I started a comment earlier, then stopped. But I guess I’ll mention it, although I’m sure anybody who follows my comments knows what I’m going to say.
Why not modify the tax laws so that any business can devote a portion of its tax bill to specified forms of research, instead of the government? Offer them limited IP, more than nothing but less than patent rights they’d get from research funded by their own money.
Now, there’d certainly be a modicum of cheating, putting the money to “research” simply intended to siphon some of it back. But there’s already cheating on taxes, and this would be just one more type.
Many businesses and wealthy individuals, however, would probably look to research that they thought had some chance of paying off. They’d do it in all sorts of different ways, depending on the idiosyncrasies of decision makers.
Research intended to contribute to solving the “fossil carbon problem” could well be included as eligible. So could research intended to address any perceived problem, both those facing our current civilization, and those of scientific theory. So could “blue-sky” research.
I’m not saying it would be any sort of “magic bullet”, but allowing such large amounts of money to be allocated at the whims of thousands (or even millions) of people would work as a sort of “scatter-shot”, evading the restrictions of “by-the-book” scientific mainstreamers.
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