"Taking surgery beyond the limits of the human hand" is the trademark of a company called Intuitive Surgical (traded on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ISRG). This motto appropriately captures the long-term, visionary, capital-intensive, and high-tech nature of the company. Intuitive Surgical produces robotics and 3D visualization technologies that simplify a wide range of complex operations, including cardiac, thoracic, urologic, and gynecologic procedures. Patients benefit from reduced trauma to the body, reduced blood loss and need for transfusions, less post-operative pain and discomfort, less risk of infection, shorter hospital stay, faster recovery, and less scarring. Such a venture is distinctly the product of capitalism.

Capitalism encourages technological progress, while socialism necessarily stifles it. Under capitalism, anyone who sees an opportunity for profit by doing something different than the way it is being done, or by doing something new altogether, has the freedom to act on his idea. He is free to fund the venture himself or to seek capital from investors, whom he must convince by presenting his case for profitability, not by resorting to compulsion. The best ideas get funded, and the best of the best ideas become profitable.

Under socialism, no one can produce without the permission—indeed without the orders—of the state¹. This is because the state is the sole owner of all of the resources that are required to invent, produce, and implement a new idea. Innovation almost always requires individual brilliance and extraordinary motivation to overcome technical challenges; clairvoyance and perseverance are not things of which bureaucracies, committees, and five-year plans are made.

Under capitalism, the individual with an entrepreneurial idea is motivated by the profit he can make, and is checked against imprudence by the risk of personal financial loss. Under socialism, the individual is paralyzed by constant fear of reprisal, has little or no opportunity to present his idea to the officials who could authorize it, and the officials themselves have no incentive to assume risk of failure. It is not unlikely that the new idea will be regarded as a showing of ungratefulness for the government's programs: we sacrifice day after day for you, brother, and you are still not satisfied with what you have?

State officials have neither the push of competition or the reward of profit to consider. The closest thing they have to an incentive to improve conditions is when the populace is on the point of revolt and it is more expedient to make some show of improvement rather than crush the protest with force².

Even in a mixed economy, which features some elements of capitalism and some elements of socialism, technological progress is seriously hampered. Would-be-entrepreneurs are intimidated politically and deterred economically by the regulatory environment and government manipulation of supply (via the issuance of Certificates of Need) and demand (via capped reimbursement rates). Even when healthcare is a quasi-state-guaranteed right, demand jumps and costs skyrocket to the point where the federal budget becomes the central concern. Under this system, any measure that reduces costs represents the good, and any measure that increases costs represents the enemy, regardless of the quality of care being provided. New technologies, in the short run, are more expensive. Never mind that they provide improvements in care and reduce costs in the long run—those in charge of the budget will still be blame the entrepreneurs for contributing to the rise in the cost of healthcare. Economically, innovators are roadblocked every step of the way, and morally, they are criticized for providing luxuries that only the wealthy can afford. Who but the resilient few can continue to push technological progress under such conditions?

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¹ Reisman, George. Capitalism. Jameson Books, Illinois, 1990, p275
² Ibid.

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