"There are basically two ways we've figured out how to create public goods: taxation and assurance contracts (like Kickstarter)."
No, many BSD licensed projects have been created through other means. Partial sponsorship and user contributions (usually non-monetary) seems like a common path.
The problem with taxation is that it requires force, which implies a heavy burden of responsibility on the people allocating the funds after collection. It's really hard to figure out which projects should get funded, and how much, and avoid strange incentives along the way. I just don't think any group of humans could do a good job of this outside of very specific tactical funding (e.g. what the DoD does with some projects).
Yeah, assurance contracts make the "figuring out what to fund" easier, since there's sort of a natural selection process. You still have execution risk, though, which is probably the biggest problem right now: if I'm contributing to fund the creation of some software, how do I know the funded people will actually deliver?
That's where a trusted intermediary probably has to come into play. The best thing I can think of at the moment is a version of Kickstarter that vets the candidate projects almost as thoroughly as a VC would and takes a cut for providing that service. Not sure how the business economics would play out in practice, though.
No, many BSD licensed projects have been created through other means. Partial sponsorship and user contributions (usually non-monetary) seems like a common path.
The problem with taxation is that it requires force, which implies a heavy burden of responsibility on the people allocating the funds after collection. It's really hard to figure out which projects should get funded, and how much, and avoid strange incentives along the way. I just don't think any group of humans could do a good job of this outside of very specific tactical funding (e.g. what the DoD does with some projects).