As a result of this 'theft', consumers now have more bendable phone options.
"The English patent system evolved from its early medieval origins into the first modern patent system that recognised intellectual property in order to stimulate invention; this was the crucial legal foundation upon which the Industrial Revolution could emerge and flourish." ([1]Wikipedia)
Without patents what you do is create trade secrets, patents publish the concepts that are protected, they are fully disclosed (or the patent is junk) and after 25 years anyone can use them. The 25 years is the time that you have to get payback on your invention - forcing investment in development now before your monopoly expires.
Please find me an example that open-sourced everything, with their Enterprise solution.
It didn't require any IP theft for that to happen.
I would hate if this happened to the Nintendo Wii, Xbox Kinect or Playstation Move.
Which triggered HTC Vice and the Oculus adoption, later on: Hololens. ( So AR and VR)
They got so much better with actual competition and their own R&D instead of just stealing and hurting the innovator.
Us as customers got a lot more options because of competition, not because of theft.
They've lost factories, lost jobs, lost growth momentum, but got cheap TVs.
Hooray?
When you're well off, as a person or as a country, you can always find people or countries who will manufacture things for you.
But they will want something back. Your real estate. Your universities. Your best people.
It's a high price to pay for a bending phone.
That's why I say that jobs aren't an inherent good. They're a means to an inherently-good end. That makes them conditionally good, so long as they continue to serve the end. Prioritizing the means over the end would be a mistake.
There is no comparable alternative to giving people the things they need or want. I can think of a few (e.g., drugging people, plugging them into the Matrix) and they're unethical.
[0]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO [1]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
But another way of looking at your stats is that outsourcing labor-heavy jobs to China indeed decreases the amount of jobs available to local people. Industrial output, on the other hand, only grows because of the automation.
Our native industrial output has increased but via automation that actually made jobs decrease. The situation with Carrier, manufacturer of HVAC systems, is a perfect example. They were given a tax break to keep a manufacturing plant in the US, but explicitly stated they'd be investing $13 million in automation that would reduce the number of jobs needed. No other country is getting these jobs instead of the US. The jobs are simply gone, through automation.
You might hate the argument, but it's because the argument is accurate. The increase in US-based production isn't caused by the manufacturing industry kicking ass. It's because they fudge the numbers. They consider a CPU that's sold for twice the $ to be double the production. If you remove the high technology grouping, the US manufacturing base has cratered.