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Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

I surely hope they were privately funded, because being funded by taxpayers money and keeping the results a secret is a really shitty thing to do.

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why? i'd say that if they're funded by taxpayers the most important thing is for taxpayers to reap their fare share of the profits. if those profits can be kept higher by keeping things secret it's a win for the taxpayer.

I'm not sure it would be in the taxpayers' interest to make it easier for private and/or foreign competition against their investment

Wealth is not just money in someone’s pocket / taxes paid it’s the actual capital of humanity.

Suppose I found a way to make synthetic oil for 1$ per barrel from atmospheric CO2 and published it. Now I can’t capture that wealth and Exxon’s and many other companies stock tanks so it looks like global wealth decreased. However, soon everyone across the globe can now buy more with their money. Lowered transportation costs for potatoes means potatoes cost less in a very real way.

This is why patents expire, everyone gets richer when they do.

>Suppose I found a way to make synthetic oil for 1$ per barrel from atmospheric CO2

Funnily enough that's part of the plot of Metal Gear 2: https://metalgear.fandom.com/wiki/OILIX

something tells me that the oil companies would sue to claim ownership of the atmospheric CO2 since they spent the money to dig it up. Of course, anyone who paid a carbon tax might have some claim.

But how will the taxpayers ever see any of the profits? It's not like enterprises funded by grants from the government send any of their profits back, unless the government takes actual ownership, which I don't think is very common, at least not anymore.

Of course, a successful business will pay taxes and increase economic activity etc. etc., but I don't think that's much of an argument. It absolutely is strange to see government-funded research ending up locked down like this, if that's what it is.

So I'll sketch a caricature answer.

let's say the patent is released, and a year later every household in the world is thrilled to have black morels every night for dinner, for free, out of their DIY morel cultivation box, and nobody anywhere in the world can ever sell a morel to anyone else again.

Have "the taxpayers" seen benefit from this? In terms of currency return on investment, no. But in terms of access to a desirable commodity, heck yes. How much value have they seen? Something like 365 times the price of a meal's worth of mushrooms.

The best government research generates benefits this broad.

Imho that is as wrong as saying that Jeff Bezos' money eventually trickles down to normal people and it's good that he is so rich.

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