like most things, it may have started out to protect or help the "little guy", but it inevitably gets corrupted and subverted. It now only protects the big players. Even if you have created something truly novel, the big guys will out-litigate, outspend, and outlast you. And, the big guys can afford to patented so many obvious "inventions" as to stifle any competition.
The patent system has become a victim of regulatory capture.
That is of course, if it really did start out to protect the little guy.
The patent system grew out of the European guild system. It was the opposite of regulatory capture: the local authority (typically a king) would be paid to sanction a monopoly (on shoemaking or whatever). So the shoemakers could keep their secrets but even if one leaked it didn’t matter because they controlled making shoe at all.
The US patent system was the first that worked differently: it was a bribe to the inventor for disclosure: if you describe your invention so anyone could copy it, the government will let you use the courts to enforce a temporary monopoly.
Sometime in the 20th century the “so anyone could copy it” part fell into abeyance and now one of the strategies is to write as vaguely and ambiguously as possible, both to make it harder to copy and so you could argue that someone doing something vaguely related or parallel was “infringing”.
Patents only really work in a few places. Pharma is one because the R&D and other up front capex is massive compared to production.
Click on the queen. It will show the order the pieces move. If one piece blocks another from killing you, and the first piece moves earlier, then the second will be able to move after and kill you.
Technocracy is a form of government in which the decision-maker or makers are selected on the basis of their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge.
The average house in my small town is $799,999. 2 hours from Toronto. A small 1 bedroom, 1 bath, built prewar with no basement, is going for $300,000 in a bad part of town with a tiny lot. The house across the street sold for $240,000 three years before the pandemic. Today, it's quite possibly would go for $600,000+. This all might make sense in a high density area but...
When looking at a satellite image, 95% of the land around my immediate area is farms/forests. The average price of that land is $10,000 per acre. That's a 100% increase since the beginning of the pandemic(Avg. 5k before).
I don't believe it is the case that interest rates and house values are strongly correlated. In theory they should be (inversely) correlated, but in practice, they have not been. Even the article you link to says:
"As you can see there are some points where it appears interest rates may have correlated with a price drop, like in the late 2000s. Those of us who were in real estate at the time know there were many other issues as well. Lending was horrible, there was record new building and tons of foreclosures, basically the opposite of what is happening now. I think most people in the industry would say increasing interest rates were not the main factor that caused the crash.
I think the more telling sign is from the 1980s and 1970s where interest rates rose to astronomical highs! The prime rates were more than 20% at one time. It is important to know that the first graph is not what mortgage rates were. Mortgage rates that people get on their houses are not directly tied to the prime rate. The chart below shows what mortgage rates were."
The patent system has become a victim of regulatory capture.
That is of course, if it really did start out to protect the little guy.