Wish society would incentivize more smart people to tackle these important problems rather than go into finance, management consulting, working at the next hot tech startup, etc.
Maybe some form of corporate patronage, like Facebook and Stripe did in this story, and giving the inventor a generous slice of the returns from the invention (I can imagine several downsides to this too, of course):
The problem is that investments in the future and public goods will always be unfunded in a free market capitalist economy due mainly to the free-rider problem. Fixing it would have to involve the government (or a government-like entity) subsidizing these projects. Of course care would have to be taken to make sure this money is properly allocated, the incentives are properly aligned, etc.
Maybe some form of corporate patronage, like Facebook and Stripe did in this story, and giving the inventor a generous slice of the returns from the invention (I can imagine several downsides to this too, of course):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791