skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Exactly. And because we don't usually see all this work happening firsthand, we tend to severely underestimate the difficulty involved in meeting our many needs and desires.

Modern society makes it look easy, but it's extremely challenging for a 'Dunbar's number' sized tribe to meet all its members' needs at anything resembling the quality of life we're all used to. The healthcare/pharmaceutical needs alone would be borderline impossible. You'd have to be willing to tolerate much lower life expectancy, much higher mortality for infants and mothers, etc. etc.
IMO patents should have mandatory FRAND (Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory) licensing. With higher (2x?) license fees allowed if a working prototype has been submitted to the patent office instead of just a design.

Incentivize new inventions, but keep profits fair. Incentivize working designs over on-paper ideas. Promote the progress of useful inventions over rent-seeking.