Does anybody here have an interest in macroeconomics?

[ScottK]

If you don't have incentive, you don't have innovation.  Without innovation, we have a problem.

Scott, why do you believe this is a true statement?  All the evidence shows that most of the great discoveries and inventions happened outside the patent system and the inventors rarely got rich off of them.  Innovation seems to be something that humans do in spite of the incentive, because we're naturally creative.

What capitalism and the patent system does really well is capture or enclose innovation and rent it out to the folks who will actually use it.

Even if we didn't have innovation, I'm not sure we'd have a problem from a spiritual perspective.  Ra has stated that many STO civilizations never reach great technical heights.

Tricky nuance here..

Patent systems have been exploited by the large corporations especially, I would guess, because of seemingly unlimited money available for litigation. But a simple inventor making some fees because of a great idea he/she had - who could argue with that?

I think my mindset in posting this is more related to the concept of "regulatory capture", than anything else.

I'm in agreement that STO civilizations would not have to be technologically advanced - but then, what does that mean? I would think that it's a helper IF the technologies help create more free time and peace and abundance in the world. That doesn't seem to be the case now generally. Free energy, food synthesizers, etc, would probably really help..