Quote Originally Posted by Geoffrey S
Slight off-topic, but the basic premise isn't incorrect. I don't know the book or the people involved, so I may be misrepresenting both, but the effect that protection of intellectual property had was probably a major reason for the rise of the West relative to the rest of the world. Institutional evolution played a huge part in the rise Europe, with laws guaranteeing basic rights protecting individuals from physical harm and random justice by lords eventually leading to laws and systems protecting innovators from economic risks and to a large extent plagiarism. This evolution of basic rights of the individual, making for a safer world and more inclination to try something new, was uniquely Western and quite possibly essential for the rise of the West in the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century. A fascinating (early and fundamental) book on the theory is The Rise of the Western World by Douglass North.
Sure, but it still has nothing to to with the 'American mind', and as you have so kindly pointed out, it's not even American. Intellectual property rights are an external condition, not a mindset. If it is part of our 'mind', i.e. a psychological factor, then it logically follows that any other people exposed to the same conditions would not behave in a similar manner. I simply do not believe this to be the case, and I believe there is ample evidence to refute it.