I am a historical patentee, and can tell you from a lifetime working as an innovator, that you are looking in the wrong places, if you are looking for real innovation. It isn't in capitalism any longer, it is in Energyism. Fixation with capital blinds us to the real nature of energy - it doesn't come from capital, it comes only from the sun.

Capital is the stuff of Earth we quantify economically, whilst energy is something added to that capital.

Before we had explicit solar energy technology, we could get away with considering all things, all capital, as something constant, a finite pot of resources to squabble over.

But since we've been putting explicitly collected Joules of energy to use in our electrical systems, we have been ignoring that those Joules act to devalue all existing capital.

There, is the physical proof that a piece of gold, or any other fixed physical asset actually has continually decreasing value, relative to the capital base, to which there is a continuous flow of joules from the sun being added.

As our solar energy capacity increases, that effect has to become more and more difficult to ignore.

But collectively we see it, reflected in markets, it seems, gold is devalueing relative to Bitcoin, for example. Bitcoin is a special case, more than capital, as described in my Bitcoin Kardashev Hinge story.

For further proof of the above, if needed, we only need to look at the innovative technology of reversible fuel cells. Those generate hydrogen fuel which functionally replaces fossil fuels, with none of the pollution, when generated from solar energy.

That fuel is a physical embodiment of the Joules received from the sun, in a form which can be traded in markets, just like fossil fuels.

So it is product, with at least as much value as any dug from the ground using hard labour.

By the ideals of Austrian Economics, we should always balance product with the issuance of money.

So free fuel leads directrly to free money, which again devalues all capital.

I don't think you will hear any individual or organisation currently invested in capitalism talking about this.

That is why you might believe we are nowhere near the level of technological progress needed. The solution is not in Capitalist technology, the solution is in Energyist technology, and so far, the Capitalists seem blind to it, steadily expanding, underneath the public radar.

Hopefully you will be writing about that yourself very soon, it is actually the real big story.