Possibly a reformed patent system, e.g. one in which time limits are variable or in which you don't get a full monopoly (forced licensing terms). At one point I was researching an alternative patent system in which you don't get a monopoly on the idea, but rather for every next licensee they have to pay in a share of the total value of the patent such that e.g. the first licensee pays half which goes direct to the original filer, the next licensee pays a third and that money is split between the other two licensees, the next pays a quarter etc. So the patent gets cheaper over time to license, but you lose the first mover advantages.
The problem with that system is that the "value" would have to be determined in some independent manner, e.g. an audited cost+ basis, which wouldn't be reflective of the true value of the idea. Granting time-limited monopoly rights allows the idea to be priced via normal market mechanisms, at the cost of high transaction costs.
At any rate, you get the idea. The justification for academic research is that the private sector, supposedly, won't do long term basic science and that grant recipients will. That's a very dubious set of assumptions. We see basic science being done by private labs all over the place, most obviously in AI but also in many other areas of computer science, we see it in the biotech sector, we see it in semiconductor physics etc. The areas where there's no private investment tend also to be the most controversial areas of academia where many people have concluded that the results are systematically useless e.g. social sciences. And meanwhile what we see amongst grant recipients is systematically unscientific behaviour like knowingly publishing claims that aren't actually true, refusing to share data even after promising to do so, accepting unvalidated modelling as 'science' and a million other things.
The problem with that system is that the "value" would have to be determined in some independent manner, e.g. an audited cost+ basis, which wouldn't be reflective of the true value of the idea. Granting time-limited monopoly rights allows the idea to be priced via normal market mechanisms, at the cost of high transaction costs.
At any rate, you get the idea. The justification for academic research is that the private sector, supposedly, won't do long term basic science and that grant recipients will. That's a very dubious set of assumptions. We see basic science being done by private labs all over the place, most obviously in AI but also in many other areas of computer science, we see it in the biotech sector, we see it in semiconductor physics etc. The areas where there's no private investment tend also to be the most controversial areas of academia where many people have concluded that the results are systematically useless e.g. social sciences. And meanwhile what we see amongst grant recipients is systematically unscientific behaviour like knowingly publishing claims that aren't actually true, refusing to share data even after promising to do so, accepting unvalidated modelling as 'science' and a million other things.