Funding Markets

Private Markets for Public Goods

The primary goal of Olas is to make all non-private information free to all. The secondary goal is to remove systemic economic incentives that create conflicts of interest for truthful and accurate information. Subscription and advertising based models are incompatible with these goals. That leaves Olas with only one other possible economic model given how trivial it is to reproduce information: Charity.

Charity has been used for centuries to raise money for various projects and causes. It is a tried and tested method for subsidising things people find valuable that markets are not well suited to providing. However, since funds are not subject to competitive market forces - governments often only permit one charity for each cause - they are not regularly very well used. Government spending on public infrastructure and services faces a similar problem. Consequently some have posited it's preferable to subject public goods funding to private market forces in a hybrid system. In Olas, those seeking donations to write on the same topics will be made compete with each other to harness the great benefits of market competition.

Since some forms of information such as scientific research and investigative journalism involve greater up front costs but unearth a relatively larger amount of value for society, they are suited to investment as well as competition. Given the prospect of a large amount of donations investors can assume the risk of the large up front costs in the hope of profiting after the work is published.

Below is an overview of the two funding streams available in Olas:

Figure : Overview of Olas Funding Markets