5. Enterprise software 2.0.

This might be partially solved by my commercial idea for #17. But, that idea breaks down for things which are only rarely sold. And it would be very difficult to apply to corporate buyers, who have varied and changing needs and behaviors.

This is where the government could take the lead. The govt. could declare all patents and copyrights, or just certain classes of them, to be public domain immediately upon creation. Then the government would (anonymously) track usage of all of them. It would then take that info, and estimate how much the creator would have earned in the typical monopoly market patents and copyrights have. And then pay that much to the creator.

Example: a company makes some enterprise software. Once released to the government, it can be downloaded by any company, from a government website. The government collects as much data about usage as possible. They find that, say, 50,000 companies are using it as their primary software. In a normal market, they estimate the company would have earned $25 million for the year for that many users. That's what the developers earn. If they think the data is undercounting (or the government thinks the data is overcounting), it can be arbitrated.

Advantages of this approach are myriad and overwhelming- the first country to adopt this approach will have a major competitive advantage over all other countries, because all their businesses and individuals will be using the highest quality software, health care drugs and devices, manufacturing processes, etc. The collective cost to society, paid via taxes instead of private expenditures, would be roughly the same, since the government would only be trying to pay the creators the same amount they would earn under the old market.

For the creators, while revenue would be the same, profit margins would go up, since their marketing and administrative costs would mostly disappear. Basically, they would get paid more for focusing on what they do best- creating useful things. No longer would they need to be experts on numerous other aspects of distribution.

For the taxpayers, instead of paying for one copy of software, and that's all they got, they would pay the same amount in taxes, but be free to try any software ever made. Apply the same logic to anything else that was covered by copyright and patents, and you will see that's quite a deal, don't you think?

For those crying "socialism!", well, yes, I am suggesting the government increase taxes in order to gain a valuable common good. But this would actually reduce the amount of bureaucracy people have to deal with- no more DRMs, RIAA after your butt, piracy warnings before movies, dealing with insurance bureaucrats (once prescription drugs and medical devices are public domain, there is much less need for insurance and other complicated stuff, because medical care becomes much cheaper (without creating more government regulation of healthcare. Yay!)), unnecessary business administration, etc. etc. etc. The government would only be monitoring usage, and paying money. That's a pretty light hand.

12. Fix advertising.

If "fix advertising" means "eliminate advertising" (OK, that's my definition), the idea above would eliminate most advertising. Once the content of newspapers, magazines, TV shows, online web content, etc., is free (the creators being paid by the government), advertising has lost its function- anyone would be free to publish an advertising-free version of something.

This would do wonders for the psychological health of humanity.