This rethinking rests on three pillars:
1. Recognizing Curiosity Capital as a Distinct Form of Value
Conventional economics collapses intellectual labor into "human capital" or "knowledge production," categories that erase the anticipatory and non-instrumental dimension of genius. Curiosity capital is different: it is not produced for immediate utility but for the expansion of horizons. Like dark matter, its gravitational pull shapes entire economies even when invisible in balance sheets. Any genuine economics of genius must measure and institutionalize this form of value, lest it remain perpetually unrewarded.
2. Redefining Reward Beyond Exploitation Leverage
If wealth flows primarily to those with institutional leverage, then the economy is effectively rewarding exploitation rather than creation. A new framework must invert this hierarchy: institutions should compete to nurture and compensate genius, rather than genius begging for recognition from institutions. Mechanisms such as distributed ownership of intellectual dividends, trust funds for high-risk originality, and sovereign wealth models of knowledge are potential pathways.
3. Correcting the Time Lag Paradox
History shows that anticipatory contributions are punished in the short term and sanctified only posthumously. To prevent systemic intellectual waste, we must design mechanisms that advance recognition and security closer to the moment of creation. Early-stage grants, curiosity-driven fellowships, and insurance against precarity for innovators are not acts of charity; they are acts of civilization self-preservation.
In sum, a New Economics of Genius must reject the Innovation-Rewards Fallacy and unmask the Wealth Illusion at the heart of current paradigms. Genius is not rare by nature; it is systematically wasted by design. By realigning economic structures to recognize curiosity capital, redistribute exploitation leverage, and shorten the time lag paradox, we might prevent the next Tesla from feeding pigeons in obscurity, the next Ramanujan from coughing blood in neglect, or the next Van Gogh from starving in madness while his canvases gather dust.
This is not simply a matter of justice for the individual genius. It is a matter of collective survival. For when genius dies unrewarded, humanity inherits not just lost potential but the ghost of futures it might have lived.
VIII. Implications
A. For Economic Theory: Why Human Capital Models Are Insufficient
