reverse economy

we usually think of spending our own money coming up with some idea or piece of art, and then we want to own the idea or art with a patent or copyright and get money from it going into the future.

however, the game mechanics of this approach are weird, since ideas and artistic imagery are not limited resources — they can be copied easily — so we need to go through great lengths to arbitrarily limit how people use them with laws and lawsuits.

also, we lose out on all the creative mixing that could happen if all intellectual property were public domain.

so, I fancy the idea of a reverse model, like kickstarter, where people ask for money in advance to create ideas or art, and then it becomes public domain.

But how would people know who to fund?

we have this problem anyway. I said idea generators and artists spend their own money, but they usually don't actually — they get funding from a company or publisher who believes they will make something good, and plans to own and sell their work, and these sources of funding need to assess who they think will make something good.

the answer is, idea generators and artists are generally evaluated on work they've done in the past, and if you go back far enough, they're evaluated on stuff they did for free, usually during school, for the specific purpose of putting in their resume portfolio.

anyway, there are other issues with other answers and so forth, but I'm going to bed