You're missing a huge part of this: The "competition" you think you're referring to had, you know, actual rules. Sending people to get jobs at a rival, and steal all of their internal documents and trade secrets, is illegal in most countries.
Perhaps we should reframe how intellectual property works to make secrecy no longer desirable and allow industries that rely on "trade secrets" to realign naturally.
Perhaps (well.. almost certainly) that would disincentivize any of the companies in these industry from innovating at all (if you can’t gain any edge by additional investment since anything you do will be stolen you might as well start stealing if that cheaper).
This would also especially favor large mega corporations as long as they are efficient enough (due to obvious reasons).
Most substantial technological innovation is either funded by government grants or is publicly funded in some other way in the first place. It's a myth that IP laws protect innovation, they protect profits of corporations that add very little to the process on their own.
well, the us only pretends to like free market politics. in reality rich dickwads like regulation just fine, namely in the form of protecting the value of their property.
