 2, the US was orders of magnitude wealthier per capita then virtually every single European country, and yet, today, Europeans are happier, healthier, and richer then Americans. So all those patents helped Americans how exactly?

I recognize that there are many Americans who believe a great deal in the benefits of standards and interoperability.

But on the whole, as a group, you’ve spent almost a century electing politicians who vow to do the opposite.

They love letting their companies do so.

How can they benefit from innovation that has been stifled?

a) how are you measuring “innovation”?

b) how are you measuring the “benefit”, and for who?

Regulations and standardization can hold back an existing company from trying a new idea, however, they are also the only thing that creates true, lasting, interoperability, and interoperability is what let’s new companies enter markets.

i.e. Theoretically, Apple may be held back if they want to innovate their charging port because they have to make it compatible with USB-C.

However, now new companies that aren’t apple that want to innovate on cables and chargers can enter the market, and they’ll benefit from a consistent specified interface and not having to design a million proprietary variants, and they’ll be able to plan their products in a stabler, longer term environment, that will make it easier to attract investment.

Standards are effectively a government created platform / framework for building and designing new ideas. True innovation often strives when you have some thoughtful constraints that lets everything work together predictably.

Oh encouraging to see they’re finally out there.

$340 CAD for the UGreen one is eye watering, but not insanely out of line compared to early 100W USB C docks…

The Framework one is a lot more reasonable, but sadly we’re not part of the EU yet.

100%.

Sony has continuously sought to make money on licensing royalties for proprietary formats whenever they can.

And then took 8 years to add it to their phones? And only did so kicking and screaming after being forced to by EU regulations? And whose USB C implementation is notably more finicky and less compatible then virtually every other manufacturers’?

This wouldn’t happen to be the same company that reversed the polarity on headphone jacks just to be a dick would it?

However, most of that is still part of advertising; producers proactively strive to get reviewed.

Reaching out to reviewers is still technically advertising in the broadest definition of the word, but it is distinct from commercial advertising where companies pay to broadcast their specific messages to users.

This distinction is also reflected in the way that most companies are operated these days: reaching out to reviewers with information and offering them review units would fall under the marketing / communications / strategy department, but wouldn’t be referred to as advertising unless they were paying the reviewer for a positive review, which isn’t even legal in some places.

Thank God for the EU.

If Apple and the Americans had their way, each of those would use a different proprietary connector.

The spec supports 240W, and there are lots of cables rated at that, but there are still no chargers on the market that can hit 240W.

TBF, the original meaning of advertising was just that: spread the word about your product. Sure, praise it, add nice pictures, but that’s about it. People need to know that your product is out there, and what it’s like.

I get that, if you’re arguing from an economic efficiency standpoint, there was an argument to be made that the spreading of new information through advertising helps to spread new innovative ideas and thus increases overall societal efficiency.

It’s just that a) in the Internet age, we have other, non-advertising ways to spread information (i.e. specs and reviews), and b) if advertising was actually still about genuine education, then it would not scale in effectiveness the way it does with volume and repetition.

You’re right overall, but the mechanism you listed about advertising only appearing near safe content is not that big of a deal compared to other mechanisms at play:

1. psychological manipulation vs competition - the way that a capitalist economy is supposed to work is that a bunch of firms compete to sell you a good or service, you pick the best one for your situation and buy it, then the firm that produces the best good or service gets more resources (money) to grow, rewarding the best product maker.

Advertising breaks this. It lets you spend money on psychological manipulation to get people to buy your product, instead of just trying to produce a better product. True conservative capitalists should fucking hate advertising for distorting the economy, and letting big companies pay advertising money to drown innovative competition, but there are very few of those left these days.

2. engagement driven algorithms - because advertising operates on the basis of psychological manipulation rather than actually informing you, it means that its effectiveness always scales with volume.

i.e. I can read everything there is to learn about two different laptops, watch YouTube videos, read all the specs and reviews, and after about two hours of research I’ll know everything there is to know. A company can try and provide me with more information about their product to sway me, but at that point it’s probably ineffective because I know everything about them already. However if they bombard me with slick fun ads that evoke certain emotions in me over and over and over and over and over again, it will create an emotional bias towards one over the other.

This distinction is super important because it is what leads to most of advertising’s ills: most specifically engagement driven algorithms, which social media uses to keep you scrolling and are what are truly destroying society. The amount of human time and effort wasted to them is incalculable, the amount of languished relationships, neglected kids, over tired and angry people etc. is truly jaw droppingly damaging, and it is fundamentally because advertising is a cheap way to manipulate you into buying something, and unlike true education, it’s effectiveness keeps scaling with volume.

How about Canada And Mexico sign agreements with Europe, Latin America, and the TPP and see how the US manages without being able to exploit anyone?

Canadians don’t need the US, they have literally 10x the natural resources per capita. The US is not negotiating from a position of power.

No, the necessity of food and shelter to your survival determines the value, money is just a unit of measurement for value.

Now compare how many people would consider a strong work ethic at the office bad to how many would consider spending a lot of time on DnD bad. The difference is massive.

I mean, again, no one is going to consider a hard work ethic at the office bad by default, because it pays for you and your family’s food and shelter.

If you flip the incentives around, i.e. you got food and shelter for playing DND and nothing but socialization for being at the office, then people would consider a strong work ethic at the office equally bad.

I mean it doesn’t pay the bills, but it does get you respect from other speed runners and from people who respect speed running.

It’s also somewhat a matter of your specific hobby … speed running video games is pretty niche and useless compared to most hobbies.

Like on one end of the spectrum, there are hobbies that help everyone, like volunteering, cleaning up or beautifying your community, helping friends and family and loved ones, or organizing community programs.

Everyone is going to respect the hell out of you for that, and it’s pretty easy to see those translate to jobs if you needed them to.

Then there are hobbies that can be beneficial to you or to anyone, like hobbies where you create stuff (whether it’s knitting, 3d printing, home renos, gardening, cooking, etc). These are much easier to use to help others, and to turn into side hustles if you want to.

Then there are hobbies that you like that create community and socialization, from playing team sports, to DnD groups, to parties, to multiplayer video games, to organizing dinners and events.

Then there are hobbies that primarily benefit you and benefit the community only indirectly (in the sense of you being a better or more capable person). This includes stuff like running, weight lifting, reading a book, etc.

Then there are hobbies that don’t even really benefit you but you do anyways, like watching TV, scrolling social media, or getting slightly better at a pointless mechanical skill.

Since when is a strong work ethic at your hobby considered bad?