[Joeri]

Most of the great art was created in a world without intellectual property, or with no effective IP enforcement on that art.

While I don’t think all IP should be abolished, I think in general there is too much of it, protected for too long, and society would be better off getting rid of patents and dramatically downsizing copyright to at most a few decades of protection.

(And yes I have thought a lot on this matter. The evidence behind patents being overall beneficial is weak, and there is no effective societal argument for the current copyright terms.)

[dagw]

Most of the great art was created in a world without intellectual property

It was also created at a time when copying work was almost as hard and expensive as creating it.

[fletchedx]

I tend to agree with your takeaway, but I want to pick a nit on your point about great art being made without copyright.

"The Most Powerful Idea in the World" basically makes the case that intellectual property is what enabled the Industrial Revolution. I won't try to summarize or defend the entire thing here, but I think it makes a very compelling case that the notion of "owning ideas as property" was the thing that made Britain unique (among other factors of course) and led to runaway technological explosion. It points out how in earlier times, inventors were literally killed for coming up with better methods that threatened some established system. So there is a big difference between art and technology there, and while I think debating the merits of copyright as it pertains to art is valid (and 100% agree it's overdone in our current system), I'm not convinced the current issues are serious enough to undermine the entire concept of intellectual property.

[jampekka]

Enslaving half of the world also played a slight part in that uniqueness.