If you want to have expensive ground breaking research done in the private sector, you basically want superprofitable corporations that have at least regional m

If you want to have expensive ground breaking research done in the private sector, you basically want superprofitable corporations that have at least regional monopolies and power to guarantee their long term security via direct or indirect law-influencing/making/changing powers. If you get to this, then they'll also need corporate police, corporate armies, corporate intelligence services etc., that will also have powers over and provide protections to civilians depending on their corporate affiliation. You basically want the dissolution of traditional states and their replacement by corporation states - a form of corporate semi-anarcho capitalism. ...and it doesn't sound like such a bad idea actually. We just need to choose between gross incompetence (what governments worldwide have shown us they are capable of) and pure for-profit maliciousness (what corporations showed they are capable of). We just need a 3rd magic ingredient, maybe something like a "global karma system" that could help keep the "profit driven maliciousness" in check. If this magic 3rd ingredient is ever realized, and corporations agree to become more democratic, a switch to the new system becomes possible if desirable. Over all this, the basic truth is that in order to take on the risks of costly research you need to have either: 1. guaranteed long term and real power (governments and monopolist corporations can have this, less for corporations since the landscape is too dynamic now to guarantee the "long term" part, nor more big Bell and AT&T :( ) 2. a reliable way to turn a significant percent of any kind of research "outputs" into guaranteed profit (this is actually an area I'm very interested in and I think I have some ideas, but I'm not sure if I should just"open source" them or wait until I'll be able to "sell" them...)