[crispyambulance]

  > The temporary monopoly is awarded in return for publicly disclosing your invention. 

Reading patents is perhaps one of the WORST and most inefficient ways to discover "new ideas". Even ignoring the turgid legal language, the actual central ideas of the patents are either so vague they're useless or they apply to utterly obsolete scenarios or they just poorly describe something that has already been in existence/usage before, during, and after the patent's existence.

We could do just fine WITHOUT the patent system. Maybe if instead of fretting about diligent Chinese copycats, the USA and its corporations actually built stuff instead of outsourcing everything, we would not need to worry so much about patent infringement.

[waterhouse]

Not to mention, it's my understanding that tech employees are generally instructed to avoid reading patents, because if the company ever gets found in court to have infringed on the patents, then them having read the patents will be used to show wilful infringement and therefore to award triple damages.

I suppose they could read expired patents, though.

[AmericanChopper]

You’re really just restating the claim that we don’t need intellectual property protections, without making any attempt to explain why.

Your suggestion that the global economy could shift towards an isolationist model is frankly enough to dismiss your idea without much further scrutiny.

[crispyambulance]

> ...suggestion that the global economy could shift towards an isolationist model...

Not at all. There's "global isolationism" and then there's outsourcing everything to the point where all that's left is the C-suite and a few supply-chain jockeys.

It doesn't have to be one extreme or the other.