I thought the argument is actually that they exist in the way they do, not in them existing at all.. ?

"what would be appalling about patents not existing" is a good counter-argument.

Then someone make that argument; the post I replied to didn't IMHO, and here is why: If patents didn't exist, you wouldn't do the same R&D in the same way as you would do in a world with patents. So that's just apples and oranges. "If this chair didn't exist, the person would fall on their butt!" No, actually in that case the person wouldn't even have gotten into a situation where they need a chair to not fall.

Which is of course something that is often claimed, that we need patents to "encourage innovation". But consider all the inventions that are made at more or less the same time by people who never heard of each other. To me it's obvious that (large chunks of) invention are more inherent in the laws of physics and human society than in individual inventors. "I made this" actually means "everything up to and including me made this"... sounds less grand, is so much more true. But I guess taking credit for pre-existing things and squeezing money and power out of them is something we actually got used to. Doesn't make it true though.

To me it's all bogus anyway, I don't even buy the claim that a bunch of molecules and the memories others have of them constitute an entity called "John Carmack", as if that was a real thing. But with that outlook it's very hard to influence the political process, or even to just make sense to the average person.