Ask HN: How do I turn a geoengineering invention into an adequate profit?

[geoengthrowaway]

For some time now I have been sitting on a geoengineering invention with the potential to prevent tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-change-related damages globally every year. Among its distinguishing characteristics are that it is extremely cheap compared to averted damages and that it solves one big climate-change related problem that is not easily addressed with other geoengineering approaches. (To limit the scope of this discussion let's just axiomatically assume that the invention does work.) But its geoengineering nature makes it impossible to limit its effect locally to foil freeloading. Thus I see no good way to make a worthwhile profit from marketing it as a service to paying customers.

The only bad way I could come up with is a business model that requires "tricking" a huge number of governments into entering very-long-term insurance/maintenance contracts at conditions seemingly attractive for them and then later using the geoengineering to reduce operating costs and rake in the profits. But that would take a very long time, a lot of up-front capital and a lot of work. Since I don't have enough health left for such an approach I won't do it. However, the invention itself is also far too good to give away for free/cheap, and if I don't get any good suggestions here I'll probably just take it with me into the grave.

My questions (in ascending order of difficulty):

Question 1: How to determine valuation? Since I cannot convert my invention into something marketable I cannot come up with a value using established means. This makes it basically arbitrary and is also one of the reasons for avoiding the patent route since it would leave me open to expropriation+undervaluation attacks. So: How should I determine the value of my invention instead? Should it be based on damages averted? If so: Over what time frame?

Question 2: How to preserve exclusivity? Even though the ideas underlying my invention are somewhat clever and fairly non-obvious, the overall concept is still very simple (and thus likely to work in practice). But this aspect also makes it somewhat easy for someone else to rediscover/reimplement (i.e. there is no inherent "moat"). Currently everyone else's ignorance over what to dig for and where is working in my favour and I'd feel cheated if having to give that up would result in me losing exclusivity. How can I overcome this blocker and preserve exclusivity during the compensation negotiation phase or discussions in general? If I were to even just mention what domain my idea applies to it could already clue people in enough on where to place the shovel, so I need this answered before I can drop the vaguespeak and start talking.

Question 3: How to reach assurance? Since I'm not rich and my invention has the potential for benefits in the hundreds of billions of dollars every year it brings with it the risk of legal system "malfunctions". There is an abundance of examples of inventors who were screwed out of their just compensation through stratagems and "legal mishaps" of various degrees of scumminess and nowadays it seems to be the norm. I have no nerve left for even the faintest risk of such BS, and my life experience also has rendered me extremely skittish. How do I come to a point of assurance that I will actually get to enjoy my compensation instead of getting screwed over, exhausted in litigation etc.? Without assurance it is not worth it to explore any of this further.

TIA

[schoen]

I don't think there's a good mechanism in place for "getting paid for saving the world" which is essentially what you're looking for.

Scott Alexander was working with some people on a kind of financial market for benefits from charitable projects; I forget the exact details but it allowed people to have shares which could go up in value (a lot) if there was sufficient later consensus that the intervention was beneficial. But I think that project is in a totally embryonic stage, it might never become mainstream, and it might not even be legally feasible to scale it up to something that would succeed in making you rich from your invention. But you could try to see if that mechanism is under development anywhere.

The basically mainstream mechanisms you can use are a patent (then you can get paid if people in a jurisdiction where your patent is enforceable openly practice your invention), a prize, or a grant from a grantmaker.

I just searched and saw that, for example, last year there was a prize for technical ideas to help address climate change:

https://wilkescenter.utah.edu/prize/2023-wilkes-climate-priz...

The dollar amount for that is probably a lot smaller than you want, but you might find that other people find your idea's benefits more speculative than you do. Maybe there are other prizes like that continuing to be offered.

For grantmaking foundations, I'd agree that you still do have a chicken-and-egg problem about how to begin negotiations.

If you're as confident about your idea as you sound, I'd also encourage you to set up some kind of mechanism (like with a lawyer, or with various online services) to ensure that the idea is eventually disclosed if anything happens to you.

[geoengthrowaway → schoen]

Yeah, I looked into prizes and grants, too, and the amount awarded there is usually quite measly. Patents don't work either because for geoengineering to not be circumvented you'd need a global patent (which don't exist yet) or patent in literally every jurisdiction which, of course, would cost a ton of money. The problem is also: If someone infringes on my patent with the intention to eventually file for bankruptcy after I sue then I'll be never made whole. So why even bother?

What irks me so hard is that my invention does not just have the potential to avert damages, but also to open doors to investment opportunities that probably number in the trillions -- of which I wouldn't see a single effin' dime simply because the legal system ignores the causality.

[schoen → geoengthrowaway]

We just don't have a good way in place to reward people for saving the world.

Maybe try to save the world anyway, and try to benefit in random ways from your (hopefully) resulting high status?

[geoengthrowaway → schoen]

Contemporary mainstream bourgeois ideology in the West glorifies the ruthless pursuit of self-interest and consequently holds any kind of altruism in utmost contempt. So, even if I actually were to gain high status for giving my invention away for cheap I would be compensated in a currency that is worthless in today's world. You can easily prove this to yourself by compiling from memory(!) a list of even just 10 people who performed altruistic tasks of great impact and how they benefited from the resulting high status. You will probably not be able to name even just 5 without searching around. "Ingratitude is the world's reward" is still one of the truest proverbs.

What makes matters worse is that exactly those kinds of people in the climate-change-denying investor class would be the ones to benefit the most from my invention, and I simply can't let that happen without at least being luxuriously compensated.

[jaggs → geoengthrowaway]

Why do you need reward? Is that mandatory?

And geoengineering is a waste of time anyway. At least until we fix the core problem/s.

[geoengthrowaway → jaggs]

I need a reward because my love for mankind has run cold and the future will probably be quite grim.

And not all forms of geoengineering are a waste of time since some irreversible tipping points will be triggered at even very low temperature increases. If the tremendous costs from the fallout from those are to be avoided then some temporary geoengineering for "untipping" them will be necessary even if the concentration of atmospheric CO2 will not fall for some time. Among other things my invention also does the "untipping" for at least one such low-temp irreversible tipping point.

[schoen → geoengthrowaway]

I don't think I can help you, but I hope you succeed in saving the world and getting rich.

[talldayo]

> How to reach assurance?

Do you have a working prototype? If not, you might have a hard time going from "idea" to "invention" without a third-party involved.

[geoengthrowaway → talldayo]

Demonstrating the workability is trivial. Like I wrote: The concept is very simple and once I explained it to you all questions about it being workable would disappear instantly even without a demo.

[defrost → geoengthrowaway]

How about acceptance, not everybody is onboard with scattering sulphur above the troposphere.

Which goes to rewards; geoengineering at global scale doesn't come cheap and more or less implies partnership with existing marine transport | fossil fuel extraction engineering | billion tonner per annum mining ventures.

THe path for return through these is by demonstrating workable methods and then lobbying for governments to grant credits to emmitters in exchange for funds for a working solution.

Such paths already exist, albeit for less effective and ineffective carbon schemes and for big name, no return (yet) sequestration projects.

[geoengthrowaway → defrost]

My invention lends itself very poorly for schemes like pollution credits (since it does not actually undo any pollution), so that's unlikely to work.

(Also SO2-based solar radiation management and CO2 sequestration are both inherently difficult/expensive due to physics, thus I'm somewhat skeptical that they will be implementable at scale.)