[ClumsyPilot]

"If you spent a few years of your life ... got to market before you and never acknowledged you or your work, leaving you with no way to earn a living from your idea, what would you call that? "

Being a scientist. Or working in academia. Net worth of greatest scientific minds in history, like Einstein or Heisenberg was less than that of average software dev, let alone bankers/businessmen.

At most you can hope to get a Noble Prize, but your discoveries of nuclear physics or quantum mechanics are unpatentable. Fist the journals make money by selling your work, then the companies do, you generally get nothing.

[mistrial9]

but this is where the Western ideas of an individual really start to show their limits.. Those careers are (were?) also surrounded physically by social and literal safety. It is an unsafe world! The benefits of being committed and embedded are undeniable, yet many prefer adventure and risk. In good times, the safety seems "boring"; when economics or social circumstances change a lot, safety takes on new importance.

[ncphil]

I think you're onto something there. As a practical matter, the cynical "IP is only for big corporations" is probably right. But that's just an extension of, "the courts are only for the rich". At least here in the US, aside from the occasional (OK, more than occasional) personal injury case undertaken by lawyers on contingency, getting "justice" through the courts is prohibitively expensive for at least 4/5ths of the public. Only the very top of that upper quintile has anything like the resources necessary to go up against anyone wealthier like SAP, Oracle or Google. So yeah, it is an unsafe world and most of us go out into it completely vulnerable. No how rugged an individual you are, you're going to get crushed. That's why extreme individualism is ultimately a dead end for all but the wealthiest (which is to say, the luckiest), few.