A flexible design for funding public goods

Abstract

A novel funding mechanism for an emergent ecosystem of public goods is introduced. It is an extension of Quadratic Voting that provides a flexible and responsive method for funding public goods without a predefined organizational structure. The mechanism improves on existing methods by allowing for greater flexibility in the set of goods to be funded, eliminating the assumption of complete information, and satisfying individual rationality constraints. It is shown that the mechanism leads to approximately optimal public goods provision. The advantages of Quadratic Finance over purely private and 1p1v contributions are discussed, and potential applications in campaign finance reform, open source software ecosystems, news media finance, charitable giving, and urban public projects are considered. – AI-generated abstract.