“Yet a closer look at the alleged benefits of intellectual property shows that they have been massively exaggerated. Intellectual property laws, at the margin, increasingly incentivize innovators to obtain monopoly licenses at the expense of innovating to meet consumer demand. At the margin, these laws magnify the reward for obtaining state monopoly licenses for ideas and lead innovators to dedicate growing quantities of resources toward meeting that end, rather than seeking to satisfy consumers.

This is most apparent in the pharmaceutical and software industries, where large bureaucratic corporations can be increasingly seen as enormous patent trolls, whose primary focus is on hiring lawyers, patenting, litigating, and defending against litigation; while developing consumer software and drugs are an increasingly secondary focus.

While we are taught to value innovations for their own sake, valuable innovations are those that consumers value enough to make them profitable. Without intellectual property laws, the only way to monetize ideas and innovations is for idea holders to ensure their ideas provide greater value to consumers than the available alternatives.88 With intellectual property laws, entrepreneurs can legally ban their competitors from competing, and succeed by dint of their monopoly power over their ideas. The satisfaction of consumer wants becomes a secondary concern. By limiting the number of providers on the market, government enforcement of intellectual property laws effectively comes at the cost of consumer satisfaction.”

Principles Of Economics by nostr:npub1gdu7w6l6w65qhrdeaf6eyywepwe7v7ezqtugsrxy7hl7ypjsvxksd76nak