Sure, one person gets rewarded more with the IP system. But at the same time, that breakthrough then can't be built upon by others.
Overall, I think it does more harm than good because of how it monopolizes technologies and ossifies development.
I think free sharing of knowledge will always beat intellectual stinginess.
Outside of military technologies they had massively fallen behind the west by the 80s. Without the western tech they licensed or copied they were permanently stuck in the 50s. Even their crappy cars were licensed copies of cheap European cars from the 60s.
When it comes to consumer electronics, vehicles and a bunch of other things they were comically behind. So it’s really not a good example..
> monopolizes technologies and ossifies development.
As bad as it might be empirical evidence shows that historically a superior system has never existed (it might be feasible but everything that was tried underperformed).
Good grief. All one has to do is look at how humanity has consistently progressed due iterating on what has existed is how we progress, not whether some corporation that wants to rat fuck us all for a few pts in share value.
Progress was extremely slow until the 1800s. Coincidentally corporation and modern capitalism in general developed around the same time. Of course I’m not necessarily saying it was the main or direct course since it isn’t exactly possible to create an experiment comparing it to other systems (of course that was tried an failed completely in the USSR, Maoist China and similar places)