Not so long ago, societies were structured to foster intellectual curiosity. Now, they are structured to kill any form of innovation. Just because you live in a broken, intellectually devoid capitalistic society, doesn't mean that's the optimal or even correct way to organize society.
If what you are saying is true, why is the US the leading tech innovator by a wide margin? The entire bay is centered on the concept of disruption via innovation.
Most of the technical innovation in the US is financed by military sources and state-sanctioned monopolies. Things like the internet and self-driving cars basically came from ARPA and DARPA fundings —at least initially.
Compared to those thing, the typical web startup we see in the Bay area innovates little and disrupts nothing. They're just facilitators and middle men. The likes of DropBox, YouTube, Twitter, Blogger, even Facebook… none are needed. They only compensate for our asymmetric bandwidth, without solving the real problem.
If you want real innovation, you need to finance fundamental research. You know, things that have no short term benefits, uncertain long term benefits, and uncertain monetisability.
In any case, the US is one of the most militaristic countries out there. It wages war all over the place for oil, and develops nice military devices to secure its supremacy. That's a pretty good drive for technical innovation.
Pretty feeble argument IMO. You restrict your analysis to companies you deem trivial and then you claim they aren't innovative. Yet you ignore the entire smartphone revolution that was started by Apple and Google.
Innovation and invention aren't the same thing. The invention of a technology is only a small component of its success. Combining it with other components to fulfill a good usecase is what makes it something useful. Google is the main player making self driving cars actually something useful,not DARPA funding.
You can continue to be apologetic for other countries being so far behind in tech innovation, but it doesn't change the point that it's happening in the US even though some ignorant commenter thinks the education system gets rid of innovation.
I want to stress however that there are many factors that drive innovation. The military setup is one. The economic system is another. Education is yet another. The mass media have substantial influence. Even if it sucks on some fronts, it may be compensated elsewhere.
Simply put, even if our economic system and our education system thwarts innovation, that's not enough to kill it.
