"jobs that don't move the country and humanity forward, but just move cash from one pocket to another without benefiting anyone but the people moving the money."
The accumulation of such 'societal overheads', as entrenched systems act to grab more resources for themselves at the expense of everyone else, is a common factor in all civilizations. Specifically, it's a common factor in the process that ultimately leads to the collapse of complex societies.
Read the book 'Collapse of complex societies' by Tainter. It's a study of failed human societies throughout history, and the common factors in their process of collapse. Yes, it turns out there is a single, driving common factor. Complex societies go into violent, chaotic and permanent collapse, at the point when their available resources (of all kinds, including manpower, energy, knowledge, food, water, etc) become less than the resources required to maintain the social infrastructure. At that point there's a rapid structural implosion, with failing infrastructure leading to inability to allocate resources to maintain the infrastructure - a positive feedback process that bites hard. Usually, almost everyone dies.
The snowball can begin when some external challenge requires an extra expenditure of resources - which are not available. Or it can begin simply because the social structure grows too complicated and parasitic, thus exceeding physical limits. Human societies almost never seem to be able to collectively say "hey, we don't need all this useless crap, let's simplify!"
The patent system, copyright, and indeed most if not all of the Federal Government and related structures like the Federal Reserve Bank (three things it actually isn't) as they are now,are all examples of wasteful, parasitic overheads with net negative benefit to American society. Which are major factors bringing society closer to systemic collapse. The energy crisis is rapidly lowering the 'available resources' ceiling, while all these parasitic, self-serving layers of social/legal complexity are inexorably raising the required resource expenditure. Maybe these lines on the graph have already crossed - there's some inertia and lag in this process, but it's still a mathematical reality that can't ultimately be avoided.
Personally, I consider the entire legal framework of corporate personhood, stock holding and the abstractions of social responsibility, finance and control that creates, to be another massive layer of harmful complexity. Creating 'inhuman' immortal entities which then grow to direct most of society's resources and control most of the media and government structures, seems like a very, very bad mistake. The present insane state of the patent and copyright systems is merely a side effect of that more fundamental error.
By now the entire corrupt, self-serving octopus of corporate/government parasitism is probably too entrenched to 'simplify' back to a sensible, workable level via methods available within the existing system.
Personally, I'd say the optimal level for such things would be 'gone entirely'. I'm aware most would not agree.
I've also long felt that without a second American Revolution, there's no chance of making any progress in cutting back these existence-threatening layers of self-serving complexity. Lately it seems like I'm not so entirely alone in that view.