“When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion — when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing — when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you — when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice — you may know that your society is doomed.”
It's not just government that's the problem here. I think that describes the situation in many private companies these days!
Oh, I'll agree with that.
But they use the legal system [or at least the threat thereof] to do so.
As an example, I have a brother-in-law who was working for a company that was having a particular problem and they asked for ideas for solutions. Well, he designed up a solution which was rejected, when he wanted to develop that idea for himself he got referred to legal who said the company owned the idea (even though it wasn't [ever] going to be used).
Another would be a friend who was a worker at Google. Google was updating their contracts so that everything any employee produced was the intellectual property of Google. There was some song and dance and my friend essentially had to lay-out/prove that the stuff he was was working on predated his joining Google. (It seems that if he didn't have his lab-/research-notes, and several published articles, Google would have been able to seize his work.)