This has nothing to do with academic patronage, in fact many of the technological advancements in the world were neither done under business or under academia, but simply by truth seekers in private.
Business aren't "forced" to innovate. Business have the same mechanism as government, as do individuals, it can force others into slavery. Just because it's morally wrong doesn't mean business can't do this, and it will as has been seen thru-out history. When business face the conundrum of innovation/tyranny/death it often picks tyranny. In fact, in history tyranny is extremely common. How's that for evidence? In fact there hasn't been a society in history that hasn't had businesses pick corruption and tyranny when faced with stagnation How about you provide evidence that everytime a business is faced with a crisis of innovate or death that it picks to do long term investment and innovate. I'm afraid you'll find business pick many methods and not of them particularly nice. I don't care if they avoid them or not, that's hopefully determined by the individuals running the businesses, but I trust them no more than the people running governments. They're all potentially corrupt or potentially fair.
You offer market economy as a panacea for problems for which there are likely no cures like a religious nut, you need to wake up and stop drinking the kool-aid.
Well since we can't determine the cost of something in resources/time does that mean it's not worth pursuing? For business that answer would be no right? As I have proved before, business don't have to always follow your fantasy world solution to its problems, it can always take a real world solution, brutality.
The pricing mechanism doesn't have to be a "free" market, not that such a thing will ever exists. I believe the market is a natural pricing mechanism, but that doesn't mean it's a "good" pricing mechanism. The market itself is a human technology which can be innovated and improved.
As far as pricing truth, there are plenty of people trying to "price" truth, especially people trying to patent your DNA. There are many reasons why patenting and monetizing scientific discoveries can lead to moral and ethical problems. Intrinsically information is very easy to transport, and the only way many scientific truth can be "milked" for the initial investment by business is if they attain a monopoly on the product.
Like what? The western world is plentiful and wealthy, people already live pretty great. Anyways stop linking from crackpots, it's annoying. And you keep saying "best", prove that, puhleeezeeeee, stop drinking the kool-aid.
I have no problem with using the market as a pricing mechanism for most things, but as I said, the market always lags reality and cannot react as fast as reality, the information it knows is incomplete compare to the whole of society. The whole society is not the market nor the government, plenty of information is exchange for free, plenty of discussions are had by people for pleasure and plenty of innovations and advancement come from people who simply want to do it.
I think you don't understand that the market thru history has been just as oppressive a force as government to the people, and if you want to live a truly free life, you position yourself outside of both market forces and government forces so you can be secure against both. The market is heartless, you don't want it to dictate your life.
I find it funny you are so similar to the communist teachers I had as a child, always with the "best", "free", etc, etc etc. Best and free are for propaganda and marketing.
Anyways the only way to respect the individuals is to let people pick, government, market, religion, academia, self, it doesn't matter, everyone can pick the tool they want to use, and these are all potential tools available in society. Ideologues in the past have tried to force whole societies down one path or another, generally to great folly and brutality.