Originally Posted by
Leisesturm
Irrelevant in this context. Completely irrelevant. Look, I'm trying to let this lie. But I'm not going to go out of my way to make butthurt Americans feel better about themselves by claiming that the intellectual property and endeavors of their resident aliens and naturalized citizens reflects on all Americans. It's more nuanced than that.
Then let it lie. But did you look at my list of inventions? Almost all of those inventors were American. Those inventions were not obscure. Some of them created trillion dollar industries. There are more.
Liquid crystal display
Object oriented programming
E-mail
Electric guitar
Lightning rod
But that's actually irrelevant to the bigger picture, which is that science and invention have always been international, since the time of Galileo if not before. The modern age of innovation may have started
somewhere, but it spread wherever the industrial revolution found fertile ground. Scientists and scholars have always enjoyed open borders, and have not defined themselves by nationalities. They've always gone where the work was good. Especially in contemporary times, innovative businesses have become stateless, and have established open borders for the most highly skilled workers.
With that said, the time period when scientists and scholars felt that America was the best place to work and invent, lasted many decades. It was a darn good run.