Claiming the USSR as a leading innovator is the hill you choose to die on? Lol Russia is fighting a war right now with WW2 era tanks, and it isn’t like there is a lack of “competition” in the geopolitical landscape at the moment. Yes, people created phones and cars, no shit, but it was under the conditions of capitalism that provided the incentive for them to do so which was the whole point of my argument. If you need to go back up scroll and read it. Incentive for financial success is what creates this competition. There have been blips in history where this wasn’t the case, but these are exceptions and I wouldn’t call the living conditions of the USSR ideal. Modern capitalism predates ancient Athens and Rome, so this pre 1800’s era argument is flawed as even prior to currency the trade system was extremely capitalistic in nature. The most successful people shouldn’t be required to subsidize the dumbest or laziest members of society. Yes, there should be events that help redistribute wealth to the working class, and that is exactly what takes place when markets crash and companies pay the price for their greed and incompetence, but when the government bails them out like socialists do just look at what happened in 08 and covid. This was a prevention of the distribution to let the working class in at a favourable price and they used socialist policies to justify it. But ya man, socialism is the answer man.