Technology

That sounds exactly backwards - letting people share information freely means there'll be more sharing of information. The whole point is that we should have a model where information is freely available. At worst that entails a separation of verticals for "research" and "production". A society can fund research as much as it feels like.

Re: corporate secrets etc. - the same principle goes for legal agreements that bind employees from sharing them. How does it benefit humanity more for a corporation to be operating in secret, using secret chemicals or processes or whatever to create a good? That right off the bat sounds like a recipe for an environmental disaster, not even getting into the problems with discouraging the advancement of technology.

Anyway, this is exactly what I meant with my original comment. Of course I've heard all these defenses before. It's the same rehashed crap I've been hearing for decades to defend this broken institution. I said "nobody would be defending this if it wasn't already the status quo", precisely because that's when people feel like any other way of doing it is impossible. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_justification

"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously" - Benjamin Franklin