Funding large-scale projects seems like a perfect job for financial markets. Maybe society should figure out the detailed reasons why financial markets don’t invest (more) in science, and fix these issues, one step at a time.
I suspect allocation of returns is one such issue, but it looks solvable by having shares over patents, risk mitigation should work by diversifying the fund, same as current index funds. Diversification also mitigates the long-term/spiky nature of the investment, but if sporadic returns are still an issue they could be smoothed out by an insurance (it may be less of an issue if this is a long-term investment for retirement for example?).
Edit: or simpler: have the government issue bonds for funding (specific fields of) science, the government pays out coupons based on how much the bond is expected to increase GDP. The money to pay the coupons comes from the tax revenue increase generated by the (expected) GDP increase generated by the science bond sell.
Funding large-scale projects seems like a perfect job for financial markets. Maybe society should figure out the detailed reasons why financial markets don’t invest (more) in science, and fix these issues, one step at a time.
I suspect allocation of returns is one such issue, but it looks solvable by having shares over patents, risk mitigation should work by diversifying the fund, same as current index funds. Diversification also mitigates the long-term/spiky nature of the investment, but if sporadic returns are still an issue they could be smoothed out by an insurance (it may be less of an issue if this is a long-term investment for retirement for example?).
Edit: or simpler: have the government issue bonds for funding (specific fields of) science, the government pays out coupons based on how much the bond is expected to increase GDP. The money to pay the coupons comes from the tax revenue increase generated by the (expected) GDP increase generated by the science bond sell.
Related: Social Impact Bonds