"In a world without intellectual property laws, what incentivizes entrepreneurs to spend time and money innovating/inventing when someone else can just take their idea after the work is done?" - @stonemasoner
In my opinion, there would still be incentives to invest in innovations and technology, but investors would possibly invest their money differently than they currently do. As Dr. Bylund stated in his lecture, intellectual property laws distort the market because investors choose to invest in products that are easier to protect with a patent. Patent laws also allow the individuals with the monopoly on that specific good or idea to overcharge for their product since there is no availale substitute. Stifling competion usually makes the consumer worse off and it stalls innovation in those products as well.
While there are advantages to intellectual property laws, such as public display of invention designs and reducing people from "stealing" each others ideas, it definitley creates a distortion in the market. Personally, I am not sure if we are better off or not with intellectual property laws, but I tend to lean more towards the advantages of fewer or reduce intellectual property laws. I do not think that getting rid of intellectual property laws would reduce invesment, but I do think investors would be making different investing decisions. If someone can find a more efficient way to produce a good than someone else, than it is for the benefit of society. The premise of being an entreprenuer is to satisfy the needs of a consumer, so the government should not be getting to say who deserves the monopoly on an idea or invention. Also, patents are super expensive, so they help large corporations keep little guys out. I do not think that getting rid of intellectual property laws would have a big effect on the amount investors invest, but I do think it would effect what investors invest in. A possible solution would be to reduce the strength and time of intellectual property laws and see if society becomes better or worse off by this deregualtion and then go from there.
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Some great points were made here around investment opportunities and free competition in the marketplace. Have you considered that some ideas/inventions require large amounts of capital for R&D and that the patents are there to protect the developer to the extent that they can recoup their costs during the protected period of the patent? I do however agree that there are certain areas eg: pharmaceutical drugs where patent law becomes a hard pill to swallow (excuse the pun). Whilst it is needed in order for the big pharma companies to even consider investing of their time and money in developing and producing life saving drugs, it also acts as a barrier to entry for much cheaper generic versions that could save countless lives if made available with more immediacy. Thankfully with covid-19, the world pharma pulled together to ensure a co-ordinated rapid response at a relatively reasonable retail price and many vaccines have been donated as part of the cause.