We like to talk about the specific effects of the patent system (protects the little guy, etc), but we rarely talk about the cumulative effects of it.
The more I look at the small innovators, they are all hungry to improve upon things the big companies are sitting on for 20+ years with a big moat to protect them, and I really get to thinking that in aggregate we are doing more harm than good.
A response I hear is "then no one would invest" and I think that's false. The investment landscape would change from a small number of big investments to a larger number of smaller investments - investing in tooling to help you beat the competition next year, but not necessarily giving you a 10 year investment for your big dream. And I think that's fine - people still want to innovate and the market already rewards innovators. It is not clear to me that government mandated restrictions on innovation are a good idea at all, and none of the common talking points really engage with the facts as I see them.
Take a look at FDM 3D printers. They went from $50k to $25k in the 13 years they were for sale and under patent protection, and then 10 years after patent protection ended they were $250 and sold by a wide variety of companies all over the world.
How many of today's patented goods could be made for 100x cheaper without patents and what is the cumulative effect of manufacturing machinery, medical equipment, washing machines, computers, and more being 100x cheaper? Is our world really better without that?