I don't believe patents and copyrights help even the US. They help a very select few that have the means and skills to use the system. The average person, and

I don't believe patents and copyrights help even the US. They help a very select few that have the means and skills to use the system. The average person, and even the average creator loses out. Creativity for artistic purposes (or for matters of conviction) seems to have thrived since well before the concept of IP; and while the kind of content that's produced now is different (e.g. huge mass-market films), I don't believe it's intrinsically better or better enough to impose such restrictions on everyone. So the argument would have to be carried based on the more mundane practical benefits - useful devices people actually have that they would not otherwise have had, say. But here too it seems that such laws strongly favor the creation of monopolies or oligopolies and don't favor long-term positive developments (e.g. apple, microsoft, google). I.e. it's mostly a weapon to prevent competition, not an incentive to promote the useful arts. Hence we get these long periods of stagnation between disruptive new businesses - the existing oligopolists are naturally very good at keeping out newcomers that they need to be disruptive to actually have a chance. That's not a good thing; it's a signal that there's not enough competition and development normally. It's well known that small, vocal interests are very effective at getting what they want; so it shouldn't come as a surprise for the balance to have shifted to the overall detriment of society and in favor of rent-seekers. I think of it as a kind of like distorting farming subsidies + tariffs. It's hard to get rid of em without hurting somebody, but that doesn't mean they're not doing harm.