Guns, Guns Guns

PeterZ wrote: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm

Daryl,

I am not implying there are no innovative people elsewhere. There are. Most of the most innovative in the US had been immigrants. My point is that our weird way of thinking is fundamental to the environment where the US has been granted more patents since 1977 than any other country. This mindset isn't just in the religious right. Even our PC liberals are less enamored with conventional wisdom.

That independent mind set is fundamental to the US. We tend to be a stubborn and cantankerous lot. All of which add up to being measurably more innovative than anywhere else. We are 5%(?) of the population yet produce more than half of all patents. This is a fact.

This fact is driven by that belief in individual sovereignty. Some identify the Second Amendment as the symbol of that sovereignty. Other identify other symbols. Bottom line is that Americans don't accept constraints and limitations nearly as well as the rest of the world.

PeterZ wrote:http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm

Daryl,

I am not implying there are no innovative people elsewhere. There are. Most of the most innovative in the US had been immigrants. My point is that our weird way of thinking is fundamental to the environment where the US has been granted more patents since 1977 than any other country. This mindset isn't just in the religious right. Even our PC liberals are less enamored with conventional wisdom.

That independent mind set is fundamental to the US. We tend to be a stubborn and cantankerous lot. All of which add up to being measurably more innovative than anywhere else. We are 5%(?) of the population yet produce more than half of all patents. This is a fact.

This fact is driven by that belief in individual sovereignty. Some identify the Second Amendment as the symbol of that sovereignty. Other identify other symbols. Bottom line is that Americans don't accept constraints and limitations nearly as well as the rest of the world.

Daryl wrote:Totally agree Michael. Brunei alone invented more than many countries.

dscott8 wrote:

Daryl wrote:Totally agree Michael. Brunei alone invented more than many countries.

Please, not Brunei, which is a country. Brunel. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, possibly the greatest engineer that ever lived.

PeterZ wrote:Population of the world by nation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population

Patents by nation
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm

Webster quote
http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2010/11/government-of-people-by-people-for.html

Michael, you are absolutely right. Patents do not reflect transformative innovation. I never said they did. The point I tried to make is that patents are a measure of innovative thinking. I made no assertions about the value of the innovations or the degree that the innovations transformed anything.

The US has more patents issued because the US has more people submitting novel ideas per capita than any other nation on the world. That does not mean these patents are developed or that if developed they lead to the most transformative changes. The data does strongly suggest that the US has the most ideas novel enough to be patented per capita. That is a very good approximation for the amount of innovations the US generates.

Daryl, I am not sure what numbers you are referring to. The link I posted earlier and this new one providing population estimates pretty much support my contention that the US more patents than any other nation over the measured period.

I asserted that the US has the most innovations as measured by the number of patents they assign. This is true based on the links I submitted. I also asserted that the US's belief in individual sovereignty was the principal driver to this state of affairs. The Second Amendment is one confirmation of this individual sovereignty.

Another came later in the precursor to our Civil War, "government of the people, by the people, for the people". Daniel Webster us this to assert that the individual rights of the people were different than the collective right of the people as found in the States. That difference, he argued, made the Federal government superior to the States where the Constitution gave it authority. Abraham Lincoln added a few tweaks and used this himself.

Our Declaration of Independence pretty much encapsulates the individual sovereignty when it asserts all men received inalienable rights from their Creator. Argue that the Constitution doesn't actual state that sovereignty is given to the individual, if you wish. The belief that sovereignty is held by the individual citizen is a common enough belief through America's history and is an integral element of our national character.

The belief in individual sovereignty and that one man's sovereignty is no greater and no less than anyone else's fuels the sense that one person's ideas is as good as anyone else's. Further, if the authority of our nation is founded from each individual citizen, then is not the future of our nation shaped from the aggregate contribution of the individual citizens? We enshrine that with the patent system we have and more of our citizens participate in that then anywhere else in the world. The entire idea of patents, however, is but a symptom of the US' admiration of those that challenge the status quo and conventional wisdom successfully.

Annache, I really don't want to assert that our patent system is the best or that the ideas generated by our patents move the world. I merely assert we cherish novel ideas very much here in the US, more so than anywhere else.

Case in point. Let's take the US' development of derivatives and structured notes. The use of these expanded the real-estate bubble to mammoth proportions. Some sharp innovator came up with them and the markets ran with it. Lot's of people made money. Then the counter point. Some sharp cookies realized a way to take advantage of the consequences of the aggregate positions of those structured securities. When the real-estate market crashed they made a fortune.

Again, innovative ideas abound in the US in greater numbers than anywhere else. Not all of them will end well, some will be useless and some will help quite a few people.

Spacekiwi wrote:Hey Peter.

That may be true that you make lots of patents, but If you look back at my numbers, you can see that you are 5th per capita, and when gully adjusted for all opportunities,to allow the definition and analysis of innovation, you come 2nd equal effectively with NZ, and lose to Aus (0.1% difference can well be within observational error). And this data is for the end of 2015, so its not out of date either.



Given this, I would say yes you may believe that individual sovreignity as a founding ideal may help innovation, but it hasnt helped you innovation enough to beat out more socialist 'good of the country' NZ and AUS, so you might wnat to rethink your arguement