On intellectual property and science
The standard ancap position rejects IP — ideas can't be homesteaded, only kept secret. Fine. But this raises a real structural question for *fundamental* science.
I'm not asking whether private firms will fund applied R&D. Obviously they will. I'm asking about science as a *non-instrumental* endeavor — particle physics, gravitational wave astronomy, cosmology. Low immediate reward, diffuse long-term spillovers (CERN didn't set out to invent the internet). The value is real but it's not capturable by any single actor on any reasonable time horizon.
In the current world this gets solved by states and treaty organizations (CERN runs on a 23-nation convention). That's not available to us. So what replaces it?
A few framings I've been turning over:
- **Reputation markets** — scientists are rewarded by priority credit, which translates to salary and grants. But in a stateless world, who funds the grants?
- **Private consortium models** — voluntary cooperative funding between firms who expect *indirect* spillovers. The CERN model, minus the state coercion. Does this scale to pure theory?
- **Philanthropic/ideological patrons** — wealthy individuals funding knowledge as a terminal value. Historically this worked (Bell Labs, pre-war European physics). Is it robust?
None of these feel complete to me. Curious whether anyone has a principled framework here, or whether fundamental science is just a genuine hard case for decentralized organization.
