Meanwhile the trolls are costing the economy money and tying up the courts. This kind of behavior is peculiar to this era—look at the percentage of cases just in one year. Don’t confuse patent protection with trolling, ever.
It would also be cheaper if we let large companies steal physical property from individuals for the sake of economic efficiency, but we are willing to bear the cost of this inefficiency because we believe that overall we are as humans, and economically are better off because the protection of property encourages incentivizes people to add value to the economy.
The trolls are only protecting property. The cost to the economy comes because companies are willing to trespass on the property of others.
Also, this isn’t peculiar to our era, the Wright brothers sought creative enforcement of their wing warping patents against everyone who tried to enter aviation. This behaviour is just people trying to maximize their return on investment.