If it is voting contest then I am afraid we will end up with reality shows like Kardashian pretending to be working on idea.

Maybe requirement should be voting on projects have to be anonymous. Public cannot know projects owner completion of funding rounds

This is kind of how research at universities and public research institutes is funded by grants. You get money to do research, you publish a paper on your research and if it is deemed to have made enough impact, more grants will be funded and you get more money to continue.

My personal opinion is that the average person is struggling not to die of obesity or become diabetic, not be massively in debt, take reasonably good care of their kids, attain a reasonable level of education, etc. So from this perspective nobody really cares about a computer programmer getting to do an interesting project for a year.

As for government funding for interesting projects, the way you get these is submitting research proposals to the NSF or something. Unfortunately I think it’s rare for them to give you money if you’re not a university professor or something.

As I understand it there are similar public and private grants for artists but you probably have to be pretty good already to get one.

> My personal opinion is that the average person is struggling not to die of obesity or become diabetic, not be massively in debt, take reasonably good care of their kids, attain a reasonable level of education, etc. So from this perspective nobody really cares about a computer programmer getting to do an interesting project for a year.

This is so poetically stated.

"Once I've been a citizen long enough (i.e. paid enough taxes) I get to invoke my free year, which is a year where the government pays me enough to cover my bills and maybe a bit extra for projects and stuff."

I really wish people would stop saying "the government" in these scenarios. It's the taxpayers. Actual humans whose money is taken by force. Not saying it's a bad idea, just saying that we need to be thinking a lot more responsibly about the fact that this is money being taken from people who themselves would rather spend it on their own needs/dreams/business ideas etc.

The money is taken regardless, whether through higher prices on goods sold, higher interest rates on money borrowed, lower returns on investments, or higher taxes. The question is what will do the most good for the most people at the highest efficiency.

Is that the question? Is that written somewhere? Or is the question, what will lead me (elected representative) to achieve my personal ambitions of, for example, being re-elected or landing a high paying job in the private sector?

is it really the tax payers? and is it really being taken by force? the government also gets funding by taking on debt, or can print more currency; not everything comes from a tax payer.

you're not exactly forced to be taxed either. it's an agreement in exchange for citizenship. if you don't want to be taxed, go make and spend your money somewhere that doesn't have taxes

Do you have an unspoken premise that this nation belongs to the government? If so, I would say that this nation belongs to the citizens instead.

Found the libertarian!

I kid, but I think most people do have the view that the government really owns everything. In practice, control means ownership, so it's not an unreasonable view.

Who controls government?

Not all money that government generates comes from tax payers.

From selling stamps, casino taxes, parking/speeding tickets, lotteries (where out of state purchases are allowed) to charging fees for applications or rent/selling land or charging fees to camp in parks.

I don't have to be a taxpayer for the government to make money from me.

Thinking the govermment is the taxpayer is wrong. The government must represent all citizens very young and old and many are not taxpayers.

As a taxpayer I'm not interested in paying people to take a year off. If they want to do that they can save up their own money.

So you prefer to pay 10 times or 100 times the amount to subsidize debt which drives the capital appreciation of stocks to benefit rich shareholders and executives who either sit around and do nothing, or worse: they use the money to create shitty companies which waste everyone's time and energy... Then when the companies finally go bankrupt after a decade everyone loses except the executives who are actually responsible for the whole mess to begin with... Then they use the proceeds of their years of huge salary and bonuses to fund their next shitty company and repeat the process over and over again.

The situation is so bad now that if you're reading this as an employee, your current boss probably fits the description above perfectly. Your boss right now is probably a serial entrepreneur who created 10 different companies which made him a ton of money but which for some reason are all dead now and either added no value to society or created negative value.

There is so much wrong with this post, I don't know where to begin. It scares me how quickly the US population is turning on entrepreneurs. Do you really believe starting a company is the easier route? Is it better to just complain and demand tax payers equalize all opportunities for non risk takers like yourself?

I'm pretty sure that I've taken more risks than most entrepreneurs. It's a mistake to assume that if someone is not financially successful, that they haven't taken risks. This kind of logic was never accurate and it's getting even less so over time.

There is a lot of talent and there are many really great projects which go unnoticed these days. Our entire economy is founded on hype and misinformation. It's no longer possible to compete based on merit; the only way to win is through cheating and deception (e.g. the focus is not on value creation for customers, it's all about social scheming). Maybe that is why people are increasingly turning on entrepreneurs.

Social schemes which allow entrepreneurs to make money don't add value to society, they take away value. The VC funnel, corporate acquisitions, IPOs, social media advertising, etc... All these schemes don't create any value and yet that's where most of society's money seems to be going.

I think the financial system has failed. TBH I still can't believe that cryptocurrencies are worth so much money after so many years. The ongoing success of Bitcoin is proof that fiat money and the entire economy is completely speculative.

In a proper functioning economy in which money has real value, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies wouldn't have been able to last a single year.

It doesn't matter how many risks you take. What counts is taking the right risks.

Fiat currency works fine. Bitcoin only has value for money laundering and drug deals; its value doesn't tell us anything positive or negative about fiat currency.

It is definitely sometimes the easier route for some people when it comes to getting rich quickly without contributing much to society

I believe this is a false dichotomy. Many of us would rather not pay for either and dislike the notion that if we don't pay for one, we have to pay for the other. Why isn't 'neither' an option?

Even if what you say is true, transferring money from taxpayers to other taxpayers to take a year off doesn't fix it.

That's the sound of a door being slammed very hard with no consideration of what you may get back in return.

The whole model of giving people tax money to do work is called research and is quite a large area and has produced some amazingly valuable things that you benefit from.

BTW I do see what you mean, but I have been trying to start a company for ages and getting the money together is just incredibly hard. It's also hard IT, not pet grooming or similar. It's difficult.

I support government funding for basic research as long as there is proper oversight and accountability. That's a totally different situation.

That's a good point, upvoted, however in my one experience of a government funded R&D project many years ago I was involved in, a bunch of universities was asked to produce a product.

There was no proper oversight. We produced nothing of value (and I'd like a post-mortem of why, but never got one). That was UK £2 million wasted.

I've no reason to suppose that company funded R&D is any better than govt. funded though.

We can call it the year of innovation. For one year projects get funded that otherwise never would. The output would solve many problems and create so many opportunities.

Playing along with your idea, I propose that we let people sign up to withdraw early from their social security, but at the expense of having to keep working longer before they get it when they retire.

That's a cool system. What country, if you don't mind sharing?