The US copyrights regime was mostly imposed on my country in 1994. What do you mean we have no experience with the problems it solves?
(Any honest discussion at that time would at a minimum bring shorter terms.)
Some people want to just abolish IP (e.g. patents and copyright) because they've read some articles about abuse by patent trolls or copyright terms that are too long. They're not thinking about (say) the author who spent a large amount of effort writing a successful book, just to have to continue working a regular job, while all the profits go into the pocket of some corporation(s) that are under no obligation to pay the author because copyright doesn't exist so they have no special rights. Or the books that never exist because the author never writes a second book, because it's too difficult and stressful to juggle writing with a job, and they can't live off the proceeds of their previous work.
Legal rights give power to the little guys. Take away those rights, and it'll mainly be the big guys who benefit.
When thinking beyond the means (economical based incentive) and skipping straight to the end (advancement of human technology and culture) - One particularly huge country (China) has already been doing an accidental experiment for a long time: taking western IP and patents with a pinch of salt, and just using them pretty freely (as far as I understand it), at least at a national level.
I find the existence of that duality in the world really interesting, and it's not exactly one sided because the west has been exploiting China and Asia in general in their own way. On one side you have economically based idea and technology creation incentives with ever increasing restrictions; on the other you have all the benefits unleashed without restriction, yet without significantly affecting the incentive for the source (I'm sure some "not rich enough" people will complain it does but frankly the economical mechanism have already been pushed too far).
You could say that about a lot of things. It's pretty irrelevant to the question of if something should be thing or not.
But that fact should serve as a caution to people wanting radically change it (e.g. abolishment): most of us only have direct experience with the problems created by the solution, but not the problems the solution solved.
> I'm not at all convinced we'll make much progress as society if we impose our values on everyone, and expect everyone to behave the same way.
But likewise, we shouldn't compromise our values either. I'm not denying that "corporate lobbyists" have a had a pernicious effect on IP law, but my understanding is that most of this "imposition" has been in the context of the quid-pro-quo of trade deals. It's totally legitimate for a country with a Western-style IP system to decide it doesn't want to give some trading partner favorable trade terms if that partner refuses to recognize IP.