I completely agree. My willingness to pay is directly proportional to my conviction in the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

The internet has revealed us to be very picky shoppers. We do a lot of comparison shopping, looking for the "best" deal on the silliest item. That same skepticism applies to policies, even effective ones. I want to fund the best ideas, and the best ideas should be backed by compelling models and, ideally, empirical evidence.

There's something to be said for the VC mindset here: funding many things, each of which has a low probability of succeeding, and using unicorns to subsidize numerous losses. Tax payers don't like losses, but an example of something kind of similar that the government already does today is science funding.