The word you're looking for is a "public good", a good that is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. In economics it is well known that businesses operating in the

The word you're looking for is a "public good", a good that is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. In economics it is well known that businesses operating in the free market will always underproduce public goods if at all. We've already solved this issue with other public goods like infrastructure and defense, which is to fund it publically. > ... or government funding from taxes that can't be escaped. This is bad why? You seem to have issue with the fact that it's being funded in a way that you can't be avoided, but this is true even for private institutions. The truth is that in perfectly competitive markets most companies do not make enough profit to reinvest into research. Most research instead come from near-monopoly markets that have the profits to invest in research. Take for example the development of UNIX at Bell Labs. I doubt anybody living in that era could've avoided telephone charges entirely.