Powerful and Popular? Oh I see you mean China! Patents don't mean too much there...

Yeah, but China achieved its success by ignoring other nations' intellectual property laws. That was hardly the case with the US.

(guffaw)

Post Hoc, meet Propter Hoc. You two have a lot to talk about.

Genocide and slavery also helped build the USA. Doesn't mean we shouldn't have stopped doing those things.

The point isn't that patents are equivalent to genocide, it's that helping the USA become stronger doesn't automatically make something a good and moral thing that should be perpetuated.

I wonder what Edwin Armstrong would say about that?

Citation needed.

Even The Economist is now saying that the US patent system is hurting, not helping, progress: http://www.economist.com/node/18389167