[antpls]

Not trying to defend any side but :

> Because it's easier and cheaper than developing it yourself.

Why should the humanity invest resources twice to figure out how to make the same product or the same service on another place on Earth? That would be a bad allocation of our time, as a global specie. In the era of internet, sharing knowledge is instant, why not make use of it?

[iguy]

Well one argument is the same as for patents -- the prospect of having sole use of something for a while is an incentive for its creation.

[freehunter]

Because the extreme opposite end of that is, no one will take the risk and invest the money to invent something if they're never going to make that money back. If I spent $1 billion creating something that costs $5 to make and someone just takes it and sells it for $6, I'm out of business. The impact of global sharing of inventions would be that expensive inventions never get made and the country with the lowest minimum wage will always come out on top.

Being enslaved by a despotic government with the world's lowest quality of life and no hope of improving your situation sounds worse for humanity than spending a little more time inventing something twice.