You think? Because the vast majority of innovation (beyond the first few) was done by men who either had money (or priviliege, which in that time was the same thing) or men who were paid (or rewarded in some way) by those who did, resulting in the same thing. People who had no money/privilege and were not paid/sponsored did not have time to innovate, they had to spend their day trying to survive.

If you were “paid” by your king/warlord or whoever, you think they allowed you to just go do the same for their enemy right after?

Besides, I think we can all agree that innovation has been incredibly fast since capitalism came along, though whether it’s a cause or correlation is debatable. If your argument is that they came up with fire without copyright, then I’m afraid it’s not a very good one.

This could work, but would require a big societal change that goes beyond the level of “copyright bad” going on in this thread.