> For other areas, like drug research, I think publicly-funded research is a great solution.
Tallying up most of the federal funding in the U.S. for R&D of any kind gives you a number ~ $130 billion per year for the last few years[1]. The top fifteen pharma companies have R&D budgets that look to add up to around $80 billion per year[2]. What countries do you expect to be willing to match that spend?
The weird thing being that some of the biggest leaps of technological development have been during wartime, because then budget is no issue.
The early cultivation of penicillin involved walls of cotton balls acting as growth environment. Laborious, ineffective and expensive, but maintained so that the army hospitals were provided a reliable supply.
Tallying up most of the federal funding in the U.S. for R&D of any kind gives you a number ~ $130 billion per year for the last few years[1]. The top fifteen pharma companies have R&D budgets that look to add up to around $80 billion per year[2]. What countries do you expect to be willing to match that spend?
[1]: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsf16311/ [2]: https://endpts.com/top-pharma-biotech-research-development-b...