I love the whole asuran vs Canthan tech debate thing, because it puts on display some of the issues within asuran society.
As much as jade tech has its huge issues (capitalism go brrr, taking jobs away, pollution, void, etc), it's something that was made to be used by regular people, to help and improve their lives, at least in concept. The overall technological progress and prosperity Joon jumpstarted is undeniable. Scary fast (Xunlai Jade was founded in 1320 AE), scary dangerous (as we've seen during EoD), and admittedly based partially on old asuran designs, but Canthans created things no one else in Tyria had made before and turned them into a household thing within 15 years. That is a massive achievement.
But wait, don't asura have similar tech? Yeah, and likely they have made even better stuff much earlier and with less resources. The thing is that, while Canthan shared and improved upon the concept so that the society as a whole could reap the benefits, asuran society is an individualistic meritocracy with its share of serious issues.
At the start of the game, asuran society has magitech in every corner of the city, while other races lag far behind, with medieval fantasy levels of technology (at most you can say industrial-steampunk for charr and lowkey-solarpunk for sylvari). Asura think themselves as Tyria's best (to put it mildly) and that's simply a matter of fact for them, so other races can only be thankful when asura want to share (read: sell) tech with them.
But even within asura society, things are pretty cutthroat. Krewes and Colleges should foster collaboration in theory, but in fact we see how every genius wants their own shiny inventions or theory to be their own exclusive achievement. Competition becomes fierce to a detrimental degree, the concept of sharing merit with others is often considered preposterous, and being that protective doesn't foster improvement through communal iterations.
That's not to say that it's the norm, as many do eventually share their inventions with others or directly create them specifically to be shared (it's practically the new norm for those who leave Rata Sum's stuffy environment to work with other races), but we've seen time and time again how one's achievements and creations are kept in higher regard than even other asura's lives, if not even their own. We also have proof of past geniuses' labs that are chuck-full of research and tech that could have been useful in the time since their deaths (Gadd's containment fields in particular) or how one asura's deaths comes with loss of important knowledge (Snaff's designs alone could have changed many things).
Ironically, the Inquest always had one(1) good thing going for them: research belongs to the megakrewe as a whole, not the individual. Them stealing other people's research is obviously wrong, but in the context of asuran society, it does kinda feel like a symptom developed out of their fear of losing more knowledge (the Inquest was founded after a massive loss of knowledge, after all).
And yet, even with the Inquest present and active, no one exemplifies that asuran mentality more than the Arcane Council.
We saw their reaction to Gorr's research: they wanted to keep that knowledge for themselves and exploit it for Rata Sum's benefit, instead of sharing it with the rest of the world. The research got out only because of individuals (including us if asura) who took the matter into their own hands along with Tyria's Orders, and then we always have to eventually force/convince the Council into cooperating with the Pact and other governments throughout the years. I'd like to point out the fact that Phlunt was always the one to act on behalf of the Council, because he probably was the only one who was willing to even just listen to what others had to say (maybe that comes with Synergetics mentality).
Another huge example of their priorities was in IBS, when the Council acted on their own interests first, setting up contact with another dragon's champion (the Commander should have been the one logical exclusion) without consulting with anyone, an action which eventually lead to many people being turned into the Frozen.
At least we got confirmation that not all of the Council is that closed-minded, at least after IBS. Phlunt has always been a bit hit or miss (he is traditionalist at the end of the day), but Ludo and her sister Zudo have been trying to be better (Ludo made an investigation into the mess with Gorr, and she does say that the Council has become complacent) and are now genuinely trying to spearhead cooperation with Cantha. It's to be noted that initially Ludo was not happy at the thought either, pretty much taking jade tech's mere mention as an offense, but she evidently warmed up to it after getting the chance to discuss it with Canthan people through the Alliance (also Taimi cooperating directly with Joon is a very good precedent and point of contact). [it's also almost like bigoted ideas are hard to keep when you're not stuck in your little bubble] And yet, we see that the rest of the Council keeps shutting all of her attempts down, be it as a "waste of resources" or whatever else.
Why? Because asura are better than everyone else and they must always be better, duh!
For the Arcane Council, entertaining the idea that another race could reach asuran level of genius is practically criminal, and they're so against it that now they're directly responsible for what's happening in VoE!
All of this to say: who knows what technology asura could have created if cooperation was more of a regular thing in their society. You can have a hundred geniuses make the greatest bestest fanciest tech in the world, but if only the creators can have access to the prototypes or even know of them, the more impressive achievement is someone who makes something similar and commodifies it to make people's lives better on a large scale. And Cantha objectively wins that one, hands down. The Council can die mad about it.
