An Ethical Question

Let us suppose you have discovered a new energy source, one that is bountiful and cheap and easy to implement. You have, say, devised away to use seawater to generate electricity by polarizing its natural ions which, when they comeback together, push electricity down electric lines -- creating an energy source that, while prodigious and dwarfing other sources of energy on Earth, is constantly renewed by sunlight (the incidence of which ionizes and polarizes the seawater). The process is like a siphon: once started it keeps flowing as long as there's an outlet on or pull coming from the other end. (We're dreaming here.)  And it's non-polluting to generate.


You could patent your idea and sell the technology, but it is so easy to copy and implement that you'll not make much money from that.  Soon it will be everywhere, and your easy to implement system could be modified and your patents avoided.  So, there's some money but not too much money to be made in selling the technology.

If, however, you keep the process secret but sell the energy, you'll easily become the richest person on Earth.  As is legal, at first you'll run your business from offshore boats with power lines to the shore so your process stays secret, and you'll properly report your income on your confidential tax returns. Eventually you'll not only be the richest but the most powerful person on Earth, as you'll control the supply of energy. Doing so is not an antitrust violation in the United States, anyway, as you've created a natural monopoly.  Even incidentally undercutting your competitors on price -- who find it much more expensive to produce energy -- you'll still make a huge profit (and so you're not illegally dumping) and eventually, when your competitors fail, you'll be able to price your product more aggressively as well as control demand by limiting supply.

The thing is, other humans need energy, and it directly and substantially affects our standard of living. If, in fact, you keep your process secret other humans will suffer and die in the millions as a direct result of this. With sufficient energy, for example, enormous amounts of seawater could be desalinated and used to irrigate arid unproductive land, feeding millions. Widespread use of your process could prevent vast amounts of pollution from other energy sources as well as halt global warming. It would allow people to travel and communicate quickly in many places on the globe. In raising the standard of living for many poor people it would help reduce the ignorance and want that often lead to war and violence.

So, should you be allowed to keep it secret? Would laws that force its disclosure and allow its use by others, without your consent, be ethical? If keeping the process secret is unethical, how is that conduct different from any other supplier of a product who does not make his or her product available to everyone after a modest profit but controls sales (i.e. sets the price point to maximize profit) -- products other than our example might not seem to be life and death (though we could provide examples that plainly are), but is not demand a measure of need?