I think that the value of IP protection makes sense for health & safety, and also for small/growing businesses that don't want to be shut-out from bad actors.

I think that the value of IP protection makes sense for health & safety, and also for small/growing businesses that don't want to be shut-out from bad actors. Where it gets worse is when it gets enforced by some giant behemoth as just another tool to maintain dominance and essentially forbid competition. It's just extracting money for the sake of having more money. For example, Lay's (owned by PepsiCo) forbidding farmers in India from growing the same potatoes that Lay's uses for chips because PepsiCo owns a patent on the seeds. There's basically no other rationale behind doing stuff like this besides "but my money!". Like, the rest of the world should just cave to a $227B US conglomerate on everything they want? At that point, IP isn't even about up keeping freedom or justice or whatever, it's just another way to enforce a colonialism-esque class hierarchy via capitalism.