For many years, the National Science Foundation has used your money to offer grants to university professors for research on their favor projects. I have pointed out in previous writing that most of these grants are politically motivated in attempting to justify various governmental projects, such as global warming. Many other projects have no practical significance. For example, we recently heard in the news about $1 million plus grant for the study of some kind of organism in Latin America.
The thought has apparently entered the mind of NSF that some of the research generated at universities might be used to establish commercial organizations. For that purpose, they have set up a new procedure by which researchers can take a 10-day course at your expense by charging it to NSF. The course uses webinars and consultants to help determine whether a particular research is commercially viable. A $50,000 grant covers the costs related to the course and travel of University professors over a six-month period.
It may appear admirable to check whether any of the research is commercially viable, but it is another expenditure of taxpayer money.
I suggest that since the original grant involved taxpayer money, now, with the addition of furthering public fund expenditure for courses on commercialization, any subsequent businesses which are developed based on the research and the commercial investigation course should be publicly owned. This means that until the business can be sold publicly, dividends should be paid to the government for reimbursement of taxpayer funds advanced.
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