A free world is one in which human beings can live free, self-directed lives. A great obstacle to such a world is severe poverty, still blighting the lives of half of humankind. We have the resources, technologies, and administrative capacities to eradicate severe poverty, but doing so requires some restructuring of existing social arrangements. We might begin with the current regime governing innovation, which has monopoly markups as its key funding source. Such monopoly rents encourage the quest for innovations, but also greatly impede their diffusion. This headwind harms the poor, who cannot afford monopoly prices and whose specific needs innovators thus tend to ignore. It also works against potential innovations whose benefits would mostly go to third parties whom buyers care little about. Both problems can be much alleviated through a supplementary alternative reward mechanism that would enable innovators to exchange their monopoly privileges on any patentable technology for impact rewards based on the social benefits achieved with it. By promoting innovations and their diffusion together, international impact funds would bring substantial gains in justice and cost-effectiveness, especially in the pharmaceutical and green-technology sectors.

中文翻译：

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自由、贫困和影响力奖励

自由世界是人类可以过上自由、自我导向的生活的世界。实现这一世界的一个巨大障碍是严重贫困，它仍然困扰着一半人类的生活。我们拥有消除严重贫困的资源、技术和行政能力，但这样做需要对现有的社会安排进行一些重组。我们可以从当前的创新管理制度开始，该制度以垄断加成作为其主要资金来源。这种垄断租金鼓励了对创新的追求，但也极大地阻碍了创新的扩散。这种逆风损害了穷人的利益，他们无力承担垄断价格，因此创新者往往会忽视他们的特殊需求。它还不利于潜在的创新，这些创新的利益主要会流向买家不太关心的第三方。通过补充性替代奖励机制可以大大缓解这两个问题，该机制使创新者能够将其对任何可专利技术的垄断特权交换为基于该技术所实现的社会效益的影响奖励。通过共同促进创新及其传播，国际影响力基金将在正义和成本效益方面带来巨大收益，特别是在制药和绿色技术领域。