But eg just giving companies cash would also trivially increase their ability to pay higher salaries. But obviously, that's not really something anyone advocates for.
Right because cash comes from government which comes from taxes which come from companies' profit. Cash has value because governments put some limits on how much there is. Of course, they do end up printing some and dilute the value. They don't just hand it out willy nilly.
And even if there was a windfall, eg imagine something silly like a gold meteorite just falling down on the treasury building: there are always opportunity costs to consider.
But monopoly profits aren't too different: they don't just fall from the sky either. An enforced monopoly like those granted from a patent works by restricting what other people can do.
I guess one _can_ make some kind of argument about how adding government enforced monopolies, ie patents, increases that kind of competition. But it would have to be a somewhat sophisticated one.
Most patents are written in such a way to be maximally defendable/enforceable in court, and minimally useful for reproduction. Often you need to pair them with lots of trade secrets to get anything to work.
The other common argument in favour of patents is that they reward innovation. And that might or might not be an argument that actually works. Patents certainly also hinder innovation, so it's an empirical question which effect dominates, and whether any net beneficial effect is big enough to overcome our basic economic presumption against encouraging monopolies.
Wouldn't everyone be copying all the best ideas from everyone else? Wouldn't that be a good thing? Both in general and for innovation?
(And even if only the richest companies did this, they would still have to compete against each other's copy-cat implementations of those ideas.)
We don't necessarily have to re-hash this discussion, other people already had it, eg at https://sciencebusiness.net/news/79887/The-Great-IP-Debate%3...
In any case, whether patents help or hinder innovation is an empirical question that deserves study! Instead of just assuming that they _must_ encourage innovation, because they say so.
You can also get a start on the literature by following the sources of this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_and_patents#Innovati...
No because this incentivizes copying over innovation. There is little reason to invest in R&D when anyone can copy your idea. Consider the COVID vaccines. Each cost billions in R&D. If they could be copied then a company that specializes in production could invest all its money into that and spend nothing on R&D. Eventually no one will be willing to invest in innovation until someone comes up with the idea of protecting IP again.
You can argue that solving one problem creates a set of new ones and I won't disagree. Those are for the next generation to address.
It also hinders ingenuity, especially prominently displayed with software patents.
> [...] we give credit to creators and encourage creativity.
You can do that just fine without patents, too.
Eg socially by recognising their genius. But also more materially via trade secrets.
And as you say, people don't like banging their head against the wall over and over again, and that's true whether there's a patent system or not.
That's ripe for corruption. Social recognition would largely be in the hands of the wealthiest, i.e. the government in that scenario. You want individuals to be able to generate their own wealth so they can defend themselves. Patents, capitalism, etc are a means of delegating power to the people. Keeping all that control in the hands of the government is costly and less efficient.
When a company can defend its IP, it earns more profit and can invest in itself more. One way to invest in itself is to pay higher salaries to attract talent.