[Chaebixi]

> Under a different system that doesn't incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment.

Patents were explicitly created to avoid, "incentivize holding back global progress for small amounts of individual enrichment." The other realistic alternative is keeping the invention a trade secret, which is much worse for progress.

> How should he get paid for this? In a very-ideal world, people and corporations that used his idea and had spare capital would voluntarily give him donations.

That sounds exactly like how patents work except with no protections for the inventor. With a patents, the corporations that use the idea do give the inventor donations called license fees, but they can't screw him over and pay him less than he's worth (which they would otherwise do so they can keep the profits for themselves).

Basically, it sounds like you're proposing worse, more awkward systems because you irrationally hate the concept of patents for some reason.