Funny thing is, that may be a bigger concern here, that the research is often publicly funded while the uses of that research and the profits that come with them are kept private. It’s complicated and I buy the notion that research improves the economy as a whole, but it is also true that when research gets patented and becomes a billion dollar product, those dollars don’t reduce any taxes directly.
What do you mean? Research funding absolutely is an investment. Research that is productized is a venture, and the universities involved absolutely do invest in the venture, and sometimes see a handsome ROI.
In terms of why the public funds research, your statement might be true, but isn’t addressing the concern that many in the public have raised before: the results of the research should be public, given that the research was publicly funded. We have laws about open access to government functions, so why is research different?
There are often a lot of steps between a discovery (or even a patent) and commercial viability. Patents make it easier for the companies to raise funding to do that work and move from theoretical or small scale to an actual product.
Also you could argue that patents are open access. The whole point of a patent is you give a complete summary of what the invention is and how to replicate it (with a level of detail that would allow someone knowledgeable in the field to recreate it) in exchange for a time limited legal moat.
> In terms of why the public funds research, your statement might be true
Yes this is what I meant. We fund research because we think pure research is valuable. It needs to be done without requiring a financial return. Products sometimes come out of it and that's also a public benefit, but direct results of the research are not a "product" they are the starting point to a possible product. There is still a lot of development that has to occur to get to the product stage.
That’s all true and I agree with all of that. But again, that doesn’t address why publicly funded research ought to be locked away for private gain. This is not to look a gift-horse in the mouth; open access publication has really taken off in the last 5 years, but for a long time until recently, the research itself was only available for relatively hefty fees from private, for-profit publishers. And nothing’s changed about the patent and university venture system; publicly funded research isn’t up for grabs by the public, and when successful, the profits don’t go to the public. The patent system as incentive to invest in research makes sense when protecting private companies that take risks with private money, but why should the public only get the indirect trickle-down benefits of research, when they pay for it directly?