The basic issue here isn't funding, it's collective social permissions and policy judgement. Businesses are only 'viable' or 'not viable' according to rules that are decided by the ownership class, and which are designed to benefit the ownership class.
VC is a lynchpin of the conspiracy which creates collective efforts - i.e. businesses and corporations - which are forced to follow the rules.
Real innovation might not be quite so constrained. If the restrictions on viability, profitability and payback were loosened it's possible we'd see an explosion of genuine inventiveness.
We'd also see more interest in projects with generational payback times, which are impossible to imagine with the current politics.
In fact the VC system guarantees that only socially trivial start-ups like Facebook are possible, and that the most interesting and creative long term R&D remains goverment funded, or in some cases barely funded (i.e. approved) at all.
Having said that, kickstarter is a new(ish) model that's doing some very interesting things, and could be retooled for other applications.
Whatever takes its place will also, if effective, be part of a conspiracy which creates collective efforts which are forced to follow the rules.
The rules that collective efforts are forced to follow may be changed, but the fact that they are is not going anywhere so long as we are social animals. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Currently the rules are hidden for very selective advantage, and it's implied that they're the only possible rules.
This is a nonsense in a nominal democracy. It excludes the majority of the population who are deprived of policy input, and it also makes rational policy choices impossible.
