Well fair enough, talking in absolutes is always easily countered. However people buy products because it provides them value.

If a product doesn't provide (enough) value either the company switches to different products or goes bancrupt.

So yeah each product that you have is proof that it improves life. But what I am mostly aiming at, is to compare each product to their counterpart 100+ years ago.

whats there to belief lol, its the truth.

It baffles me how many people, like you, somehow can claim the oppossite whilst literally standing and living in the middle of all these innovations.

Like literally every single item you touch is the proof lol.

ok you start, sell literally everything you own and start buying only from charities who "care" about you. I'm incredibly interested in how far you will come lol, keep me updated.

Well yes and no.

State funded (public) universities are officially not-for-profit. However they are no charity and behave themselves as a for profit organization. They maximise their amount of students, maximise their quality and minimise costs, they are at risk of going bancrupt and have many deals and ties with businesess. Their quality of research indirectly attracts students and with that money.

Besides the world surrounding research is definitly for-profit mostly, journals and publishers play the key role and are generally for-profit. The only people not really earning well on their efforts are the researchers themselves.

We tried running that test globally multiple times it didn't work once.

Innovation comes from competition, plain and simple. Take away the competition and you take away the drive of people for more.

Besides that, it simply doesn't work like you suggest.

Let's imagine your perfect world, we will redistribute all of the wealth among all people equally.

Well the problem is, it would literally take less than an hour for all of that to become unequal. Some people would spend it outright on drugs and alcohol. Others will invest it to create something new thus creating more wealth in some form.

It's the pareto distribution a fundamental "law" that is natural in every single creative domain. The amount of goals scored in NBA? 20% of people have 80% of the goals. Same for articles published, records sold, money earned, etc etc.

You cant fight it. An equal redistribution of wealth is fundamentally not possible.

science comes mainly from universities which are for profit.

Also a lot of breakthrough comes from R&D, which is also science but well funded and with a clear goal.

I would much rather have Musk invest all of his wealth into R&D at SpaceX than give it to charities.

Edit: public universities are non-profit officially, but they do indirectly profit from their research by attracting more students. They are world aparts from charities.

>donating is generally done to organisations

Yes but these organizations do not produce anything. They just redistribute money, like you said they give out medicine or food. That is the exact equivalent of giving a man a fish.

>They are driven by usefulness while a company is driven by profits.

Yes and how do you get profit? By being useful. You trade money against value. You buy things that make your life better. Every single thing you touch has been created by a company not by a charity. All a charity does is redestribute the essential products to places who are unable to fish (produce) themselves.

I also find it funny you mention medicine and food, because all of those innovations (yes food has a lot of innovation especially in the supply chain and harvesting) are created by for profit organisations.

You don't understand the message. I'm not saying we do not need charities, especially during a humanitarian crisis they are essential.

However keep in mind every single thing that makes your life liveable. From your isolated house, to phones, to computers, to food and medicine, all comes from (for profit) companies. If people would have donated that money back then to charities you would be worse off.

that is actually a good line of thinking from him. I know you probably disagree on first thought but hear me out.

If you have a clearly set (innovative) goal for your company it benefits humanity. Any kind of new tech brings us forward and increases our welfare. Any kind of product is usually bought when it brings value to the buyer. Products bring a better life to people, especially if they are set on progressing humanity.

So as an owner it's actually better to invest most of your money back into your company. Donating that money brings less value to humanity in those cases. kinda like: give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, learn a man fishing and he will eat for a lifetime. Donations are a fish, whereas innovations are the fishing skills.